Featured The Thrill of the Chase: A Detective Story - Dutch Boats at Anchor

I don't mess with fine art at all and this little story on MAD offers an excellent excuse why i don't, it's just to complicated for old dad with all the forgeries & fakes. Old furniture is bad enough but fine art? uhhhhhhh nooooo on collecting.

https://www.maineantiquedigest.com/stories/the-thrill-of-the-chase-a-detective-story/7056

 

I read the whole thing .. facinating !! I am left wanting to know WHO exactly did it and WHY ?? It had to be something to do with money but I guess we'll never know. I'm glad that it has been attributed to the original artist .. it is truly a beautiful painting ... Joy.

 

Yeah, me too! Yes, it's almost ALWAYS about the dollars when these incidents pop up.

 

Most of the research was genealogical, wasn't it? It's that 7-degrees-of-separation thing.

I wonder if the painting was ever cleaned. That's when signature changes tend to happen.

Could be that the first initial was partial, so someone decided to "strengthen" it.

With both painters named Chase, it's possible that someone knew of the one, but not the other. I think William Merritt is the better known of the two, which is to say: I've heard of him. I can't say I've heard of Harry, but if I have, I've probably lumped the two together. William Merritt likely commands the higher prices.

All conjecture, of course.

As the painting was not being offered for sale, there was little incentive to forge the signature for monetary gain.

There is a 4 volume (at least) catalog of William Merritt's work published by Yale, so there are experts. I haven't found anything on Harry. I don't know how this painting would pass muster. A guess would be that authorship was never questioned. The gallery just took the donor's attribution at face value.

 

What I know about sailing is that it doesn't have an engine. However, why are all the pennants at the top of the masts waving one way, and at least the first two boats have sails which belly the other?

 

@silverthwait, Could just be perspective (it's so very dark!) and maybe could be artistic license!!!! And the way those 'top flags' aren't straight out.....they all could have their sails up to catch whatever wind there is!!!

 

I read the whole thing as well......fascinating article!!!!! That author really spent some time digging in to the whole mystery!!!!! Don't know if I could stay focused for THAT long.....KUDOS to him!!!!

 

Yes, i think that's right, hard to say what happened here as the family had money & painting wasn't of great value, it's weird! Still, a signature was changed............

 

I also read the whole story. It's fascinating. I think it is one of the intriguing benefits and attractions of owning antiques and old paintings - the provenance. This forum recently helped me identify a 1950's Norwegian impressionist painting I bought in Sydney, including the artist and the actual location and buildings which still exist. I know this story is 100 years earlier, but I find this all very exciting.

If anyone fancies an interesting read about a fictional painting from the 1600's, The Last Painting of Sara Devos by Dominic Smith is an enjoyable, light read.

 

A fictional novel about a man who creates a memorable old-master fraud: "What's Bred in the Bone" by Robertson Davies.

 

Already ordered. Thanks for the recommendation.

 

Well, geez... that was unexpected.

But now you'll have to come back and say whether it's boom or bust.

 

Absolutely!

 

Hello, Jeffrey Chace here who wrote the article about this painting. Indeed, this is similar to the theory that I eventually came up with. Your assumption about the cleaning/restoration is correct. After the article was published I received additional information from the museum:

Correspondence from the donor states that she had some restoration done on the painting in the early 1960s by someone recommended to her by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She writes: “He recanvassed the back and touched up some paint that had flaked off.”

I sent this email in reply on 10 August 2018:

Thank you very much for the follow-up information. Now that I know this tidbit concerning Dorothy's background information on the restoration of the painting, I have thought about it a bit and formulated a theory. Originally contemplating that there may have been nefarious intent in the alteration of the signature, I now think that the changes may very well have been of a much more mundane nature.

We can clearly see the inpainting around the signature. Assuming that this means that some of the paint-flaking was occurring in this area, perhaps enough of the paint from the "H." had flaked off that it was no longer recognizable as an "H." Then, if the restorer made an assumption about who the Chase must have been who painted the work (and assuming that Dorothy herself did not know, since the work had been handed down to her successively), perhaps the restorer was completely unaware of the obscure Harry Chase, and only knew of the preeminent William Merritt Chase. After all, this was the 1960s, and by then, any traces of Harry Chase had all but disappeared. It is not far-fetched then to believe that the restorer made the understandable assumption that this painting was by William Merritt Chase. WMC had visited Holland and had painted many scenes from the country (albeit after 1880, which only after the ground-breaking work of Ronald Pisano and Fred Baker in the 1980s would have become widely known), the canvas and paint were contemporary to his work, and the style was not completely dissimilar to what might have been expected from WMC. Adding to the confusion, from the inpainting, it appears that perhaps only the upper part of the two upright sides of the "H" remained, which interestingly leaves only two other alternative uppercase letters that also have two upright parallel sides: M & N. Assuming that the work must have been by WMC, the restorer may have therefore attempted to faithfully repaint the rest of what he/she thought must have been an "M." However, not wishing to add anything to the painting that did not already have remaining vestiges, the restorer then very likely would have decided that it would be irresponsible to add the otherwise requisite "W."

The above theory, if indeed anywhere close to what actually happened, would explain the following:

1. Why the H became an M.
2. Why there is no W.
3. How the painting came to be assumed to be by William Merritt Chase.

Cheers,

Jeffrey Chace

 

Love your further thoughts, Jeffrey!!! And could well be a plausible explanation!!! Oh, and welcome to Antiquers!

 

Yes, welcome! Thanks for stopping by and posting on this, it's an interesting story.

 

Absolutely loved the book and the characters and read it in just a few days. Thank you so much MOS for the recommendation. "What's Bred in the Bones" is regarded as volume 2 in a trilogy and I've now bought the first volume (from America). Enchanting characters, incredible settings and a wonderful story involving art and antiques that just sweeps you along.