Paintings vs Painters

A couple of days ago a French museum in the south of France, dedicated to the work of painter Etienne Terrus, discovered that more than half the works in the museum were fakes. This was described by curators as a “catastrophe.”

But here’s the thing.

It’s most likely that, unless there was an entire Terrus-faking cottage industry in the Pyrenees, most of the 82 fake paintings were painted by the same person. Now, we don’t know who the faker was but let’s call him Benny.

Now, if Benny was not as good a painter as Terrus, the question arises as to why the curators did not pick up that half the collection was not as good as the other half. Did they assume that, like most painters, Terrus had good days and bad days. But if that was their assumption, why hang paintings that were not the best examples of the painter’s work, let alone make up half the collection out of them.

My belief would be, however, that the curators were fooled into acquiring these paintings because they were exactly the same standard of painting as Terrus’ work. And that raises the question: if Benny is just as good a painter as Terrus, why aren’t his or her paintings just as valuable, just as significant, just as worthy of being displayed.

A few years ago there was an art scandal in Sydney where someone bought a large painting alleged to be painted by Brett Whitely. It was later shown to be fake. Again, here’s the thing. If you like the kinds of paintings Brett Whitely did and would like to have one, and you find a painting that is like a Brett Whitely painting, so close to his style that art aficionados think it could have been painted by Brett Whitely painting, then surely your wish has been granted. Surely a painting that looks just like a Brett Whitely is as good as a real Brett Whitely if that's what you want to look at. If you insist that the painting not only look like a Brett Whitely but have been actually painted by Brett Whitely, you’re not really interested in the painting itself, you just want the name.

My advice to the curators of the Terrus museum would be: if half your collection of wonderful paintings was not done by Etienne Terrus but by an unknown artist I have dubbed "Benny" find out who that artist is and rename the museum the Musee de Terrus-Benny and let it honour two artists who are clearly equally good.