Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot - Forgeries

Forgeries

The strong market for Corot's works and his relatively easy-to-imitate late painting style resulted in a huge production of Corot forgeries between 1870 and 1939. René Huyghe famously quipped that "Corot painted three thousand canvases, ten thousand of which have been sold in America". Although this is a humorous exaggeration, thousands of forgeries have been amassed, with the Jousseaume collection alone containing 2,414 such works. Adding to the problem was Corot's lax attitude which encouraged copying and forgery. He allowed his students to copy his works and to even borrow the works for later return, he would touch up and sign student and collector copies, and he would loan works to professional copiers and to rental agencies. According to Corot cataloguist Etienne Moreau-Nélaton, at one copying studio "The master's complacent brush authenticated these replicas with a few personal and decisive retouching. When he was no longer there to finish his "doubles", they went on producing them without him." The cataloging of Corot's works in an attempt to separate the copies from the originals backfired when forgers used the publications as guides to expand and refine their bogus paintings.