Almost True The Noble Art Of Forgery 1997
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Short filmTranscript
00:30Because we would get for something like that of $15,000, $20,000, I would sell it for less.
00:48I never offered a painting or a drawing to a museum who didn't buy it.
00:54Never refused one. Never.
01:17What is genuine and what is fake?
01:21A question which has been asked since art began.
01:30A large seizure of oil paintings and drawings in 1968 by the French state
01:35uncovered one of the largest art scandals of the century.
01:38Who was this forger, whose brushstroke was so clever
01:42that he was at times confused with the greatest of artists?
01:51I'm going to paint, I'm going to make a painting by Matisse.
02:01But you have to give me a little time, yeah?
02:04The forger's name? Elmire de Horry.
02:07Seen here in an old film from the BBC's archive.
02:11Elmire, the man labelled as the greatest art forger of our generation.
02:17It has been claimed that he not only managed to fool the art world over a period of 20 years,
02:22but that he also sold fakes for countless millions of dollars.
02:26Is it true that museums, galleries, art historians and collectors
02:31all over the world were tricked by his paintings?
02:34And if so, where are these forgeries now?
02:37Who fooled who? What is the truth and what is the myth?
02:43He had an incredible personality.
02:47Incredible. Very, very smart.
02:50He built the ideal family and the ideal story of himself.
02:57Yes, Elmire was a big actor.
03:00He could be a very, very good actor, yes.
03:03He knew everybody on the island that was a huge fan of his.
03:08Very good actor, yes.
03:10He knew everybody on the island that was anybody.
03:13And he had friends all over the world who used to come and see him.
03:16He had an endless capacity to sort of revive himself.
03:23He was a mystery. He certainly was a mystery.
03:27Yes.
03:29But for a while, I thought it a possibility that he had faked his own death.
03:34And I tried my best to find someone who had seen the corpse.
03:38And you know, I never did.
03:49We begin our search into this man's elaborate life and works
03:53on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza,
03:55where Elmire spent the last years of his life.
03:58It was here he had his base and held his court.
04:01This Spanish island in the 1960s and 70s
04:04had become the centre for the international jet set,
04:07rich hippies, and also for many of the world's known and unknown artists.
04:15Café Montessor was, in the 1970s, the in place.
04:20It was where Elmire drank his daily morning cup of coffee
04:23and where he kept himself updated with the island's latest news.
04:27Elmire de Hori was also known as Hoffman,
04:30Doribotan, Cassoud, Reynal, and Herzog.
04:47This colourful catalogue is from an exhibition of Elmire's forgeries
04:51held in Tokyo in 1994.
04:54Matisse, Picasso, Modigliani, Renoir, Van Gogh, and Van Dongen.
05:01Could these forgeries once have been sold as authentic works of art?
05:07Let's start by travelling to Paris and meeting our most important source.
05:11Clifford Irving, author of the book Fake,
05:15Elmire de Hori's official biography.
05:37But the problem with our source is, how reliable is he?
05:41Irving is the same man who tried to publish the fabricated biography
05:45of the multi-millionaire Howard Hughes,
05:47and who also made the cover of Time magazine
05:50as a 1972 swindler of the year.
05:53And who was it who painted that picture?
05:56It was Clifford Irving.
05:58He was the author of the book Fake,
06:01Elmire de Hori's official biography.
06:04And who was it who painted that picture?
06:06That's right, Armand Elmire.
06:14To do a Clifford Irving is a term used nowadays
06:17to describe writing a false biography.
06:20Clifford and Elmire, two artists in their own fields,
06:23one a writer, the other a painter.
06:26Both revealed as swindlers, two good friends.
06:30We're on the trail, but of what?
06:34One of the good things about Elmire is that he was not evil.
06:38There was nothing nasty or vicious about him.
06:41He had a vicious tongue when he wanted to, and he didn't like you.
06:44But other than that, unlike Legros and Lessard,
06:50he was not vicious, he wasn't.
06:53He only wanted to get by and spin this dream.
06:57Mallorca and Chopin, Ibiza and Elmire.
07:28And that's when we became friends.
07:31And then he trusted me.
