Elmyr de Hory

 

Elmyr de Hory was one of the most talented art forgers of the twentieth century, whose paintings have now become valuable in their own right. Before he died, he claimed to have painted over 1,000 forgeries and sold them internationally. His forgeries of masters such as Picasso, Matisse, and Modigliani deceived some of the most respected experts in the art world, and at one time he made a great deal of money. However, when the forgeries were discovered, he was forced to go on the run, pursued by the FBI and Interpol.

A concentration camp survivor who had learned to paint forgeries to earn a living because he could not sell his own work, de Hory had been deeply scarred by his early experiences. In later life, when his forgeries were discovered and he became a wanted man, living in constant fear of capture, his mental health broke down. He committed suicide in 1976.

 

Prison nightmare

 

De Hory was a Hungarian Jew, born Elmyr Dory-Boutin into a wealthy family. His father, an Austro-Hungarian ambassador, was a highly successful man, and the family lived a comfortable, privileged life; however, there was little emotional warmth in the family, and Elmyr’s parents left the care of their son to servants and governesses, so that he seldom saw them.

At the age of sixteen, Elmyr’s parents divorced, and he moved to Budapest, where he began to move in bohemian circles and became aware that he was a homosexual. Two years later, he enrolled at the Akademie Heinmann in Munich, excelling at his studies as a classical painter. He then went to Paris to continue his studies at the Académie la Grande Chaumière under the painter Fernand Léger, and afterwards, returned to Hungary with the intention of making his living as an artist.

However, it was then that events took a turn for the worse. In Hungary, he was involved in a sexual relationship with a man suspected by the government of being a spy. As a result, he was thrown in jail in a remote part of the Carpathian Mountains. The conditions in the jail were abysmal, but de Hory found that he could gain small privileges by using his skill of painting. He painted a portrait of a senior camp officer and was rewarded for his labours, but life in the prison was still desperately harsh.

By the time Elmyr was released, World War II had broken out, and the Nazis had invaded Hungary. As a Jew and a homosexual, he became a target for Nazi persecution, and it was not long before he was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. Here he was brutally beaten and had to be sent to hospital to recover. Although one of his legs was broken, he nevertheless managed to make a daring escape from the hospital, making his way back to his parents’ house in Hungary. However, when he got there, he found that another disaster had taken place: both his parents were dead, and the estate had been confiscated by the Nazis.

De Hory was left penniless but, ever resourceful, he escaped from Hungary to France. Here he was forced to find new ways of making a living, and thus tried his hand at forgery. His knowledge of art history and skill as a classical painter helped him to produce beautiful works that fooled even the sharpest art collector’s eye, and in this way, he began to earn a good living make a new life for himself in his adopted country. He even created a history for his paintings, telling buyers that they had been in his parents’ collection before the Nazi occupation of Hungary.

 

Double-dealing

 

De Hory’s first forgery was a Picasso, which he sold in 1946. From then on, he began to make substantial sums of money from his paintings. He found a partner in crime, Jacques Chamberlin, who agreed to operate as his dealer, and went on to become a rich man. He and Chamberlin travelled around Europe selling the forgeries and living in luxury. But this successful period of de Hory’s life was not to last. Unbeknown to him, Chamberlin was double-dealing, keeping large sums of money for himself rather than sharing the profits. When de Hory found this out, the pair parted company on hostile terms.

De Hory then went on a visit the United States, and decided that there was a promising market for his line of work there. He now had a wide repertoire of styles to draw on, and had forged paintings by such masters as Matisse, Renoir and Modigliani. He also began to work in oils, expanding the range of his works – and the profits from them. To avoid recognition, he traded under a variety of names, including Louis Cassou, Elmyr Herzog, Elmyr Hoffman and Joseph Dory. At the same time, he tried to sell his own works, hoping that he could go straight and make a living as an honest painter; however, he soon found that there was no market in the United States for original paintings by an unknown Hungarian.

 

Suicide attempt

 

By the 1950s, de Hory was living in Miami, selling his works by mail order so that there would be little chance of his true identity being traced. But in 1955, his luck ran out. A Matisse that he had forged was sold to the Fogg Art Museum, and an expert there realised that the museum had been sold a fake. In addition, a Chicago art dealer named Joseph Faulkner had also realised that he had been duped and had begun court proceedings against him. De Hory went on the run again, using false identity papers to travel to Mexico City. However, complications of a different kind then ensued, when he was accused of murdering a British homosexual there. He was jailed for the murder, but it transpired that he was completely innocent, so he was eventually let out. De Hory returned to the United States, but by now his spirit was broken.

De Hory knew that his career as a forger was coming to an end: his style of painting was beginning to be recognised and it was only a matter of time before the orders for his work ceased. He also knew that he had few other options in life: painting was his only real skill. Moreover, he was terrified of being caught for his forgeries and thrown in jail again: his experiences as a prisoner – seldom for anything he had done wrong – had completely traumatised him. At a low point, he took an overdose of sleeping pills, intending to end his life; but, fortunately, he was discovered before he died and taken to hospital.

The next phase of de Hory’s life began when he went back to Miami and began a relationship with Ferdinand Legros, a man with great skill as a confidence trickster. Legros began to sell de Hory’s paintings for him, but like Chamberlin, he turned out to be a double-dealer, keeping most of the money for himself and lying to de Hory about the prices buyers had paid for the paintings. In addition, Legros was a violently bad-tempered man who constantly argued with his lover, Real Lessard, who travelled with them. In the end, de Hory left the pair of them to battle it out together, travelling to Europe to try to find some peace of mind.

 

On the run

 

Sadly, however, de Hory found that he was unable to survive without Legros, so began a commercial partnership with him once more. This time, Legros installed de Hory in a luxury villa in Ibiza, Spain, where he could set up his studio and produce his forgeries. Meanwhile, Legros would sell them to museums and galleries in Europe’s big cities. The plan worked for a while, but de Hory became unhappy at his island retreat. Legros kept de Hory on a tight budget, keeping the profits of his transactions for himself; also, de Hory was lonely and missed city life. He began to produce inferior paintings, and before long they were discovered as fakes. The police were notified, and soon de Hory was on the run again. He fled to Australia, but eventually returned to his home in Ibiza once more. In 1966, Legros and Lessard turned up at the house, also on the run. They asked de Hory to leave, and took over the house for themselves there, but police caught up with them over forgeries they had made to a Texas oil magnate, and they were arrested.

Next, it was de Hory’s turn to be pursued by the police. Without any evidence to show that he had committed crimes in Spain, in 1968 the police managed to charge him with homosexual activities and consorting with criminals. Once again, he was sent to jail. However, when he came out, he unexpectedly found that a new phase of success had opened up in his life. Biographer Clifford Irving had written a best-selling account of his life, and he became a celebrity, appearing on television and in a film by Orson Welles. For the first time, he was able to sell his own paintings. However, he then found out that the authorities were planning to extradite him. Faced with more upheaval, he made another suicide attempt, and this time succeeded.