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Wednesday, November 26, 2008, 15:10
The highly collectable works of the late Cornish painter are being copied and attempted to be sold for tens of thousands of pounds, according to the artist's autobiographer.
Robert Jones, artist, and author of Alfred Wallis Artist and Mariner, who lectured on Alfred Wallis in the University of Surrey, Kettles Yard in Cambridge and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Tokyo, suspects that an unusually high number of fake Alfred Wallis' are appearing on the market.
"While I appreciate that Alfred Wallis has probably been one of the most faked artists of all time, what I have been looking at recently are very clever and convincing fakes, and I believe a considerable proportion of them are by the same hand.
"There does seem to be a very talented forger at work," he said.
Graham Bazley, of W H Lane & Sons auctioneers in Penzance, said the forgeries amounted to greed. "People look at Wallis' paintings and think 'that's very childlike and simple, I could do that and cash in'.
"The moral of the story is if you are buying an Alfred Wallis be absolutely sure that you get the provenance, that you know its history," he said.
In September Penzance auctioneer, Barnes Thomas, phoned the police when a client allegedly went berserk upon learning the Alfred Wallis painting he believed to be worth £50,000 was a fake.
Chemical tests in London confirmed that the painting was not by the hand of the famed Cornish artist.
An Alfred Wallis painting with full provenance, called Two Steamers on an Estuary, is on auction at W H Lane & Son today with an estimated price of £50,000.
Alfred Wallis was a central figure in the St Ives artist movement.
The Devonport-born son of Cornish parents, who grew up in Penzance, did not start painting until his 70s following the death of his wife in 1922.
He spent his younger years in the Merchant Navy and later fished with the Newlyn fleet.
Robert Jones.
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