07:34How did Elmire become a painter?
07:37We know that he studied at an art academy in Munich,
07:40but it was here in Paris where he received his most important impulses.
07:52At the Academie Le Grand Chimier,
07:54Elmire painted under the most prominent living artists during the 1930s.
07:58Matisse, Picasso, Lesger and Flamenc.
08:06Paris was the centre of the art world.
08:09This was where new styles of art were born,
08:12where authors, painters and intellectuals from the whole world gathered.
08:25Elmire tried to live off his own creativity as an artist for many years,
08:29but this brought him neither fame nor fortune.
08:32And it was the desire for the good life, if anything,
08:35that influenced him to make his choice.
08:38A titled Englishwoman walked in one day to my room
08:42and she saw on a wall, pinned on a wall, a drawing.
08:45I said, hey, where you got that Picasso?
08:48I said, well, do you think it's a Picasso?
08:51She said, well, I know enough about Picasso to know whether it's a Picasso or not.
08:55I said, fine. She said, would you sell it?
08:57I said, well, delighted.
08:59It assured my living for the next month or two months.
09:03I would like to see that poor Hungarian refugee
09:06who would have resisted that temptation.
09:22To be a great artist, or even a very fine artist,
09:25you have to be focused on that.
09:28It has to be the central core of your life.
09:31That was not true with Elmire.
09:33The central core of his life were beautiful young men and pretense.
09:38And he was a man of pretense.
09:41He was a man of pretense.
09:43He was a man of pretense.
09:45He was a man of pretense.
09:47It was a place of beautiful young men and pretense.
09:51And the life of a boulevardier.
09:54He loved to sit at the cafe tables talking to people
09:57and then have wonderful parties.
10:00Artists are not like that.
10:02They go to some of those parties so they can meet people
10:05to whom they can sell their paintings.
10:07They don't give the parties, and he did.
10:10Clifford Irvin's statement is interesting, but also highly personal.
10:15to search for some new leads.
10:20Here is a picture of a young man.
10:22In film taken from the BBC's archive, we can see the very same young man appear discreetly
10:28together with Elmire.
10:30His name is Marc Forgy, Elmire's friend and former flatmate in Ibiza from 1970 to 76.
10:39Marc lives alone now, in a house filled with mementos of Elmire de Horry.
10:44His lifestyle is withdrawn and during the night he works as a security guard.
10:49Marc is friendly and tells us that we are the first ones who are interested in hearing
10:53about his life with Elmire.
10:56And yes, I do have quite a number of interesting stories.
11:02Where would you like to begin?
11:03Marc, come here.
11:04I want to show you.
11:05These are the drawings I made during the time I was in prison.
11:09In many respects, he was more of a father to me than my own father.
11:15And in that I mean that at a very early age in my life, because I met him when I was just
11:22barely 20, he took me under his wing, so to speak, and began to give me a well-rounded
11:35education that no university could have given me.
12:05The reason Elmire was able to succeed so well at what he did for so many years was
12:24because he was not a copyist, and that's a very important distinction that must be
12:29made.
12:30He did not copy particular paintings.
12:33What he did was to imitate the style of that particular artist.
12:40Marc makes the same assertions that we have heard before, but he is unable to provide
12:45us with any evidence.
12:52I think one of the questions that frequently comes up when talking about Elmire is that
13:01I think people in the art community, museum directors and so forth, would be interested
13:08to really know how much of his work really filtered into the art market.
13:14I'm thoroughly convinced that a great many Elmires are still extant and exist in legitimate
13:25collections of museums and private collections throughout the world.
13:30And those are works that are under the names of Matisse and Modigliani and Picasso and
13:37all of the great 20th century artists.
13:41This leaves us with only one choice.
13:44To keep on following Elmire's trail.
13:56Stockholm.
14:10Let's look at a claim Elmire made himself about something that happened in 1947.
14:19I sold five drawings to a big gallery called the United or International Gallery in Stockholm.
14:27After arriving in Stockholm, he checked into the Grand Hotel.
14:30He had with him five forged Picasso drawings, which he is said to have sold for $6,000.
14:37Elmire said one of the experts who studied the drawings was employed by the National
14:41Museum.
