The massive fraud that was the Jägers Collection left the art world more than a little embarrassed over the relative ease with which two self-described hippies were able to con some of the most esteemed dealers, collectors, authenticators, and auction houses in the world. With nothing more than a clever backstory as provenance and a talented yet devilish artist at the easel, the Beltracchis set in motion tens of millions of dollars in deals and devastated reputations. It would seem that all of the major players in the field would have reexamined their practices and cast a cautious—if not doubtful—eye on high-value art coming on scene, especially that said to be from a previously unknown collection mysteriously hidden from the world for decades.
But such was not the case.
Manhattan’s Knoedler & Company was one of the oldest commercial art galleries in the United States, having operated in New York for 165 years. Situated in a stately, early-twentieth-century townhouse on East 70th Street—on the same block as the Frick Collection—Knoedler clients read like a who’s who of American wealth, including the Rockefellers, the Astors, the Vanderbilts, and the Mellons. In a headline, the New York Times called it a “gallery that helped create the American art world.”1 It’s hard to imagine a more venerated gallery or an institution with better access to the best minds in the field of art authentication. It’s harder still to believe that on the heels of the lessons that should have been learned by dealers large and small across the world from the Beltracchi affair, Knoedler would almost immediately thereafter fall victim to an American version of the Jägers Collection: the so-called David Herbert Collection.
David Herbert’s connections to the artists who were purported to have created the art in his “collection” were solid. Unlike Werner Jägers, Herbert’s chosen avocation was in the world of artists and art galleries, and his credentials were excellent. As a young man, Herbert spent the better part of a decade working with two influential and legendary art dealers: Betty Parsons and Sidney Janis. Parsons and Janis shared not only the fourth floor of 15 East 57th Street in Manhattan, they also shared connections to some of the most important artists and collectors of the day, including major figures in the Abstract Expressionist movement like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Robert Motherwell. Thanks to his work with giants in the New York art gallery scene, Herbert gained a great deal of experience working with these and other artists. In fact, during his time working with Janis, he established a reputation as a leading salesman of New York School artists, selling Pollock’s Arabesque and Franz Kline’s Wanamaker Block to major collector Richard Brown Baker.2
After his work with Parsons and Janis, Herbert set out on his own as an independent dealer in 1959. He would eventually become what has been described as a significant force in helping to launch the careers of a number of artists, including Ellsworth Kelly.3 Most famously, it was Herbert who introduced a then unknown Andy Warhol to Irving Blum and Walter Hopps, founders of the renowned Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. Though he closed his own gallery in 1962, Herbert remained very active as a private dealer, traveling throughout the United States, Europe, and Latin America.4 In 1963, Herbert took on a protégé of his own, a young émigré to the United States from Colombia named Jaime Andrade. Soon, the pair would be hosting informal exhibitions at Andrade’s Manhattan apartment. A lifelong relationship was formed, and Andrade developed into a respected gallery figure in his own right, working with a number of famous collectors while also cultivating a personal interest in contemporary Spanish and Latin American art. In 1967, Andrade went to work at the Lawrence Rubin Gallery and later followed Rubin to Knoedler & Company. It would be the start of another enduring relationship, and he remained at Knoedler for 40 years as a senior associate.5
In the mid-1990s, Andrade introduced his boss, Knoedler president Ann Freedman, a tall, thin woman with striking gray curls, to a woman he described as “a very good friend,” Glafira Rosales, an art dealer who ran a small operation with her live-in boyfriend Carlos Bergantiños.6 Given Andrade’s connections to the Latin American and Spanish art communities, it probably came as no surprise to Freedman that Andrade would know Rosales, who is of Mexican descent, and Bergantiños, a native of Spain. The pair made a particularly good team for dealing in art: Rosales, a convincing and impeccably dressed middle-aged woman with long, dark hair and rimless glasses, and Bergantiños, a man with an eye for artistic talent.
In 1981, a Chinese painter named Pei-Shen Qian came to the United States from China with a student visa to study at the Art Students League in New York City. Before coming to America, Qian’s early years as an art student in China were not unlike those of fellow forger Wolfgang Beltracchi in Germany. The works he produced in school were so good that his teachers doubted their authenticity, accusing him of tracing his drawings from originals. He persevered despite his teachers’ skepticism and went on to become a professional artist, albeit producing the mundane: during China’s Cultural Revolution, he was directed by the government to produce portraits of Chairman Mao Zedong for use in schools and factories.7 Though it was honest work, it was hardly the sort of creative outlet dreamed of by many aspiring artists.
