Egyptian statue that cost council £440,000 is a forgery

[Merlion]

Is it really so easy to forge a 3000 year old stone carving? This news story goes into more forgeries from the same family. Click into the link to read about them.

Egyptian statue that cost council £440,000 is a forgery (http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23393458-details/Egyptian+statue+that+cost+council+%C2%A3440,000+is +a+forgery/article.do)

The offer from the antiques dealer seemed too good to be true.

He had a 3,000-year-old Egyptian artefact, a statue of King Tut's half-sister, which had been in his family for more than a century.

And although it was worth £1million, he was prepared to sell it to his local authority for a knockdown £440,000 so it could remain in his home town.

After experts from the British Museum and Christie's had vouched for its authenticity, Bolton Council raised the money to buy the sculpture, known as the Amarna Princess.

http://img.dailymail.co.uk//i/pix/2007/04_02/egyptianstatPA_228x534.jpg

It was not until three years later, when a similar item arrived at the Museum, that the Princess's guilty secret was exposed.

She was a fake. Far from being made in Ancient Egypt, the alabaster sculpture has more in common with Modern Lancashire. Police believe the sculpture was created in Bolton. When they raided a house in the town, they discovered marble and other artists' equipment inside.

An elderly couple and their two sons have been arrested and charged with offences connected to forgery.....

[StevenW]

Put the crooks in shackles and have the "experts" get their resumes together, looks like a few job openings.

Next! ;)

P.S., makes you wonder how many have gotten by the "experts" doesn't it?

[Merlion]

I am a bit surprised justice system can move so very slowly.

The family was arrested and charged end April, as mentioned above. They now appear in court end July, and a provisional trial date was set early Feb 2008. Who knows, the elder Greenhalgh may die first. That's not the idea, is it?

I am also a bit surprised from my earlier post, that both the British Museum and Christie's vouched for this sculpture's authenticity before it was bought by the Bolton Museum.

Family sells fake Egyptian statue for £400,000 (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/01/nstatue101.xml)

01/08/2007, A family appeared in court yesterday accused of passing off a fake Egyptian artefact to a local authority for more than £400,000.

The fake was displayed at the Hayward Gallery

George Greenhalgh, 83, who is wheelchair-bound, was positioned outside the dock while his wife Olive, 82, holding a walking stick, joined their two middle-aged sons inside.

The Amarna Princess statuette was bought for £410,393 by Bolton metropolitan borough council in September 2003 in the belief it was genuine.

The Greenhalghs were arrested with sons George, 52, and Shaun, 47, at the home they share in Bromley Cross, near Bolton, after experts determined it was counterfeit.

Shaun Greenhalgh, 47, admitted conspiracy to conceal, disguise, convert or transfer the proceeds of the sale of the statue when they appeared at Bolton Crown Court yesterday. ...

None of these three entered pleas at the brief hearing yesterday and a provisional trial date was set for Feb 4 next year. ....

[Merlion]

There is now further news on this forgery case first discovered last April. Justice moves very slowly over there.

The couple are both over 80, one is wheelchair-bound, the other walks with a stick. Yet they managed to fool so many art institutions and experts.

Pair admit fraud over fake statue (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/manchester/7053233.stm)

An 84-year-old man and his 83-year-old wife have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud over the sale of a fake Egyptian statue to Bolton council.

The council paid £440,000 for the Amarna Princess in 2003 believing it was 3,300 years old but in 2006 experts found it was counterfeit.

George Greenhalgh and his wife Olive, of The Crescent in Bromley Cross, will be sentenced on 16 November.

Their son Shaun Greenhalgh, 47, has already admitted the same charges.

Another son, not charged in relation to the conspiracy, faces a charge of acquiring criminal property to which he has pleaded not guilty.

He will face trial on 4 February 2008. ...

The council bought the antique with a grant of £360,000 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, £75,000 from the National Art Collections Fund and £2,500 from the Friends of Bolton Museum and Art Gallery.

The statue, said to date back to 1350 BC, went on display in the town's museum after first being featured in an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, which was opened by the Queen. ....

These below are from another online news story.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2007/10/20/nfake120b.jpg

George Greenhalgh, 84, who is wheelchair-bound, and his wife Olive, 83, who walks with a stick, pleaded guilty yesterday to conspiring to defraud art institutions.

[Merlion]

The judge has passed sentence on these three. They fooled the art establishment for 17 years. This case was brought to light because of a spelling mistake in the Assyrian cuneiform srcipt.

Statue forger jailed for art con (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/manchester/7090795.stm), from the BBC.

16 Nov 2007. A 47-year-old man has been jailed for more than four years for what police said was "the most sustained and diverse" art forgery case ever.