14:42The museum's collection still contains a number of drawings by Picasso.
14:46In the 1970s, a question about one of the works' authenticity was raised.
14:51A Stockholm newspaper reported the possibility that it might have been drawn by Elmire.
14:56However, there are a number of factors which make such a claim highly unlikely.
15:01Among them, the evidence that shows the museum's drawings were bought in 1945, two years before
15:07Elmire paid his visit.
15:09There is also the price that Elmire said he received for the drawings does not correspond
15:13with the market price for drawings by Picasso at the time.
15:17So where are the so-called Elmire forgeries of Picasso?
15:20Hanging on the walls of some naive Swedish art lover?
15:23Or in another museum's collection?
15:25Or was the trip to Stockholm just another fabrication?
15:28The money I got somewhere around between $15,000 just for drawings, I took a one-way ticket
15:34to South America.
15:38We won't follow Elmire to South America.
15:40Only content ourselves with some stock shots and an old picture.
15:44Nothing illegal is supposed to have happened while he was there, according to Elmire, that
15:48is.
15:49Somehow I got tired of Rio, I went to United States, and I, uh, I, uh, uh...
16:04Oh, I've got to stop.
16:32Clifford Irving says it was here in New York that it really started.
16:36At first Elmire tried selling his own pictures through the Lilienfeld Gallery, but the exhibition
16:40was a fiasco.
16:41Bad critics and no sales.
16:44So Elmire returned to forgery once more.
16:47He drew simple line drawings using a pen or pencil and signed them Picasso.
16:52But it is not enough for a forger to imitate an artist's style and signature.
16:56The materials also have to be authentic.
17:24He combed through the second-hand bookshops on Fourth Avenue and found what he was looking
17:28for.
17:29Old French art books that had blank white pages with a characteristic watermark.
17:34His first American victim was a New York branch of the Pearls Galleries, where, according
17:40to Irving, he sold a Picasso drawing.
17:42We contacted Pearls before traveling to New York.
17:45A pleasant conversation was very quickly cut short when we began to talk about Elmire Dohori.
17:51No comments.
17:53When we visited Pearls a few months later, the gallery had been closed down.
18:10Elmire soon discovered there were greater challenges and more money in forging oil paintings.
18:15Business must have been good, as he was able to maintain an elegant lifestyle at the Waldorf
18:20Astoria.
18:21But did he paint there?
18:23No.
18:24He rented a cheap, tiny room at the YMCA.
18:27Elmire didn't want to stain the expensive carpets at the Waldorf with his paints.
18:40Forgery Modigliani works now became his favorite occupation, and he was apparently paid $6,000
18:46for one by the Niveau Gallery.
18:48But the gallery no longer exists, and the story is unable to be confirmed.
19:05Irving lists several museums and collections in the United States in his book that were
19:09apparently swindled by Dohori, including the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and
19:14the Atkins Museum of Fine Art in Kansas.
19:17The Detroit Art Museum, the Chicago Art Institute, the Fogg Art Museum in Boston, and the Museum
19:23of Modern Art in New York.
19:26The Museum of Modern Art is definitely not closed.
19:29But was it possible to get them to talk about Elmire?
19:32Pleasant faces turned into stony silence.
19:40Clifford Irving had the same experience when working on his research for Elmire's biography.
19:45He tells us about some of the typical answers from the various museum directors and gallery
19:49owners.
19:50No, no, no.
19:51You'd be wasting your time coming here.
19:52They said to talk to us.
19:53We have nothing to tell you.
19:58Elmire always said that if a painting or drawing hangs in an established collection long enough,
20:07it becomes real.
20:09And this is a good illustration of that.
20:20Are we unable to persuade the experts to talk?
20:23To get them to confirm that Elmire's forgeries were and still are in circulation?
20:29We were about to give up when we had a breakthrough.
20:37The Fogg Art Museum in Boston, the museum which had been swindled by Elmire in the 1950s.
20:43After a lot of ooing and aahing, they finally gave us access to the case.
20:48In the Fogg archives, we searched through the correspondence between Elmire, alias Mr.