Years later, after the Cultural Revolution, a dozen artists in Shanghai—including Qian—staged an exhibition that would come to be credited as playing an important part in a rebirth of sorts for Chinese art, and he received special attention for an abstract piece he produced for the show. When a viewer of the piece told him that he could earn the equivalent of about two years’ pay for that one painting in New York, Qian sought and obtained a student visa.8 He struggled to earn a living in America, however, resorting to work as a construction worker and a janitor for some time to supplement the very modest income he eked out as a painter. His plight was a cause for consternation for Qian, at the time in his mid-40s. As his friend and fellow artist Zhang Hongtu recalled, “He was kind of frustrated because of the language problem, the connection problem. He was not happy.” Another friend described him as “homesick” and “lost.”9 While his modest earnings in New York far exceeded the $42 per month he made in Shanghai, the success and acclaim he had experienced back home were now gone, and Qian found himself reduced to peddling his paintings on the streets of New York City.
In the early 1990s, with Qian adrift in a sea of artistic obscurity, Carlos Bergantiños came across the Chinese painter selling his works downtown. While it’s not clear whether Bergantiños set out looking for a skilled forger or if he fell victim to an on-the-spot devious epiphany, something about Qian’s work stood out to Bergantiños. Here was an artist with true skill who might be willing to earn a few extra dollars. According to Qian, Bergantiños offered him $200—the equivalent of a very long day’s work—to imitate a work of modern art by a master artist. The offer was too good to turn down, and Qian produced the painting his new patron requested. Impressed with Qian’s work, Bergantiños came up with dozens of additional projects for him, each involving paintings in the style of world-famous Abstract Expressionist artists, including Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, and Franz Kline. On each, either Qian or Bergantiños would forge the signature of the artist.10 But of course, mimicry of a painting style is but one aspect of a convincing forgery. The right materials were essential to the creation of a convincing fake. So Bergantiños visited flea markets and art auctions to purchase old paintings purely for the sake of procuring period-appropriate canvases for Qian. In order to artificially “age” newer canvases, Bergantiños would stain them with tea bags—a smart approach to take considering that tea, as an organic material, would not be easily detected by scientists examining the works. In a further attempt to make the works appear older, Bergantiños would subject the finished paintings to heating and cooling and experimented with exposing them to the elements outdoors. Ever the innovator, Bergantiños tried propping a blow-dryer over one of the forgeries in an attempt to heat it. He would seek out older paints for use by Qian in his works. And he’d even purchase old furniture at flea markets and elsewhere in order to obtain Masonite, a board used in some furniture as well as in some works by Abstract Expressionists.11
Still, the scam was not complete without some semblance of provenance. No matter the efficacy of Qian’s brushwork or Bergantiños’s aging techniques, Glafira Rosales would need a backstory for the paintings that she would present for sale. She would have little success selling art whose origins could not be explained—that would set off red flags that she was trying to sell fakes or fence stolen works. Thus the David Herbert Collection was created.
Rosales pitched an elaborate story to explain the fortune in Abstract Expressionist paintings she sought to broker, one that evolved as needed. Initially, she said the David Herbert Collection had been amassed by an anonymous collector who would come to be known only as “Mr. X,” and his wife. The couple, she said, knew the artist Alfonso Ossorio, and he would take them to artists’ studios where they would buy works that would be added to their collection, which was maintained in storage. Soon after, however, this story fell apart when (the now deceased) Ossorio’s longtime companion, Ted Dragon, was vehement in his assertion that this could not have occurred without him knowing about it—and he didn’t. So Rosales adjusted the story, adding additional intrigue to make it yet more difficult to vet and, therefore, disprove. The second iteration of the collection’s provenance involved an affair between the married Mr. X, a deeply closeted homosexual, and David Herbert. It was Herbert, not Ossorio, who steered his lover to artists’ studios where Mr. X bought his collection of masterpieces. To make the story yet more difficult to confirm or deny, Rosales said the deals were always—conveniently for her purposes—made in cash, thus there was no money trail.12
Rosales used this story for only approximately 50 of the works she had available for sale. For an additional 13 or so, there was another fantastic tale. In this instance, Rosales claimed she was working on behalf of a Spanish collector who had received the works from a gallery in Spain. Rosales claimed that she and her boyfriend Bergantiños had interviewed the Spanish dealer to obtain details about his life to bolster provenance. The pair and Bergantiños’s brother Angel produced not just the forged paintings but forged documentation stating that the purported Spanish collector had certified the works as authentic.
Armed with the faux provenance, Glafira Rosales approached two esteemed galleries: Julian Weissman Fine Art and Knoedler & Company. At the latter, Rosales’s introduction through Jaime Andrade meant a solid start to her relationship with the gallery’s head, Ann Freedman. In 1994, Freedman bought from Rosales two works by the artist Richard Diebenkorn, who had a long relationship with the gallery and had died the previous year. A problem arose, however, just a few months after the acquisition when Diebenkorn’s widow and daughter, accompanied by art scholar John Elderfield, visited Knoedler and expressed to Freedman their skepticism that the works were authentic. Richard Grant, Diebenkorn’s son-in-law and executive director of his foundation, told the New York Times, “They didn’t look quite right, and we said, ‘The provenance is wacky and the story behind the provenance makes no sense.’” Though Freedman has disputed the family’s recollection, Elderfield, a former curator at the Museum of Modern Art, remembers expressing doubt about the work to her.13
It was later that same year that Rosales presented the story of Mr. X and described her previously undiscovered treasure trove of Abstract Expressionist works to Freedman. Rosales even produced an authentication document to be used by Knoedler, which stated that she was “the authorized agent, as well as a close family friend, of a private collector residing in Mexico City and Zurich [ostensibly, Mr. X].” It continued: “For various personal reasons the owner prefers to remain strictly anonymous as the seller. The art works [sic] were acquired by the current owner’s father directly from the artist and were passed by inheritance to his immediate heirs (son and daughter).” She further claimed “that the owner has absolute clear legal title to the [works].”14 With little additional inquiry or investigation into the story, Knoedler was all-in on the opportunity to consign the works, regardless of the sketchy provenance and changing tales.