His mother Olive, 83, was given a 12 month suspended sentence for her part in the con. His father, George, 84, will be sentenced at a later date.

All three admitted fraud and money laundering at Bolton Crown Court. ...

Judge William Morris, sentencing Shaun Greenhalgh to four years and eight months in prison, said the three had conspired together to defraud the art world for 17 years. ...

The scam came to light after George Greenhalgh presented three faked Assyrian reliefs - ancient stone wall art - to the British Museum for examination in 2005.

Errors in the cuneiform script - in effect, spelling mistakes - prompted museum officials to doubt their authenticity.

They alerted the Metropolitan Police's Art and Antiques Unit which began an investigation. ...

[StevenW]

Well I'm glad granny and granddad didn't go up the river, but they should swab the decks every so often at the local museum till death do them part or something. You'd think people would know better by that age, but we're odd creatures.

The younger guy took the brunt of the punishment, whether he was the primary perp or not. Was any of the money recovered or do you know?

[Merlion]

Was any of the money recovered or do you know?
I think this will be later, at civil law suits.

[Merlion]

The wheelchair bound father does not need to go to jail. But the mother and son have to.

It now sounds so easy how they did it.

"Police say the Greenhalghs used a genuine 19th century sales document to get ideas on what items to fake, and once the items were fabricated they used the catalog as proof of provenance when presenting their knockoffs for sale."

Some more interesting excerpts.

"Police eventually determined that the family made about 1.5 million pounds, which would be worth about $2.98 million today, .."

"As for the fabricated items, the judge in the north England city of Bolton said some should be saved and used to teach experts how to detect high-quality fakes."

I think these 'experts' really need to improve themselves.

Art Scammer Gets Suspended Sentence (http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iILviip2Nc3QKwJcnmNuhwvF98AQD8UF58NO2)

Jan 29, 2008. LONDON (AP) — A man whose family forged statues and paintings and then passed them off as priceless pieces of art to museums including the Art Institute of Chicago received a two-year suspended sentence Monday.

George Greenhalgh, 84, his 83-year-old wife, Olive, and their 46-year-old son, Shaun, pleaded guilty in 2002 to charges of laundering money from the sale of forged artworks.

The son, who authorities said created the fakes, was sentenced to more than four years in jail in November. His mother received a 12-month sentence. Police said the parents handled most of the sales. ....

Rapley, the chief of Scotland Yard's Art and Antiques unit, said there was little doubt that some of their forgeries were still circulating in the art world.

In December, the Art Institute of Chicago said a ceramic figure supposedly sculpted by 19th century French artist Paul Gauguin, which graced the museum for 10 years, was among the Greenhalgh forgeries.

Police say the Greenhalghs used a genuine 19th century sales document to get ideas on what items to fake, and once the items were fabricated they used the catalog as proof of provenance when presenting their knockoffs for sale.

The scheme unraveled when experts spotted misspellings in the Cuneiform script on three bogus Assyrian stone reliefs the family was trying to pass on to the British Museum. Scotland Yard launched an investigation in February 2006 and raided the Greenhalgh home the next month. .....

Police eventually determined that the family made about 1.5 million pounds, which would be worth about $2.98 million today, although police said the family did not live lavishly.

The Greenhalghs forged a wide range of objects, including sculptures attributed to Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, paintings purportedly by American artist Thomas Moran, and gold and silver items dated to Roman and Anglo-Saxon times.

Their biggest sale was the Amarna Princess, a statuette depicting one of the daughters of Queen Nefertiti, the mother of King Tutankhamun. After being authenticated by experts at Christie's and the British Museum, it was sold for 440,000 pounds — now worth about $870,000 — to the Bolton Museum in 2003.

Authorities are now weighing how best to divide the family's assets among those they defrauded.

As for the fabricated items, the judge in the north England city of Bolton said some should be saved and used to teach experts how to detect high-quality fakes.

[StevenW]

I think these 'experts' really need to improve themselves..


Well ultimately it is the responsibility of the people who hired the "experts" to keep them from being screwed over, Sotheby's etc... And you would think there would be some job openings after such incompetence.. Obviously there is a lot of room for improvement in some of these specialists...

I'd do the job; "Nope it's a fake, I'll just confiscate it and keep it in my collection for study". ;)

[sculptor]

The quality of the item hasn't changed, just the snob appeal.

Experts rely on the word of other experts who rely on the word of experts who rely on the word...

Is a can of shit with a well known artist's name on it really worth more than a can of shit?

Another "Armanan princess?" dated to 1375-50 bc had more attention to breasts, and wider pleats in the garment, and is a tad less hippy
and, as pure art, i prefer this one

[sculptor]

here's a scan of her image

If one assumes this to be a carving from 1350 bc---then we'll call her the original

notice the subtle treatment of the garment