20:53A. Reynal, and the then curator, Agnes Mongen.
20:59The letters show that the Fogg Museum bought a Matisse drawing from Mr. Reynal in 1955,
21:05young woman with flowers and pomegranate.
21:09Suspicion arose later when the same Mr. Reynal offered the museum two new drawings, one by
21:15Modigliani and another by Renoir.
21:18These were of such poor artistic quality that the picture that they had purchased earlier
21:22by Matisse was now examined more closely.
21:25The conclusion being, the drawing was an Elmire Matisse.
21:30At last, we had achieved our breakthrough and had an answer to our most important question.
21:35Elmire had clearly managed to swindle a prominent university museum in the United States, at
21:40least for a while.
21:42And finally, we were able to look at a genuine Elmire forgery.
21:46A point, I don't copy paintings, painters.
21:55I paint in a certain style.
21:57It could be the style of Matisse or the style of Modigliani, the style of Picasso.
22:04How could a recognized university museum be swindled by the forger Elmire de Horry?
22:11We put this question to the present curator at the Fogg, Mr. William Robinson.
22:17When speaking about forgeries, Agnes Mongen was always fond of saying, the life of a forgery
22:23is one generation.
22:26Looking at a de Horry drawing 30 years later certainly reveals to us the stylistic characteristics
22:34of the 1950s that were in de Horry's own style.
22:39In retrospect, and with the knowledge that they are forgeries, we can easily recognize
22:44the weaknesses in de Horry's work, the lines that don't describe volume, the emphasis on
22:51the decorative and superficial characteristics of Matisse's line.
23:00Matisse's drawings, lines, were never that sure as mine.
23:05He was hesitant when he made a drawing, you know?
23:08These are qualities that instantly reveal themselves to us now, but were evidently less
23:15apparent to those who consider the drawings in the 1950s.
23:21In 1955, the museum printed a Matisse postcard.
23:25When he was shown to be by Elmire de Horry, the card was quickly withdrawn and the stock
23:30destroyed.
23:31We asked Mr. Robinson if he believed that any of Elmire's fakes were still hanging on
23:35the walls of museums and art galleries.
23:39I am sure that other museums hold works by de Horry.
23:47I don't know of specific instances that I could cite.
23:52We'll take Mr. Robinson's word for it, before following an interesting trail that leads
23:57us to the Henni Onsted Art Center, situated on the outskirts of Oslo.
24:01In his biography, The Great Swindler, Fernand Légrault claims that Sonia Henni was one
24:06of his best customers.
24:09Are there any fakes to be found in this collection?
24:14It could be false paintings in this collection.
24:22After doing some cross-checking, we discover that one of the collection's pictures was
24:26bought from a gallery that is known to have sold a number of Elmire's fakes.
24:30Could you show me the painting from the catalogue, please?
24:33Because I can't...
24:35We point the picture out to the curator, Mr. Irving Storm-Bjerke, before asking him to
24:39tell us about it.
24:41This is one of the paintings we are going to investigate.
24:52It's a quite well-known painting.
24:56It has been in several exhibitions and has never been questioned.
25:02But according to your information, we are forced to question this painting and investigate it.
25:12Let's leave the Henni-Onstad Centre to conduct its own investigations and turn our attention
25:18back to Elmire.
25:30For the next 12 years, Elmer de Horry crossed the length and breadth of the United States,
25:35during which time he used a number of pseudonyms, such as E. Reynal, Louis Cassou, Elmire Hoffmann
25:42and Baron Herzog.
25:44The owner of the Niveau Galleries in New York, who Elmire had swindled earlier, once said,
25:49De Horry has talent, but the real swindler is Elmire Reynal.
25:54However, exotic names were not enough, so he began to develop his techniques for forgery.
26:00Not only did the artistic expression have to convince the customer, but the pictures
26:04also had to be painted on authentic French canvases with French stretchers,
26:08if the product was to appear French.
26:11Imitating the age of the fake was also necessary, if it was to appear to be from the correct period.
26:17Elmire employed carpenters to replicate French stretchers, which he himself had patinated.
26:23On the back, he glued a new canvas over the one that was already painted.