In March 2001, Knoedler purchased a supposed Jackson Pollock painting from Rosales for $750,000. Nine months later, Knoedler sold the painting, Untitled, 1949, to Jack Levy, cochairman of mergers and acquisitions at Goldman Sachs, for $2 million. Ever the savvy businessman, Levy wisely included a provision to the purchase that stated that he would submit the painting to the well-respected International Foundation for Art Research in New York for authentication. Should IFAR find that the painting was not an authentic Pollock, he would be entitled to a refund. In October 2003, IFAR issued its report on Untitled, 1949, stating that it had conducted archival research, expert analysis, and interviews about the painting and found the provenance story to be “inconceivable,” “improbable,” and “difficult to believe.” IFAR concluded that it “believes that too many reservations exist to make a positive attribution to Jackson Pollock.” Levy returned the forged Pollock to Knoedler for a full refund.15 It’s a source of continuing wonder why more art buyers don’t take the same precautions as Levy when spending exorbitant amounts of cash on paintings, especially considering the long history of forgeries throughout the ages. A common response involves the fact that when one approaches a gallery with the esteem and history of Knoedler, they should have a high level of confidence in their purchase.
Knoedler was left red-faced after this mishap, and one might suspect that this would have led the gallery to end its relationship with Rosales and the paintings she was offering. IFAR’s reputation was well established over decades of outstanding work in the field of art authentication and assisting the art community and law enforcement in fighting art crime, and its results are accepted as the gold standard for provenance work. At the very least, one might expect that Knoedler would subject any future offerings from Rosales to intensive provenance research, including scientific analysis. But rather than distance itself from Rosales, Knoedler continued to buy and sell works from the contrived collection, including additional Pollocks she had produced.
For her part, Freedman has stated that in considering any artwork for sale, it had been her consistent practice throughout her four decades of experience to enlist “scholars to research the provenance of a work that has been brought to my attention.” She said, “I have consulted preeminent experts to view the work and express their opinions about it, both orally and in writing. I make every reasonable effort to learn as much as possible about a work of art that is being offered for sale, and I then disclose to prospective purchasers the facts that I have learned—and the facts that I have not been able to learn—about the work.”16
Not so, says Domenico De Sole. The chairman of luxury retailer Tom Ford International and former president and CEO of the Gucci Group, De Sole is a man with an undeniable eye for style and a keen business sense. In 2004, the Rome native De Sole and his wife, Eleanore, contacted Freedman about purchasing an abstract work by Irish artist Sean Scully. They figured they would spend in the neighborhood of $1 million. When they met in person to discuss such an acquisition, Freedman used her legendary sales skills to convince the De Soles to purchase a much more expensive Abstract Expressionist painting: a work by the famous artist Mark Rothko. It took less than a month for Freedman to close the deal, selling Untitled, 1956, to the couple for $8.3 million.
It is the contention of the De Soles that Freedman went beyond innocently selling a forged work to them. Instead, they claim, the Knoedler president, in meetings with them and their consultant and agent Jim Kelly, “affirmatively and knowingly made an array of material false representations to induce the De Soles to purchase the [Rothko].”17 In addition to consistently representing that the Rothko was authentic, the De Soles say that Freedman told them the painting had been authenticated by Christopher Rothko (the artist’s son), Dr. David Anfam, who was the creator of Rothko’s catalogue raisonné—the scholarly compilation of the artist’s complete body of work—and other experts. They also claim that Freedman told them that Mr. X and Mr. X Jr. “were personally known to Knoedler” and that Mr. X Jr. wanted the painting to be sold to a collector as opposed to someone who planned to merely resell it.
When purchasing the painting, the De Soles remained somewhat concerned about the authenticity of the painting. Whether this was because of nagging doubts or simply because they were understandably cautious given the massive price tag is not clear. In any event, the couple requested a written assurance from Knoedler as to the authenticity of the work. In a letter addressed to the De Soles’ daughter, Laura, Freedman attested to the legitimacy of the Rothko, stating that “the painting has been viewed by a number of eminent scholars on Rothko as well as specialists on the Abstract Expressionist movement.” She added that Knoedler anticipated that Oliver Wick, who had previously curated a Rothko exhibition, would be requesting that the piece be loaned to him for an exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler, a famed repository of Rothko’s works. She wrote, “Mr. Wick considers the Rothko painting, Untitled, 1956, to be of superior museum quality.” She also included a bio of David Herbert.18 The letter sealed the deal. The De Soles were now the owners of a multimillion dollar painting attributed to Rothko that had actually been painted in Queens by a Chinese immigrant.
