Falsies - Fake Busts & Historical Statues - 1899 - 2008 - 1

A Cautionary Chronology

In the spring and fall fine art auction session (May & November 2007) all the leading Canadian auction houses offered scores of bronzes they claimed were originals by top Canadian Victorian and Edwardian artists. Doubles and triples of the same bronze figures were often at auction at the same time, sometimes at the same auction....

Joyner's alone offered 16 examples. They brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars from eager buyers...

In the spring session (May 2008) scores more were offered by all the auction houses. Joyner's alone offered 26. The money just kept rolling in...

In May, our web page "Falsies & Fake Busts" (2 above), warning of fakes went up to warn consumers. We were especially hard on supposed original works by Suzor-Coté, Philippe Hébert, and Alfred Laliberté, and anything on duplicate or shiny wooden bases.

In the subsequent fall (November 2008) fine art auction session these bronzes had, almost all, quite suddenly and mysteriously, disappeared from the fine art catalogues of Toronto based auction houses.

And perhaps not so mysteriously, the main source for bronzes dramatically shifted to auction houses based in western Canada..

Our Complaints About Bronzes at Fine Art Auctions - Sotheby's, Heffels, Joyner's, Hodgins, Bonham's	The Result - Sotheby's, Heffels, Joyner's, Hodgins, Bonham's
Auctions in May 2007 to May 2008	Auctions Nov 2008
Too many bronzes at once with 38 offerings at five auctions	Down to 5 (Toronto-based); 10 (western-based)
Too many offerings with up to 26 at one auction	Down to 4 at Joyner's; 4 at of Heffels; 5 at Levis
Too many duplicates at the same auction	None
Too many duplicates across many auctions	None
Too many at Toronto auction houses	From dozens down to 5 (shift to 10 out of western Canada)
Too many common pieces	Down to 1
Too many repeats	Down to 2
Too many, with dozens by Laliberté	Down to 7
Too many, with dozens by Suzor-Coté	Down to 2
Too many by Philippe Hébert	None
Too many shiny, new looking pieces, lacking age-burn	2 very convincing - Sotheby's & Hodgins
Too many without convincing dirt	2 very convincing - Sotheby's & Hodgins
Too many with duplicate bases	One but very convincing
Too many with shiny wooden bases	None
Under the resulting conditions, with declining numbers, in our view, it is not more likely that you will get a guaranteed original work of art by the artist, just that you are less likely to end up with an expensive repro made by someone else.

Suzor-Coté, below, who had been, by far, the most visible presence in copies at auctions - with at least 33 sculptures in his name put up for auction in the fall 2007 and spring 2008 - had almost entirely disappeared from fine art auction house catalogue in the fall of 2008.

Left Joyner's had a solitary Suzor-Coté offering, Le Remmancheur - note, without a secondary wooden base.

Sotheby's had one Suzor-Coté, le modèle bottom.

Philippe Hébert whose copies had been the second most popular offering, with at least 15 in the same period, also disappeared entirely.

Alfred Laliberté's copies, with at least 18 offerings in May 2008, were the only multiple presence on the fall scene. There were only 4 remaining pieces of whatever, at Heffels. And this time, interestingly, the wooden bases, which we had complained made the bronzes highly suspect, were gone from all their Laliberté copies. And Hodgins had one, le vaisseau d'or which looked very convincing indeed, thanks to their great pictures.

Joyner's, which, in the previous two auctions, had offered an astonishing 42 specimens, was down to only the four (three shown here), two ascribed to Laliberté, including Le Diable left - note no wooden base - and a Suzor-Coté profile, below. This, a fourth attempt on similar profiles, the three previous offerings finding no buyers at auction. Joyner's had a reoffer, the Flapper by Henri Hébert, which it claimed to sell in May 2008, for $9,600, and now resold again in Nov 2008, for $4,600. Whoever took the bath on this is very, very clean indeed...

The Joyner catalogue also notes that Le Diable is "indistinctly signed." You might, with profit, want to read the section on making bronzes that could explain why this might be.

Walkers offered no bronzes; Bonham's offered none.

But there was a mysterious shift to numerous offerings, suddenly, from western Canadian based auction houses... four as noted above, at Heffels, and five at Levis, in Calgary...

Why the sudden relative drought from Toronto based fine art auction houses?

Even though dozens of bronze copies had sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars during the past year...

What was everyone thinking?

Better yet - what did they know, and when did they know it?

Once as numerous as the buffalo, which pooped up the plains, the passenger pigeons, which beclouded the skies and befouled the earth, and the bogus Bentleys, which once polluted the high school prom scene, the fake bronzes are no more...