26:27This method, known as relining, is a technique used for restoring pictures which have been
26:31damaged or become worn through age.
26:40Another cunning technique he used involved forging art books containing folio illustrations.
26:47Elmire replaced the photograph of the original painting shown in the book with one he had
26:51taken of his own fake.
26:53Selling a forged Modigliani or Duffy now became a lot easier, when he was able to show the
26:59customers his pictures in recognized art books.
27:06After he left the United States, Elmire returned to Europe and the Mediterranean island of
27:11Ibiza, where he once again picked up his trail.
27:19Before we delve into the dramatic years in Ibiza, the scandals, the exposure and the
27:24tragic end, let us try and get a clearer impression of Elmire.
27:29One thing that we are almost certain about, Elmire de Hooray was Hungarian.
27:33Of others, we are less certain, such as the date of his birth, 1911, which is written
27:39on his gravestone, his claim to be of aristocratic descent, and that his father was a diplomat
27:45and a member of the landed gentry by Lake Balaton.
27:55Mark told us some of the tales which Elmire had made up, but also added...
28:02Elmire portrayed a childhood that was bourgeois, comfortable, and I have no reason to disbelieve
28:16that, from some of the early family photos that I possess of him, it would show that
28:24his mother and his aunt, for example, they were very elegant people, of probably a high
28:34bourgeoisie.
28:36Living close to Café Montessor, his retired estate agent, Jumet Djori, a former close
28:42friend of both Mark and Elmire, did Elmire tell her anything about his background?
28:52He was very secret about his family, and when he talked about his family, I know it wasn't
28:59the truth.
29:01No, no, no, absolutely not.
29:04Never.
29:06Not really.
29:09Or...
29:11No.
29:15Another close friend, Sundy Pratt, used to run a bar where Elmire and his innermost circle
29:20regularly met.
29:24Could you hand me the specs which are in there?
29:27Don't forget that to all of us, you know, Western Europeans, English, Irish, Spanish,
29:34French, that world, the world of Hungary, you know, because of the war and since the
29:41Iron Curtain had come clattering down to us, you know, we knew nothing about it at all.
29:58Oh, I know only what Elmire told me, which was always a fairy tale of Mama coming down
30:18this grand staircase, wearing a gown for a ball where the Countess of such and such was
30:25going to be there and the Duke of so and so, and Elmire would be crying at the bottom
30:29of the stairs because Mama was leaving him alone yet another night.
30:33That was the version of his childhood that he told most of us.
30:44In Budapest, we begin at the National Archive to see if we can track down Elmire and his
30:50family.
30:53But we are unable to find any trace of a diplomat or member of the landed gentry which matches
30:58one of Elmire's many surnames, Bori, Hoffman or Herzog.
31:10At the age of 16 or 17, Elmire is said to have attended an art school here.
31:16At the time, there was only one such school in Budapest.
31:19It is still running and so we went to visit it.
31:24A thorough search of the records revealed the interesting fact that a pupil called Elmire
31:29Horthy had attended a school in 1922 to 1923.
31:34The principal insists that this must be our man.
31:37Th in Hungarian is the same as de in French.
31:41Elmire quite simply changed the th with a de and formed the name de Horthy.
31:52According to the school's ledgers, Elmire was born in 1905 and not 1911 as stated on
31:59his gravestone.
32:00So another forgery by Elmire is brought to light.
32:03It also confirms Mark's statement that Elmire liked pretending he was younger than he actually
32:09was.
32:10The records also show that he was a Calvinist.
32:13We discover the date Elmire was christened and his parents' name and address.
32:17Number 20 Barrow Street.
32:19Could anyone with the name Horthy still be living here?
32:22No.
32:23No one knows anybody by that name.
32:25Neither is there anything noble about this part of town, the place where Elmire probably
32:30grew up at the turn of the century.
32:32It is a middle class area without a trace of Hungarian aristocracy.
32:40We return to Ibiza and talk to Elmire's old friends in order to continue our search.
32:46Vicente Ribas' home has a view over the main street and Café Montessol.
32:54He is a prominent lawyer, knows everyone who is worth knowing in Ibiza and was a central
32:59figure in Elmire's circle of friends.