Like a number of history’s most famous artists, Robert Motherwell had to first meet his father’s demands before embarking on his career as a professional painter and collagist. Though the well-educated Motherwell studied literature, psychology, and philosophy at Stanford and did postgraduate work at Harvard, he decided to become an artist after visiting Paris and viewing the work of French Modernists. First, though, his father demanded that he complete his studies in art history at Columbia University in 1941 in order to ensure a “secure career.”19 Neither the artist nor his father could ever have dreamed that more than 60 years later (but just 3.5 miles away), forgeries carrying Motherwell’s name would be sold from the Knoedler Gallery for millions of dollars.
One such painting was titled Spanish Elegy, a 11⁄2 × 2–foot painting bought by Killala Fine Art, a respected gallery based in Dublin, Ireland, for $650,000. The painting was purported to be part of Motherwell’s monumental series Elegies to the Spanish Republic. This time, Rosales had sold the painting to Julian Weissman, a well-established dealer and a former associate at Knoedler & Company who operates the Weissman gallery in the Wall Street area. In 2006, Weissman contacted Marc Blondeau, who operated Killala, to let him know that he had a Motherwell for sale. Interested, Blondeau visited Weissman’s gallery to see the work and discussed provenance with the dealer. Weissman informed him that the owner of the painting he was consigning—Mr. X Jr.—did not wish to be identified but that his parents had purchased the painting directly from Motherwell. It was the classic Rosales fabrication. Though Weissman and Blondeau had done business together successfully for a decade, Blondeau knew this was shaky provenance and told Weissman that he would require certifications from both Weissman and the Dedalus Foundation.
In 1981, Motherwell established the Dedalus Foundation to foster an understanding of modern art. After his death, the foundation took control of the copyrights of Motherwell’s art and went to work establishing a catalogue raisonné of his work. Surely they held the expertise to authenticate one of Motherwell’s paintings for Weissman. In January 2007, the Dedalus Foundation’s president, Jack Flam, and the foundation’s executive director, Morgan Spangle, visited Weissman’s gallery and visually examined the painting, but did not subject the work to scientific testing. The results were just what Weissman had hoped: the pair declared the work to be a Motherwell and issued a letter of authenticity, writing, “It is the opinion of the Foundation that the Work is the work of Robert Motherwell.” Blondeau had an additional question: Would the work be included in the foundation’s coming catalogue raisonné of Motherwell’s works? Spangle wrote a clarification to Weissman for Blondeau stating, “Here is the letter of authenticity which is issued by the Foundation. While it does not say directly that the painting, Spanish Elegy, 1953, will be included in the catalogue raisonne which is being prepared by the Foundation, I can assure you that the painting will be included.”20
While it is not uncommon for works to be discovered after the publication of a catalogue raisonné, it does serve as an essential source for researching provenance and authenticating works. The foundation itself described it as “a reliable corpus of authentic works.”21 Based on the fact that Spangle assured Weissman that the painting would be in the catalogue raisonné of Motherwell’s works, Blondeau decided to purchase the painting from Weissman.
Despite Spangle’s enthusiastic tone, trouble loomed regarding the hasty authentication of Spanish Elegy. Later in 2007 and through January 2008, the Dedalus Foundation met with Ann Freedman three times to discuss the Motherwells from the David Herbert Collection. Seven purported Motherwells sold by Glafira Rosales—four to Knoedler and three to Weissman—were now thought by the foundation to be fakes because they found the explanation that the Motherwells were sold directly to Mr. X through Herbert implausible. In addition to provenance research that Flam would later describe as “just kind of fluff,”22 they told her that the Rosales Motherwells included stylistic anomalies. These findings were reiterated by Jack Flam in a meeting with Freedman on January 10, 2008.23
Unaware that these revelations had just recently been brought to Knoedler by the foundation about Rosales and the Mr. X provenance, Domenico and Eleanore De Sole contacted Freedman requesting an insurance appraisal for the Rothko they had purchased with the same provenance. Knoedler quickly replied to the request, valuing Untitled, 1956 at $9 million—an increase in value of more than a half-million dollars. Though Knoedler was now in possession of information that the authenticity of no less than eight paintings sold by Rosales from the David Herbert Collection (the Pollock bought and returned by Jack Levy and the seven Motherwells) was, to say the least, questionable, Freedman did not inform the De Soles that there might be an issue with the Rothko the gallery had sold them using the same exact backstory. The De Soles went on to spend $64,000 insuring a painting that was, essentially, worthless—a fact that should have by now at least been on the minds of the leadership at Knoedler.24
