German art historian Henry Keazor has reattributed a work on paper to Pierre-Auguste Renoir that had previously been labeled a forgery.
Keazor is the founder of the Heidelberg Forgery Study Collection (HeFäStuS), which is “a collaboration with the three state criminal investigation offices of Berlin, Bavaria, and Baden-Württemberg, which provide forgeries from their evidence rooms as loans for research and teaching purposes,” according to its website. Students at the University of Heidelberg, where Keazor is a professor of modern and contemporary art history, have first-hand access to its 140 forgeries of artists like Vincent van Gogh, Salvador Dalí, and Alberto Giacometti, so they can “can become aware of the phenomenon of art forgery and learn how to recognize it,” according to its website.
In 2023, a private collector decided to offer the drawing to Keazor and the HeFäStuS as part of a “household clearance”; the owner had inherited the work in the 1970s from a friend who ran a New York gallery that “classed [the work] as a fake,” per a release. The gallery had also given the medium for the work as a pencil drawing.
“While unpacking it I noticed immediately that it was a print, not an original pencil drawing,” Keazor said in a statement. That led him and his students to begin conducting research into Renoir’s works on paper and subjecting the piece to paper and microscopic analyses, which revealed that the “the structure of the autotype paper” and confirmed that “signature is written by hand with black grease chalk,” according to Keazor.
A close-up of Renoir’s signature on the lithograph.
©Seele/Kurpfälzisches Museum Heidelberg
They now believe that it is hand-signed lithograph, dating to around 1899 and depicting actor and singer Amelie Diéterle. The work matches one that Renoir produced for “Germinal,” an artist portfolio that also included works by Degas, van Gogh, and Toulouse-Lautrec.
Keazor now believes that the HeFäStuS print was a test for the portfolio works, which were produced in an edition of 100 and have their signatures printed on the work as opposed to handwritten. “The solution to the riddle is that the picture is a test print made with only one of the two print stones. Since the signature evidently lay on another stone, Renoir added it by hand, thereby making the proof a fully valid work,” Keazor said, noting that such test prints are rare in art history.
The work will go on view at the Kurpfälzisches Museum in Heidelberg from November 26 to March 21 as part of an exhibition titled “Riddle around Renoir.” Afterward, the HeFäStuS and the previous owner will decide “where to keep the print in future,” per a release.