33:02One, in one day and one dinner I saw the house plenty of beautiful pictures and photos of
33:14beautiful ladies with big hats and very elegant, like from Escott, you know.
33:21And I said, who are all these ladies?
33:23He said, it's my mother.
33:25And I said, how many mothers do you have?
33:29So who are we to believe?
33:31Some say this is a picture of Elmire together with his older brother, while Elmire told
33:35everyone it was his cousin.
33:38Who can tell?
33:41How to tell?
33:44Former James Bond girl, Ursula Andress, actress and sex symbol of the 1960s and 70s, was another
34:03of Elmire's many friends from Ibiza's international jet set.
34:08Yes, I had just seen as a guest a very dear old friend of mine, Ursula Andress, and I
34:15tried to talk her into it, to stay here, because I think we two together would have the most
34:20perfect beauty on the beast.
34:23I am very drawn to people who are full of imagination, full of life, full of talent,
34:32full of stories.
34:35He had an incredible personality, incredible.
34:46I see him so clear in front of me always.
34:49I see him with the white hair, with the big brown eyes, and having the rings and the chains
34:58and his basket.
35:00Well, he had everything in his basket.
35:02It was like a magic basket he had, always with him.
35:17Ibiza is Elmire's stage.
35:20In the open, he has the island society in the palm of his hands, while he paints in
35:25secret.
35:26There is no one to equal him.
35:28Business is good, and in contrast to his time in the United States, others have now taken
35:33over the responsibility for selling his pictures.
35:50Relinquishing control into their hands, however, increases the risk that something might go
35:55wrong, and could ultimately lead to his downfall.
36:02He did not have any true insight into human nature, and that's what left him open and
36:07vulnerable to the exploitation of others.
36:12He could not really judge people.
36:18French-Egyptian and U.S. passport holder, Fernand Lagro, a sales genius, a man whom
36:24Elmire met in the United States, and whom he educated in the history of art and etiquette.
36:29Lagro, a man renowned for his expensive taste, silk suits, expensive jewelry, exclusive cars,
36:37and young men.
36:43French-Canadian, Réal Lessard, Lagro's lover and business partner.
36:48It was these two men who took over and now administered Elmire's production.
36:55Réal Lessard and Fernand Lagro.
37:03He was the expert at selling.
37:06They needed a place to keep these paintings.
37:10They brought a lot of paintings to England, and England was an easy place to fly into.
37:15Spain was always difficult, but England was easy.
37:19I lived near the airport.
37:21They used to fly in, pick up a few paintings, fly out somewhere, give me a little bit of
37:27incentive to keep them, and so that's how I got some of these paintings.
37:34Just outside London, we meet Anthony Hugo in another apartment filled with pictures by Elmire,
37:40a former smuggler who during Franco's reign captained a boat which trafficked contraband
37:45between Gibraltar and Spain.
37:48Today he describes his occupation as an artist's agent.
37:52He knew Elmire well and was an important business partner of Lessard and Lagro.
38:10Paris, Boulevard Henri Martin 89,
38:14a royal apartment formerly owned by King Hassan of Morocco.
38:18Lagro and Lessard based themselves here.
38:21They often threw glamorous high society parties, which were regularly attended by a number
38:25of leading French social figures, parties which were in all probability financed by
38:30the profits from Elmire's pictures.
38:32Their expensive lifestyle implies that it was Lessard and Lagro that kept most of the money,
38:37leaving Elmire with only a fraction.
38:41Poor Elmire got very little out of it. They kept him on a string.
38:44They bought him a car, they built him a house, which in the end wasn't his,
38:49and they paid him a small retainer.
38:52But he never earned the big money that they said.
38:54He was always chasing them for money.
38:57No, he wasn't a businessman.
38:59And so that's why he was easily taken advantage of again and again.
39:05Elmire had some crazy idea that if he did the paintings but didn't do the fake signature,
39:11then he hadn't done anything wrong. He hadn't committed a crime of anything.
39:14So Rial said, well, if you're too weak-kneed to do the signatures, don't worry about it.
39:20I'll do them. And he did.