While the De Soles were still under the illusion that they were in possession of a multimillion dollar painting from what they believed to be a credible source—the so-called David Herbert Collection—another wealthy collector, Pierre Lagrange, was also making a purchase from Ann Freedman at Knoedler & Company. The long-haired and wildly successful Belgian hedge fund manager had heard through dealers that Knoedler had a Jackson Pollock painting on the market. Eager to invest in a Pollock that he might later sell at a profit, Lagrange was intrigued. One of the dealers, Jamie Frankfurt, contacted Freedman on Lagrange’s behalf and expressed his interest in the Pollock. To explain the authenticity of the painting, Freedman told Frankfurt that the painting was from the private collection of Mr. X, who had obtained it from Jackson Pollock himself, through David Herbert. No mention was made of the Pollock with the same exact provenance that was returned by Jack Levy a few years earlier because of concerns as to its authenticity after an expert review. Rather, Freedman further told Frankfurt that the painting had been viewed favorably by a number of important experts—whose names she provided—and, according to Frankfurt, went on to say that the painting would appear in a soon-to-be-released addendum to the catalogue raisonné of Jackson Pollock. Nevertheless, Lagrange, who was based in London, wanted to see the painting before buying it. Excited at the prospect of a major sale, Freedman agreed to ship the supposedly valuable painting to Lagrange in London. It was a wise decision on Freedman’s part—after seeing it, Lagrange decided to purchase the painting, called Untitled, 1950, for $17 million.25
The claim about the painting being added to the Pollock catalogue raisonné is the subject of dispute between Frankfurt and Freedman. Freedman claims she merely said that she was lobbying the Pollock-Krasner Foundation for the painting’s inclusion. But in either scenario, the very idea of Untitled, 1950 being added to a forthcoming Pollock catalogue raisonné should have raised red flags: The Pollock-Krasner Foundation disbanded its authentication board in 1995 and hadn’t any plans to authenticate additional works, a fact well known to most insiders who make their business in the world of Abstract Expressionism. Furthermore, it appears that Freedman’s list of experts who had viewed Untitled, 1950 was just that—a list of viewers. Not a single one of them said they had come to Knoedler with the mission of inspecting the painting for the purpose of authentication.26
In February 2009, Julian Weissman received a troubling letter from Jack Flam at the Dedalus Foundation. At issue was the Motherwell Spanish Elegy, about which the foundation had earlier written to Weissman stating their intent to declare the painting authentic and their decision to include it in its catalogue raisonné of Motherwell’s works. This time, Flam was the bearer of very bad news. “I am now writing to inform you that, based on new information, and per its right to withdraw the March 2, 2007 letter, the Catalogue Raisonné has determined to withdraw the letter per that right. We are at present not planning to include that painting, titled ‘Spanish Elegy,’ in the prospective Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings and Collages by Robert Motherwell.”27
The Dedalus Foundation offered no basis for the reversal. But that drastic turnaround set into motion a series of events that would lead to the unraveling of the web of lies that were spun by Glafira Rosales to Weissman and Knoedler. Just a few months later, in the summer of 2009, Ann Freedman received an equally troubling document: a subpoena from the FBI. The bureau was now investigating the David Herbert Collection and the group behind it. By October, Freedman was no longer the president at Knoedler & Company, having allegedly been escorted out the front door of the legendary gallery after resigning.28 She would not, however, be leaving the world of dealing fine art, and began working on plans for her own firm.
Freedman may have been committed to moving forward, but more trouble lay around the corner. In October 2010, Pierre Lagrange, who was ready to capitalize on his investment by reselling Untitled, 1950, approached Sotheby’s to discuss a private sale. Citing concerns about the provenance of the painting, Sotheby’s declined Lagrange’s overture. Lagrange was understandably troubled by this response and contacted Frankfurt, who, in turn, was in touch with Freedman. Steadfastly standing by the painting, she expressed her willingness to sell the Pollock for Lagrange through her own new gallery, FreedmanArt. Curiously, she also wrote of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation’s “plans for a new revised CR [catalogue raisonné] to include the number of discovered Pollocks since the time of its now outdated black and white publication from the mid 70s.” When asked by a representative of Lagrange’s if this update was indeed in the works at the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, a representative replied “absolutely not.”29 Exactly where Freedman was getting her information about a nonexistent Pollock catalogue raisonné is unclear. But this, of course, was the key issue in Lagrange’s efforts to deal his painting. As Christie’s wrote in a letter to Knoedler, “It is our belief, and generally agreed in our industry, that Pollock paintings not listed in the catalogue raisonné, are rarely accepted in the marketplace.”30
On February 1, 2011, Killala Fine Art filed suit against Julian Weissman and the Dedalus Foundation over the forged Motherwell painting Spanish Elegy. Three days later, Pierre Lagrange met with Freedman’s replacement at Knoedler, Frank DeLeo, to discuss his Pollock purchase. Lagrange’s demand was clear: rescind the sale of the Pollock and refund his money. DeLeo refused, citing the opinions of experts who had provided “positive opinions” about it.31
Hoping to rid himself of the problem painting, Lagrange then approached Christie’s to see if they, unlike Sotheby’s, would be willing to sell his problem Pollock. Again, questions about the provenance of the painting—Rosales’s Mr. X story—caused consternation. Christie’s was clearer still, outlining the issue related to the David Herbert story and requesting the name of the anonymous consignor (Mr. X Jr.). Knoedler stubbornly refused to furnish the information, with DeLeo informing Christie’s that the gallery was “not able to provide you with any additional information with respect to this work other than what Mr. Lagrange already has in his possession.”32 Of course, it was becoming clear that what Lagrange had in his possession was not much at all. So he sought a scientific analysis of the painting.
