“Fake or Fortune” and “Britain’s Lost Masterpieces” are two UK television programmes in which art experts and art detectives investigate the origin of paintings. These paintings may be in a well-known art gallery or a private home, but the paintings featured in both series have either been labelled as forgeries or of questionable origin. Some paintings have been revealed as fakes or unproven to be genuine but some have been confirmed as original works by major artists. It’s the sort of detective work that uncovered the real identity of a portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie I wrote about last month. Another recent success was the confirmation that a portrait of the Duke of Buckingham, the lover of King James I, was a genuine Rubens.
History is littered with art forgeries, including the one by Michelangelo which was the subject of my first Homohoax article. One of the biggest forgery scandals of the 20th century was one which involved three gay men during the 1950s and 1960s. Even the life story of one of them was a fake.
Elmyr de Hory was born into an aristocratic family who had estates dotted around the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was an ambassador and his mother came from a distinguished family of bankers. Both of his parents were killed during World War II and Elmyr fell on hard times. To survive he began to sell of his family’s art collection.
Everything in the previous paragraph is a lie (except falling on hard times). It is what the man himself told his biographer, Clifford Irving, in 1969. It is only in the past decade that researchers have uncovered the true facts of his personal background.
Elmyr’s real name was Elemér Albert Hoffmann. He was born in Budapest in 1906. His father was recorded as a “wholesaler of hand-made goods” and his mother was what we used to refer to as a housewife. His parents didn’t die in the war but survived and divorced.
Elmyr, the name by which he is usually known, studied art from the age of 16. He soon discovered he had a talent for forgery and in the late 1920s he was arrested for cheque fraud and counterfeiting documents. He also discovered that he had a talent for copying the styles of famous painters and in 1946 he sold a drawing to an English aristocrat who was told it was by Picasso. It wasn’t. It was by Elmyr. It was also around this time that he developed the persona of an impoverished baron forced to sell his art collection, rather than the impoverished artist that he really was.
After going into partnership with an art dealer who took the biggest cut of his profits Elmyr decided to leave Europe and eventually moved to the USA where he lived for the next twelve years. He was doing well until 1955 when a Chicago art dealer discovered that some of the paintings he bought from Elmyr were forgeries and pressed charges against him.
For the few years afterwards Elmyr painted original works. His reputation as a forger had come to the attention of the FBI because of the Chicago affair but he found a steady income hard to some by and returned to forgery. He found another art dealer to partner with, but like the first it didn’t work out and Elmyr got so depressed that he attempted suicide.
It was during his convalescence in New York that Elmyr met Fernand Legros (1931-1983). Fernand was born in Egypt and moved to France after World War II. He married an American woman in order to gain US citizenship and promptly left her in Paris and moved to New York.
Elmyr decided to move down to Florida and took Fernand with him. Apparently, it was on the drive down to Miami that Fernand persuaded Elmyr to become his dealer. Even though Fernand was claiming to take only 40% the profits he was actually taking more without telling Elmyr the real price his painting fetched.
On one of their journeys around the USA the pair met French Canadian Réal Lessard (b.1939). Fernand fell in love with him and together they continued to fleece Elmyr out of his cut of the profits. They also helped to validate Elmyr’s fake paintings by forging documents and art catalogues. They were even able to bribe some less than honest art experts to claim that Elmyr’s forgeries were genuine.
Once more disappointed by the loss of earnings that was being withheld from him Elmyr decided to move back to Europe. He broke off his business partnership with Fernand for a while but was persuaded to take him back. Fernand bought him a villa on Ibiza where he continued to produce paintings for which he received $400 a month while Fernand and Réal were selling them for thousands.
In 1966 the three fraudsters were uncovered. A Texas oil magnate had accumulated 56 of Elmyr’s paintings. For a couple of years Elmyr’s work wasn’t up to its usual standard and his paintings were becoming recognisable as fakes. The Texan prosecuted the threesome. Fernand and Réal were arrested at the Ibiza villa and convicted of fraud, while Elmyr went on the run.
Eventually Elmyr gave himself up and was put on trial in Spain. Because there was no evidence that any of the revealed forgeries were painted on Spanish soil (Ibiza) he couldn’t be charged with forgery. Instead Elmyr was charged and convicted of homosexuality (illegal in Spain at the time) and of consorting with criminals (i.e. the convicted Fernand and Réal). He was sentenced to two months in prison.
The publicity surrounding the trials of all three turned Elmyr into something of a celebrity. Clifford Irving wrote his biography, he was interviewed in the media and newspapers, and the illustrious Orson Welles made a documentary about him. The new found fame was a shot in the arm for Elmyr and he began to produce original works again and opened his own gallery on Ibiza.
In the background, however, was the spectre of fraud charges in France. It took several years for France and Spain to agree on extradition terms and it looked like Elmyr would be forced to stand trial in France. As soon as his live-in companion, Mark Forgy, told Elmyr that extradition had been authorised Elmyr went to his room and took an overdose of pills and alcohol. Mark rushed him to hospital, but Elmyr died in his arms on the way.
Elmyr’s celebrity status in popular culture is sustained by the mysteries waiting to be verified about his real life. His reputation in the art world is less welcome. There are still some of his forgeries hanging on the walls of galleries and the rooms of the rich and famous.
Today Mark Forgy, Elmyr’s sole heir, is the owner of several hundred of Elmyr’s paintings, all of them forgeries of old masters and famous artists. Usually, when forgeries are revealed they are destroyed, but Mark’s collection forms a unique record of one of the biggest art scandals in history.
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