39:22I remember Elmire always, oh, now I know I never, ever sign one of those.
39:29I do not sign. It's all the galleries who do that to make more money.
39:35¶¶
40:06¶¶
40:17In order to sell the fakes, certificates of authenticity had to be obtained.
40:22Legros and Lessard had connections with art experts,
40:26who for cash payments supplied them with the necessary documents.
40:36¶¶
40:42And in the case of Elmire's Keys van Dongen's forgery, Woman with the Necklace,
40:47the two men visited the very old and near-sighted van Dongen
40:51and persuaded him to write a certificate of authenticity,
40:54as Elmire's picture looked suspiciously like his own.
40:58These were just some of their methods.
41:02They also had and found a French government official
41:08who was what the French government called an art expert.
41:13And this guy also was down on his luck.
41:16He was an old man, and they bribed him.
41:19And this man supplied many certificates
41:22for paintings they sold in South America, Australia, Japan and America.
41:28¶¶
41:33In the 1960s, Alger Hertel-Meadows, who owned the General American Oil Company,
41:38built up an impressive collection of post-Impressionist paintings,
41:42many of which had been bought from Legros.
41:45An art expert examined Mr Meadows' collection in 1967
41:49and quickly verified that 40 of the 60 or so paintings were fakes,
41:53painted by Elmire de Horry.
41:55This formed the basis for the trial.
41:57One day, that very special day, everything exploded around me.
42:02Elmire phoned me up and said,
42:04right, he said, all the paintings you've got, burn them.
42:07Burn everything, destroy everything. I don't want nothing left.
42:10I said, why? Don't ask questions.
42:12Just please, please, you're a friend of mine, do this thing for me.
42:16Of course, I looked at these fantastic works of art
42:19and only a madman would have burned them.
42:21So I hid them away.
42:24Legros was on the run.
42:26He went to Switzerland, he got arrested in Switzerland,
42:30and the same with Réal Lissade.
42:38Mariano Gilbert said to me, oh, Interpol is here also, Interpol is here.
42:42Go up to the house, see that all the paintings are, you know, right, correct.
42:47He said, looking for paintings that he signed or something like that.
42:51Everybody said, that's incredible.
42:53Our Elmire, our dear friend Elmire, now makes all this big scandal.
42:58This is out of our mind.
43:00But at the same time, we accept and we thank them.
43:03It's more Elmire than before.
43:05This is a great success.
43:08It could be described as scandalous success
43:11that France, where the trial was due to be held,
43:13had no extradition treaty with Spain
43:16and a shocked Elmire was not only able to continue living in Ibiza,
43:20he was also able to bask in his newfound fame.
43:23At one of Elmire's parties,
43:25both he and Clifford Irving lavishly amuse themselves over the newspaper reports.
43:29A man who holds the art world to ransom.
43:32Holds the art world to ransom.
43:36And you went to parties and the rooms would be full of people
43:40and the one word you could hear was Elmire, Elmire, Elmire, Elmire.
43:44It was like a buzz.
43:46And so that was lots of fun, yes.
43:49Elmire was in his glory.
43:52He was a snob at heart
43:55and when it came to high society, he couldn't get enough.
44:00But he was lovable.
44:03It is ironic that Elmire now sold more than ever before.
44:07People still wanted to own a Picasso, Matisse and Modigliani.
44:11But now they wanted them in the style of signed Elmire.
44:15And Elmire Matisse now became worth a lot of money in its own right
44:19due to his new celebrity status as a forger.
44:22And as long as he signed his paintings with his own name,
44:25he was not breaking the law.
44:27Life still had its biting irony.
44:29He was able to make a good living,
44:32live very comfortably from the sale of his works.
44:35But they didn't want Elmires by Elmire.
44:38They wanted Elmire Picassos, Elmire Modiglianis,
44:42Elmire Matisses and so forth.
44:53The seizures and the extent of Elmire's activities as a swindler were enormous
44:58and encouraged the French and Spanish authorities
45:01to cooperate in bringing about his extradition
45:04so that he could finally be brought to trial.
45:07In 1976, Elmire's future began to look very bleak indeed.