Nine months after Killala Fine Art filed its civil complaint against Julian Weissman and the Dedalus Foundation, a legal settlement over the phony Motherwell Spanish Elegy was concluded, and the agreement between the parties would prove to be the turning point for the Glafira Rosales scam. The settlement called for Killala to be reimbursed by Rosales and, to a lesser extent, Weissman. And most remarkably, the parties agreed that the spurious Spanish Elegy would be forever branded as a fraud with the following text permanently stamped on back: “After physical examination and forensic testing, the Robert Motherwell catalogue raisonne project of the Dedalus Foundation, Inc., has determined that this painting is not an authentic work by Robert Motherwell but a forgery.”33
Meanwhile, analysts had concluded their examination of Pierre Lagrange’s Pollock in November 2011. The examination proved the painting was not the work of the famous creator of priceless drip paintings. Analysts reported that two of the paint samples “that were clearly and unambiguously integral” to the painting were discovered in 1957 and not commercially available until 1970. Pollock, who died in an automobile accident in 1956, could not have used these pigments.
The results of the analysis were the death knell for the David Herbert/Glafira Rosales Collection, and Knoedler apparently knew it. One day after receiving the results of the Lagrange analysis, on November 30, 2011, Knoedler & Company released the following statement: “It is with profound regret that the owners of Knoedler Gallery announce its closing, effective today. This was a business decision made after careful consideration over the course of an extended period of time. Gallery staff will assist with an orderly winding down of Knoedler Gallery.”34
The closing of Knoedler after 165 years of business sent shockwaves around the art world. Lucy Mitchell-Innes, president of the Art Dealers Association of America, told the New York Times, “My reaction is one of tremendous sadness. This is a very venerable institution that provided great art to a number of the great collections and great institutions in this country.”35
Venerable, true, but not without previous missteps related to the provenance of works it sold. In 1998, Knoedler was sued by the Seattle Art Museum when the museum itself was sued by the heirs of Jewish art dealer Paul Rosenberg. A painting in the SAM’s collection, Odalisque by Henri Matisse, had been stolen from Rosenberg by the Nazis. In 1954, the painting was purchased from Knoedler by Prentice and Virginia Bloedel, with the couple unaware that the painting had been looted from Rosenberg. When the Bloedels sought further information from the Knoedler salesperson about the provenance of Odalisque, they received a letter from the gallery about which the court wrote, “For whatever reason, the facts set forth in that letter were false, despite the fact that Knoedler apparently had the correct information in its possession at the time the letter was written.”36 The Bloedels later innocently donated Odalisque to the SAM, but in 1996 the couple’s granddaughter recognized the painting in the book The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World’s Greatest Works of Art by Hector Feliciano, leading her mother to contact the Rosenbergs.37 After the SAM spent two years researching the ownership of the painting, Odalisque was returned to the Rosenbergs. The SAM and Knoedler eventually settled their federal civil suit, with Knoedler agreeing to give to the museum one or more works from its inventory or the equivalent in cash.38
In 2003, Knoedler was sued again, this time by the Springfield Museum in Massachusetts. In 1955, the museum purchased Spring Sowing by Jacopo de Ponte from Knoedler, a painting that had been hanging in the Italian embassy in Warsaw until it was looted by the Nazis when they shut down the building. While the Italian government long believed that the painting in Springfield was the same one taken from their Warsaw embassy, they were unable to prove it until an Italian official located a photo taken in 1939, which showed the de Ponte hanging in the embassy. It was a match for the Springfield painting. As a result, the Springfield Museum returned the painting to the Italians.39 The museum sued Knoedler, seeking money damages and citing the gallery’s claim that it had examined the painting’s provenance and had clear title to sell it to the museum. In 2005 the parties settled out of court.
