Elmyr de Hory - Life As A Forger

Life As A Forger

On arriving in Paris de Hory attempted to make an honest living as an artist, but soon discovered that he had an uncanny ability to copy the works of noted painters. So good were his copies that many of his friends believed them to be genuine; in 1946 de Hory sold a reproduction of a Picasso to a British friend who took it for an original. He began to sell his Picasso reproductions to art galleries, claiming that they were what remained of his family's estate. Galleries took the paintings and paid de Hory the equivalent of (USD) $100 to $400 (circa 1947) per painting. Like most successful art forgers, rather than attempting to copy existing works by celebrated artists, he only painted original works in their style, which made the forgeries much harder to detect.

That same year de Hory formed a partnership with Jacques Chamberlin, who later became his art dealer. They toured Europe and South America selling the forgeries until de Hory discovered that, although they were supposed to share the profits equally, Chamberlin had kept most of the money. He ended the relationship and resumed the tour alone. In 1947 de Hory visited the United States on a three-month visa and decided to stay there, moving between New York City and Los Angeles.

Occasionally, throughout his career, de Hory attempted to stop making forgeries and create original artwork, but could never find a market for his work, always returning to the lucrative clandestine activity. De Hory eventually expanded his forgeries to include works by Matisse, Modigliani and Renoir. Because some of the galleries de Hory had sold his forgeries to were becoming suspicious, he began to use pseudonyms, and to sell his work by mail order. Some of de Hory's many pseudonyms included Louis Cassou, Joseph Dory, Joseph Dory-Boutin, Elmyr Herzog, Elmyr Hoffman and E. Raynal.

During the 1950s, de Hory settled in Miami, continuing to sell his forgeries through the mail and studying the styles and techniques of other master painters in order to imitate their works. In 1955 one of his Matisse forgeries was sold to the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University; soon thereafter, authorities discovered it was a fake and launched an investigation.