Eric Hebborn

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Eric Hebborn (born March 20, 1934 in London , † January 11, 1996 in Rome ) was a British painter and art forger.

Live and act

Hebborn grew up in dreary social conditions in South Kensington , but showed artistic talent at an early age and was allowed to exhibit at the Maldon Art Club as a 15-year-old. As a student at the Royal Academy of Arts , he won the Silver Award and received a Rome Scholarship in 1959. In Rome, the art historian and spy Anthony Blunt is said to have pointed out the similarity between his work and those of Nicolas Poussins . Hebborn then worked for the restorer George Aczel, where he was also allowed to make "improvements". His first “real” forgeries were drawings on paper after Augustus John .

Hebborn then moved to Italy with his partner Graham David Smith and began to forge paintings by painters such as Corot , Castiglione , Mantegna , Van Dyck , Poussin , Ghisi , Tiepolo , Rubens , Jan Breughel and Piranesi on a large scale . Art historians like John Pope-Hennessy declared his works to be genuine, and they fetched high sales at auctions.

In 1978, however, Konrad Oberhuber , curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC , discovered that two freshly acquired works on paper by different artists used the same type of paper as a substrate. The art dealer Colnaghi referred to his supplier Hebborn. This remained unmolested and is said to have committed around 500 more forgeries between 1978 and 1988. In 1984, however, like Tom Keating , Hebborn confessed to his forgeries and attacked the art world, its cliques and experts, including in his book Drawn to Trouble (1991).

On January 8, 1996, shortly after the publication of the Italian edition of his art forgery manual, Hebborn was found in Rome with severe head injuries. He died three days later as a result of being hit with a blunt object.

A BBC documentary was produced in 1991: Eric Hebborn: Portrait Of A Master Forger . In it he states that he has put a Leonardo da Vinci drawing (the box for "St. Anna Selbdritt") that was accidentally destroyed on paper.

Fonts

  • Drawn to Trouble. The forging of an artist; of autobiography . Mainstream Publ., Edinburgh 1991, ISBN 1-85158-369-6 .
  • Art Forger's Handbook. Confessions of a master forger. The updated autobiography . Overlook Press, Woodstock, NY 1997, ISBN 1-58567-626-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Susanna Partsch : Tatort Kunst , Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2010, pp. 127–145, ISBN 978-3-406-60621-2 .
  2. ↑ The cuckoo's egg. Old masters to order . In: Der Spiegel . "Art" section from July 20, 1992, last accessed on May 5, 2013.
  3. ^ Died: Eric Hebborn . In: Der Spiegel of January 22, 1996, last accessed on May 5, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Hebborn, Eric
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British painter and art forger
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 1996
Place of death Rome