Domenico and Eleanore De Sole, clearly stirred by these events surrounding Knoedler and the fictitious David Herbert Collection, also sought scientific analysis of their painting, submitting the alleged Rothko to James Martin. Martin was a sensible, if belated, choice. Educated in the field of conservation at the esteemed Winterthur Program at the University of Delaware and a Samuel H. Kress Fellow at the University of Cambridge in England, Martin’s expertise includes having conducted more than 1,700 analytical studies, as well as six years teaching paint analysis and infrared spectroscopy to the FBI’s Counterterrorism and Forensic Science Research Unit. He founded Orion Analytical in 2000, based the firm in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and equipped it with the most advanced technology for the analysis of paintings. It’s an art authenticator’s paradise, with equipment ranging from a scanning electron microscope with backscattered electron imaging to confocal Raman microspectroscopy: things a conservator would love and a forger would likely not understand. Martin is among the most well-known art authenticators in the United States. His results, too, were conclusive: “In spite of his signature, ‘mark rothko’, and date, ‘1956’, materials and techniques used to create the Painting are inconsistent and irreconcilable with the claim that Untitled was painted by Mark Rothko . . . in 1956 or any other date.”40
Martin’s work showed that the efforts to disguise Pei-Shen Qian’s work as an original Rothko—undertaken by the artist and by Carlos Bergantiños—were no match at all for scientific analysis. In fact, the Orion Analytical report makes it clear that the painting bore indicators of fakery that were blatant. For instance, Martin’s research of Rothko’s technique helped him determine that the artist used temporarily fastened crossbars on the back of stretchers for the very purpose of retarding the development of stretcher-bar marks on the surfaces of large canvases. And while vertical crossbar marks from the painting’s support structure appear on the front and back of the painting, the stretcher holding the canvas contained only a horizontal crossbar.
In addition, Martin discovered clear indicators that the painting was done after the crossbar marks formed, a sure sign that the canvas had been used previously. He also found the canvas to be strip-lined, a measure usually taken to compensate for a tear or weakness in a canvas. However, Martin found no reason for strip-lining. Finally, he found that “the presence of white opaque primers on the Painting (and no evidence of transparent pigmented size) is inconsistent with Rothko’s technique,” and other materials inconsistent with the artist’s work.41 In short, James Martin’s analysis decimated the best and most creative efforts the Rosales forgery ring could imagine.
Meanwhile, FBI agents paid a visit to the Queens home of Pei-Shen Qian to question him about his role in the fraud scheme that was unraveling virtually by the day. While Qian would eventually claim to be an innocent dupe in the scam—simply making copies of famous artists for people who could not otherwise afford them—findings by investigators indicate this was not the case. During questioning by the agents, Qian lied about matters that did not match his claims. For instance, Qian told the FBI that he did not recognize Rosales’s name. He also denied having ever heard of famous artists about whom he not only owned books, but whose names he had actually painted onto the forgeries. And, most tellingly, he stated that he had never attempted to mimic the style of Abstract Expressionist artists. During a search of his home, FBI agents found paintings completed in the style of Pollock and Barnett Newman; auction catalogs and books on Abstract Expressionist artists and techniques; and even an envelope of old nails marked “Mark Rothko.”42
More than 60 forged paintings created by Qian and brokered through Rosales and Bergantiños were sold to just two galleries: Knoedler & Company and Julian Weissman Fine Art. In all, Rosales and her cohorts received over $33 million selling their faked art, an amount that pales in comparison to the $80 million taken in by the two companies. And while the largesse they made would lead to a mountain of lawsuits and badly damaged reputations for the galleries, Freedman, and Weissman, the millions that Rosales and Bergantiños made would prompt the feds to pursue the pair as they did Al Capone: they indicted them for tax evasion and related charges.
The U.S. government put together an airtight case against Rosales, showing that the money she received from the sales of the paintings did not, in fact, go to a Mr. X Jr. in Spain. Instead, she and Bergantiños kept the ill-gotten gains. And of course, they failed to claim this income on their tax returns either as individuals or business owners. The feds were also able to determine that Rosales kept her money in a foreign bank account, a fact that she failed to declare. Faced with 99 years in prison, Rosales decided to plead guilty in hopes of leniency from the court. She also agreed to forfeit the $33.2 million and her 5,000-square-foot, $2.4 million home in Sands Point, New York, and to pay restitution not to exceed $81 million, though it’s not clear how she would do so.43
Carlos Bergantiños didn’t stand by his girlfriend. Instead, he and his older brother Jesus Angel Bergantiños Diaz fled the United States to avoid arrest and decades in prison, taking cover in Seville, Spain. Authorities sought the pair for months before finding them in a luxury hotel in April 2014. Carlos, overcome by the arrest and facing extradition to the United States to answer for his massive fraud, suffered an anxiety attack that landed him briefly in the hospital. Within days of their capture, the Bergantiños brothers were indicted by the United States for crimes including wire fraud and money laundering, with Carlos facing additional charges for defrauding the IRS, filing false tax returns, and willful failure to file a “Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts,” charges he shared with Rosales.44
Like the Bergantiños brothers, Pei-Shen Qian, now 75 years old with his name emerging in the media and up to his neck in trouble for the lies he told the FBI, left the United States and returned to his native China. It’s an ideal choice for a fugitive from American justice: China and the United States do not share an extradition agreement, and it’s quite unlikely that Qian will ever be forced to return to the United States to answer for his crimes.
