Such, roughly, is the method mostly in use for oil paintings. With the necessary variations, and the use of the proper medium, the same method also answers for tempera. It is rare that frescoes are imitated or retouched, but in such cases fresh cheese is used as the vehicle for the colour, and when dry it not only acquires the quality of insolubility but also the opaque hue of the fresco.
As far as technique is concerned, the imitator does not find it easy to imitate the work of those artists who paint in impasto, that is to say with a thick layer of pigment, the consequent characteristic strokes of the brush requiring no little experience for reproduction in all their force, character and characteristics. Through long study and practice some finally succeed in imitating the work of such painters as Rembrandt or Frans Hals, but such cases are extremely rare. Forni, who has written a work on the restoration of paintings, suggests a method of imitating impasto painting with its characteristic brush strokes which, in our view, can only be applied in the case of repairing a part missing in some old painting. Forni’s method consists of first reproducing the peculiarities of the brush strokes in a plaster composition closely resembling that of the preparation of the canvas, and then giving the proper colouring. According to Forni this method has the advantage of giving the impression of a frank and vigorous style of painting such as is usual with the impasto technique, and yet it has been achieved slowly and patiently.
One of the side-businesses of picture faking is the providing of suitable signatures. When one considers that paintings generally bear the artist’s signature, more especially in recent times, it would be strange if this branch of the shady trade did not number specialists who can imitate signatures to perfection, as well as reproduce artists’ special monograms.
It is easy to understand how old drawings and sketches may be imitated. Just as in the case of faking a painting, the artist tries first to become familiar with the work he wishes to imitate. It is then usually executed on old paper and when finished soaked in dirty water, dried and scoured with pumice to give it the apparent abuse of age. Some imitators, however, do not give themselves the trouble to find the proper paper, and it is not unusual to see imitations on modern paper, or would-be sixteenth-century, work on paper bearing the mill-mark of two or three centuries later. But these of course are the gross imitations only intended to dupe the most naïve of beginners.
Prints are also imitated, and nowadays to perfection with the help of mechanical aids, when they have to reproduce an excellent original. The ageing process is the same as that used for drawings. There is one difference between them to be noted, it is that in the case of old prints or etchings the presence or absence of the margin counts for much. An etching with its original paper margin is far more valuable than one that has been cut to fit a frame or for any other purpose. Hence one particular branch of faking of the prints is to refurnish paper margins to those specimens that have lost them. The work is more or less successful according to the skill of the faker, but is usually effected in the following manner: The etching is cut all round the edge reasonably near the printed part, then a large piece of old paper is cut to fit the etching as a frame and the two edges are brought and held together for some time by a paper lining at the back. The crack of the join between the old etching and the new margin is filled in with paste of the same composition as the paper and smoothed even by a mechanical process. It is of course needless to add that such a method is not likely to take in a true collector, but the faker knows that foolish clients are sometimes numerous and his best supporters.
Miniature work is easy to imitate, not only on account of its technique, in which originality has a comparatively small rôle to play, but because it needs hardly any patina or ageing.
Pastels and water colours, more especially the latter, appear to be a little out of the forger’s line. Yet pastel, with its peculiar technique, affords possibilities for faking.
Copies of noted originals have not escaped the speculative spirit of the counterfeiter. They are generally sold as contemporary copies or antique copies, and they seem to command higher prices, even if an old copy is at times far inferior to a modern one.
In the faking of modern, or semi-modern art, the technique intended to confer age and venerability to the work finds no place. In such cases, it is easy to understand, the main craft lies in imitating the style of the master counterfeited.
Speaking of such imitations, we may note that fakers contemporary with the artist are perhaps the most dangerous to the neophyte, and as imitations have always existed more or less, and are by no means only the product of the greed of modern fakers and dealers, a collector is often taken in by a false Corot or a false Rousseau, in which the only legitimate thing is perhaps the date, the forgery having been perpetrated during the master’s lifetime.