45:11We didn't know exactly what his situation was going to be
45:15with the extradition demands.
45:17He was thinking to buy an e-boat, some fake passport
45:22to go to somewhere in America, in South America.
45:28I knew that Elmire had two false passports.
45:32And when I made inquiry at the town hall about what effects had been found,
45:38the passports were not found there.
45:40So what happened to those passports?
45:42He said to me, Ursula, if the extradition Spain will accept it,
45:48I will kill myself.
45:50I will never, ever go to France
45:52because I don't want to be killed by somebody else.
45:55Because he said, if I get there,
45:57Miss Fernande Le Gros with all the things, he said she will get me.
46:01The story I heard that they were going to stage a suicide pack with him,
46:15but just at the last minute, Elmire was going to be found,
46:19taken to the hospital, his stomach was going to be pumped
46:22and he was going to be all right.
46:24But he was going to be so ill,
46:26there was no way that they could send him back to France.
46:32After the trial, I was given this information
46:38that he was going to be extradited.
46:43So I went home and I gave him the news.
46:49And it was a very turbulent, very emotional period for me.
46:57And then he went up to his bedroom
47:00and proceeded to take an overdose of sleeping pills and cognac.
47:09I left the house at that time.
47:13I went into town and I met with Guimet.
47:16I told her the news.
47:18He said something bad with Elmire.
47:21Please come, come.
47:23And then I go with friend of mine, we was three,
47:26and we find him in his bedroom.
47:29And I tried to rouse him, shake him, and I said,
47:33Elmire, well, he turned upward and looked at me,
47:38but I could tell from the expression in his eyes
47:41his gaze was quite distant.
47:43He was in life, I think so.
47:47I feel it was some respiration.
47:49Henry and I then proceeded to lift him from the bed
47:53and we were going to take him to the clinic in Ibiza.
47:58And he died in my arms.
48:06A few years after his death, I heard from someone I know
48:10that he had been seen in Italy
48:15on the street by a woman who knew him.
48:18She saw him in a crowd nearby and she said,
48:21Elmire, and the person froze and ran.
48:26This is tremendously funny.
48:28Now Elmire is Elvis.
48:34Even after Elmire's death, his forgeries, as we have shown,
48:38still continue to be sold as originals.
48:42I was recently in Tel Aviv,
48:44where there was a major exhibition of fauve art,
48:48and I was looking through the catalogue
48:50and I came across a painting which rung a bell to me.
48:54This painting was in full public exhibition for a number of weeks
48:58and I was the first person who commented
49:01that something perhaps was amiss.
49:03And, in fact, this is by Elmire, well, supposedly by Elmire,
49:08because it appears in the book by Clifford Irving.
49:19We still have the catalogue with us
49:21from the large exhibition of Elmire's forgeries held in Japan.
49:24This is a catalogue which first awoke our curiosity about Elmire de Horry.
49:32Well, the catalogue is brilliant.
49:34I mean, the outside looks wonderful, doesn't it?
49:37It's absolutely wonderful.
49:45No!
49:46No, no, he never copied any of these.
49:51No.
50:00We took it with us to London, showed it to Sotheby's
50:03and asked them for their comments on some of the paintings.
50:06I have to say they're not as high-quality copies
50:10as I've experienced from Elmire himself.
50:14I have to say that.
50:16My God! What's that?
50:19It's a mock Degliani, or what?
50:25The colouration is all wrong, the balance is all wrong.
50:28Everything about them is not the sort of work
50:31that Elmire de Horry would ever produce.
50:33He couldn't produce this.
50:35Yeah, and certainly the Degar is not what I would expect to see from Elmire,
50:40to be honest with you.
50:42He wasn't a bad painter. He was a gifted man.
50:46Frankly, I don't know exactly where that falls on the sin list.
50:51I don't know if it's a crime or a joke,
50:54you know, making fake fakes.
50:57What they say, fact is stranger than fiction.
51:02If there is anything to be learnt by all this,
51:05it is that as long as there is an art market,
51:07there will always be forgers.
51:09Or as the old saying goes,
51:11if fools did not go to markets,
51:14jackpots and false swears would not be sold.