Qian’s departure came despite his insistence that he was innocent of any wrongdoing. Speaking to Bloomberg News in a rare interview with Western media in December 2013, he said, “I made a knife to cut fruit. But if others use it to kill, blaming me is unfair.” Qian called the whole forgery scam “a very big misunderstanding.” The paintings, he believed, wouldn’t be taken seriously. “It’s impossible to imitate [the masters]—from the papers to the paints to the composition.”45 But Qian’s behavior runs contrary to his claims. Though he received a few thousand dollars per painting at first, prosecutors described a seminal moment in the relationship between the brokers and their artist: Qian spotted one of his creations in a booth at a Manhattan art show priced very far above his fee and then held out for more money from Bergantiños, who boosted Qian’s payments to up to $7,000 per painting.46 This, of course, was little more than pennies on the dollar compared to the cuts that Bergantiños and Rosales took in, but on the other hand, Qian was now obviously aware that he was not producing cheap, obvious fakes. Still, he continued to produce art for Bergantiños and Rosales. Further, Qian’s lies to the FBI and the evidence they unearthed (including the Rothko nails) did not point to the behavior of an innocent man. But the world will probably never see all of the evidence against Qian put before a jury of his peers. Instead, he will likely spend the rest of his life in Shanghai in the studio where he still paints.
Aside from Rosales and the Bergantiños brothers, it appears unlikely that anyone else will ever be prosecuted for the $80 million David Herbert Collection forgeries. But the scam left a disaster in its wake. A storied gallery was closed, buyers were defrauded, the courts were flooded with enormous civil suits, and respected art dealers had seen their reputations suffer.
In contrast to the sense of loss many felt with the loss of the venerable gallery, the famous face of Knoedler, Ann Freedman, became the subject of ire for some buyers. Pierre Lagrange was incensed at her role in the sale of the phony Pollock. Domenico and Eleanore De Sole filed suit against her and Knoedler over the fake Rothko, accusing her of abdicating her responsibility and having reckless disregard for the truth in a civil complaint. John Howard, the head of a multibillion-dollar private equity firm, also sued Freedman, likening the whole affair to “a joke on the art world.”47
While some may question Freedman’s integrity in legal filings and interviews, it would be quite difficult to argue that after spending many decades building a first-rate career as an art dealer and rising to the top spot in one of the country’s oldest and most venerable galleries, she decided to take a criminal turn. Further to the point, it was revealed that Freedman had herself purchased a 12 × 18-inch Pollock from Rosales. The painting, which might seem like a bargain at only $280,000, was later found to feature an important error: Pollock’s signature was spelled “Pollok.”48 In her defense, Freedman argues, “discreet sources are my stock in trade,” and that throughout her career she had dealt with sellers who insisted upon anonymity. Besides, Rosales responded to one of Freedman’s requests to know more about the mysterious X family by saying, “Don’t kill the goose that’s laying the golden egg,” insinuating that Freedman’s requests to meet him would irritate him. Worse yet, in Freedman’s estimation, was the possibility that other dealers could be bidding against her.49 Thus, she had to seize the moment.
After the fall of Knoedler, Freedman was subjected to widespread second-guessing in the media from colleagues in the world of art dealing. One such dealer was Marco Grassi, the owner of Grassi Studios in Manhattan, who was harshly critical of Freedman’s role in the controversy, telling New York Magazine, “This has ruined one of the greatest galleries in the world. It has trashed a lot of people’s money. It seems to me Ms. Freedman was totally irresponsible, and it went on for years. . . . A gallery person has an absolute responsibility to do due diligence, and I don’t think she did it. The story of the paintings is so totally kooky. I mean, really. It was a great story and she just said, ‘This is great.’”50
Freedman, unwilling to let her reputation be attacked any longer, filed suit against Grassi, alleging defamation, libel, and slander, and maintaining that she subjected the Rosales paintings to due diligence, sticking to her claim that numerous experts, scholars, and critics had agreed with her assessment of the works as being authentic. The embattled art dealer said that she went “well beyond what is customary” to ensure the art was authentic and that “few galleries would have sought even a quarter of the confirmation Freedman demanded before selling these works.”51 She cited one instance where the former conservator of the Mark Rothko Foundation carefully examined every work Rosales brought to the gallery. “That conservator found the works to be classic works of the artists,” Freedman argued. She also quoted art dealer Ernst Beyeler, who described one of the Rosales Rothkos as a “sublime masterwork.”52
Ann Freedman is far from incompetent. But she also is no criminal. In fact, a former member of the FBI’s Art Crime Team asked to review the case for an expert opinion described her actions as “inconsistent with a fraudulent intent.”53 Instead, it seems far more probable that she was intoxicated by the prospect of being part of the unleashing of a heretofore unknown collection on the world, just as so many others who have been duped by clever con men were. That’s not to say she was acting altruistically: ego, greed, and acclaim were also possible components of what seemed like an ardent desire to believe that the unlikely was fact. How else to explain an expert dealer’s willingness to buy into a provenance story that not only evolved drastically, but revolved around characters named Mr. X and Mr. X Jr.?54