Roughly 50 years ago, Dwight Barnes was given two Woodland-style paintings by his father, Eric, who told him they were by famed Anishinaabe painter Norval Morrisseau. Now he wants to know whether they are genuine.
Barnes, who was born in Madsen, near Red Lake, in 1943, believes his paintings are real Morrisseaus — and he’s considered selling them. But “this whole thing that’s happening there in Thunder Bay, it puts a stain on every Norval Morrisseau painting that’s out there.”
On March 3, the Thunder Bay Police Service and the Ontario Provincial Police announced the seizure of more than 1,000 purportedly phony Norval Morrisseau artworks and the arrest of eight people who allegedly produced and distributed the fake artwork in what police have called the “biggest art fraud in world history.”
One of over 1,000 allegedly fake artworks seized by the police as a result of their investigation. (OPP)
Morrisseau, who is referred to as the mishomis, or grandfather, of contemporary Indigenous art, was a prolific painter who’s estimated to have produced thousands of paintings and drawings in the style of the Woodland School (which he is credited with having founded) before his death in 2007. While the total number of forgeries passed off as Morrisseaus is unknown, police say it could be as high as 6,500.
Rumours of an art-forgery ring have swirled for more than two decades and had a substantial impact on Morrisseau’s legacy, causing confusion among people who possess his paintings. While the matter of the alleged art-forgery ring is now before the courts, an important question remains: How can you tell the difference between a real Morrisseau and an imitation?
The OPP say there were three “distinct groups” creating fake Morrisseau paintings. The first group, which the police called the Thunder Bay Voss group, was allegedly led by David Voss. He reportedly started his operation in 1996, forging “some paintings himself before growing his operation into a full assembly line of painters.” The Thunder Bay Lamont group was allegedly led by convicted sex offender Gary Lamont, who police say recruited Indigenous painters, including Morrisseau’s nephew Benjamin “Benji” Morrisseau, to create fake artwork that was “often sold online.”
Experts employ a number of methods to determine whether a painting is real or fake. (OPP)
The so-called Cowan group, allegedly led by Jeffrey Cowan in southern Ontario, is said to have “provided false information for the provenances of the forgeries” and sold them to victims. Police believe that James White, also part of the Cowan group, “enlisted David Paul Bremner to produce certificates of authenticity and complete appraisals for hundreds” of forgeries. White, Bremner, and others “relied upon” those to offload the fake paintings to “unsuspecting members of the public.” None of the allegations has been proven in court.
So what are people like Barnes to do? There are a number of approaches to evaluating the authenticity of a piece of artwork, and experts say they are best used in conjunction with one another. “The first thing you do is you think about provenance documentation,” says Carmen Robertson, an art historian who has written extensively about Norval Morrisseau. “What do you have that can lead your painting back to the hands of the artist?”
“That’s a real key point, but it’s very challenging when it comes to an artist like Morrisseau, who worked outside the art-market world.”
Morrisseau was born in northwestern Ontario in 1931, moved to the Red Lake area around 1959, and soon took a job at the Cochenour-Willans gold mine. He lived in the area on and off for almost 20 years. It’s where he created some of his earliest works. Morrisseau “has a real connection to Red Lake,” says Robertson. “I have had great conversations with so many people who knew Morrisseau and collected his work or received his work as gifts over that period.”
Dwight Barnes says he recieved two Norval Morrisseau paintings from his father, Eric. (Courtesy of Dwight Barnes)
Barnes says Morrisseau would often visit Barnes Furniture, the furniture store his father operated in Red Lake in the late 1960s, offering to sell or trade his paintings for a roll of kraft paper. Barnes’s father received a number of Morrisseau paintings this way, says Barnes, and gave some of them to his three sons: while his brothers sold their paintings, he held onto his. The problem is that he has no formal provenance (documents or photographs that art dealers rely upon to help establish an artwork’s authenticity) for his paintings.
Robertson says Morrisseau’s propensity to trade or gift his paintings has made establishing provenance difficult, but that both “written documentation” and “oral stories” can help prove whether a painting is an original.
Jonathan Sommer is an art-fraud lawyer who represented musician Kevin Hearn in a lawsuit against an art gallery that allegedly sold Hearn a fake Morrisseau, leading to a legal battle featured in the TVO original documentary There Are No Fakes. He says there are “two general categories of analysis that can be applied to questions of authenticity”: the connoisseur approach and the forensic-science approach.
According to Sommer, the forensic-science approach includes “hard science” methods, such as chemical analyses of paint and radiocarbon dating, and “soft science” methods, which include more subjective techniques such as handwriting analysis.
One of two paintings attributed to Norval Morrisseau that Barnes is looking to get authenticated. (Courtesy of Dwight Barnes)
However, the scientific approach isn’t foolproof. “Let’s say you show me a painting, and you say this painting is alleged to have been painted in 1950,” says Sommer. “So we do a chemical analysis of the paint on it, and we find that there’s paint from the 1990s. Well, you’d think, ‘Oh, great, busted.’ But not necessarily, because it could be that somebody repaired the painting in the 1990s, and then you get a more modern paint-chemical signature on it.”
Sommer says that provenance, combined with an expert evaluation and scientific analysis, “can probably give you, in many cases, a pretty good idea of what’s authentic and what isn’t.”
The Thunder Bay Art Gallery suggests that those looking to get an artwork evaluated contact a qualified appraiser through the Canadian chapter of the International Society of Appraisers. Cory Dingle, CEO of the Estate of Norval Morrisseau, encourages owners of an artwork attributed to Morrisseau to submit information to the estate’s website for verification at no cost, as the estate is creating a database of Morrisseau’s work.
Sommer has also recently launched a new venture, Morrisseau Art Consultants Inc., which evaluates artwork attributed to Morrisseau. The cost for an evaluation is based on the artwork’s size and medium and can range anywhere between $100 and $5,000, plus applicable fees, says Sommer.
The second of Barnes's Norval Morrisseau paintings. (Courtesy of Dwight Barnes)
If an artwork is deemed genuine, Morrisseau Art Consultants Inc. will issue a certificate of authenticity. However, if the artwork is fake, clients may opt to pursue legal action. (The OPP suggests that those who suspect they may have a fake Morrisseau contact the Law Society of Ontario.)
While fake Morrisseaus are virtually worthless, a genuine Morrisseau painting can range in value from $10,000 to $350,000 or more “for a large, high-quality work,” according to Sommer. (In 2022, Morrisseau’s painting “Animal Unity” sold for $312,000.) However, Sommer cautions that the market for Morrisseaus “is depressed at the moment, because of the confusion in the market,” but he “suspects that the pricing will stabilize in the future.”
Barnes has contacted an evaluator and hopes to soon get confirmation that his paintings are authentic. As for the impact of the forgeries on Norval Morrisseau’s legacy, Sommer says that it’s been “disastrous, but it’s my hope that that disaster is only temporary.”
“I certainly think that what’s been happening the last while — with Kevin’s case, with the documentary, and with this prosecution — that that has now paved the road for a sort of truth to come out about all this,” he says. “And, gradually, a sorting out of what’s authentic and what isn’t.”
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