There's just no way that we can say it any more gently, But that B stands for bad, bronze, bogus, and Bentley...

We are proud to have done our part to wipe them out, though, we hasten to add, we had nothing to do with the disappearance of the buffalo, or those damn cooing pigeons...

But blush, we admit it, we once took our date in a Bentley. She was some impressed. But then what can you expect?

We were 16, and she was 14...

So it was in a Bentley we first learned about falsies and fake busts... And have been determined to expose them ever since... To prevent others from experiencing the same heartache...

Now go to page two and find out for yourself...

See why they deserve to have disappeared from the fine art auction scene...

And learn why you may have mistakenly blown tens of thousands of dollars on something worth only a coupla bucks.

And made a very bad investment...

Like others who bought a repro bronze, an Elliot Spitzer hooker, or a made-in-China, bogus Bentley...

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Heffels offered these four uniform looking bronze pieces, which they attributed to Alfred Laliberté, in November 2008, trying one on the internet, and three at their Toronto fine art auction.

Heffels evaluated three of these works from between $15 to 20,000.

But Heffels failed to attract even bottom bids of $5 to 6,000 from the most knowledgeable art dealers and collectors from across Canada for any of the pieces.

Previously, in Nov 2007, Heffels had evaluated another of the same kind, again attributed to Laliberté - le colon right - for from $20 to 30,000.

It had sold to someone for over $37,000.

Was this a good investment?

How can four bronzes Heffels evaluates at up to $20,000 each, be considered worthless by the Canadian art dealer community, while another of the same kind gets a bid of $37,000 plus from someone?

Fine Art - November, 2008

The bronze that took a bath... In May 2008, the Joyner's auctioneer declared he sold this piece, said to be the Flapper by Henri Hébert, for $9,700 "to the order," whoever that was... (Order or "in my book" bidders are people who may be out of town, or from other cities who couldn't attend the preview or the auction and leave bids on the books. But they can also be the auctioneer himself buying the item back for the auction house with a house number. At fine art auctions you can never tell whether you are really bidding against another interested buyer - and so trying to establish a true market value - or just against the auction house, bidding you up to an inflated amount it wants you to pay for an item the market says is overvalued (no other real buyer has put in bids.) Six months later, in November, the Joyner's auctioneer (re)sold this same piece - could two similar ones be offered by the same auction house only a few months apart? - for a bid of $4600... less than half the price Joyner's claimed to have sold it for before... Who took the bath, and why? Did a savvy art dealer who had the winning bid in May come to believe it was a repro, and refuse to pay the $9700? So Joyner's had to take the bronze back, to try to resell the reject again, later? So who's the lucky owner who paid $4600 for a piece an art expert earlier rejected as bogus? And if they were different pieces!!! which was the repro? So, under the circumstances, was $4600, or $9700, a good investment for either one? Whatever they were...

Above - Le vaisseau d'or by Laliberté offered by Hodgins of Calgary, Alberta. It shows the aged patina, uniformity of age burn on surfaces, and dirt distribution that one would like to see in a piece purported to be old.

Alfred made the original in 1910.

Above - Le modèle by Suzor-Coté offered by Sotheby's of Toronto, Ontario.

If you examine it in hand, it too shows patina, dirt, and age burn throughout that one should find on the best old pieces.

Hodgins does their piece justice with wonderful large and explicit photos.

Sotheby's publishes a small and awful picture that does not help convince out-of-town internet buyers that it has something worth selling.

As a result no internet bidder is going to be offering bids and take a chance on the Sotheby piece, no thanks to the grotty picture.

Now, were these copies actually made by the original artist? Perhaps the buyer doesn't care, either way...

But he/she should. Because like the genuine signature on a painting, that gives assurance that the original artist actually put his talented hands to work on this exact work of art, you should demand the same intimacy of contact with the artist associated with a bronze.

When the intimate link with the artist is broken, like in fine art prints, no collector wants them. It is the difference between the original AY Jackson and a calendar art print of the same thing.

When bronzes are made by hands other than the artist they should be considered bogus originals, just like AY's calendar print, and be evaluated the same, a coupla bucks, not $30,000.

Update - Neither le vaisseau or le modèle received opening bids.

A bad picture?

A tanking economy?

An outrageous auction valuation for a genuine piece at last?

Or have buyers and dealers been just too turned off all bronzes because of the huge glut of questionable pieces that fine art auctioneers have put on the market over the past year?

Note: You may confirm sales data on our pages, regarding auctions, items, and prices, by simply double-checking with auction house web sites, where they publish all the data we quote.