It is much too simplistic simply to divide all works into genuine and fake, and though one has to draw the line somewhere it is possible to draw the line too close.
It really is not right to brand the traders, even the genuinely culpable auction houses, for not explaining everything in fullest detail every time. Let us get one thing clear straight away - A fake is an object made with the intent to deceive, described as being something other than what it is and then sold as such. Note that just to sell goods deceptively may be fraud (or ignorance) but that does not affect the quality of the actual object traded. In one sense, every object, even a fake, was genuinely made by someone. And even this statement not not absolute as James Fenton makes clear with respect ot Armour in the New York Review of Books.
When Rubens painted the portraits of the Archduke Albert, Ruler and Viceroy of the Netherlands and of his wife Clara Eugenia, the King's sister, he no doubt made sketches in front of their Royal Highnesses and then went back and painted the famous portraits. But we know that he employed a studio of over a hundred people, the canvas was prepared for him, the paint had been ground and oiled and no doubt after he had sketched in the composition the basic colour was filled in before he painted the flesh tones and details. He was a busy and successful man and had also to be at court.
There was no photography in those days. Another pair was painted at the same time to send to Clara's brother, the King in Spain, and another pair was sent to the Emperor in Vienna, Albert's brother. Painted at the same time under the direct supervision and literally the hand of the master these are called versions. If we really believe (or know) that a second or even much later version was painted entirely by the hand of the master it is called a replica. It is a matter of the hardest and most difficult connoisseurship to tell which of these was the first and entirely by Rubens, and which should perhaps more properly be described as and studio. Hard and difficult as are such decisions and problems of quality, the discussion is in the strictest sense wrong because all the paintigns were painted in the studio as we know from the records - good men were working there too, partly students or assistants, young men like Tony Van Dyck and John Fyt and Luke van Uden and Johnny Wildens and so on . .etc.
And then more versions were ordered (or painted on spec), maybe for the King of England or an embassy going to Rome and then Rubens had to go to Paris or Madrid himself, so they painted one for him with the original still in front of them but the master absent and these are called, or should be called studio versions - but we know that Rubens was very pernickety as to what left his studio and would have checked them all, maybe adjusted them with a hasty brush stroke himself before he allowed them to go out and be delivered.
And then some of those chaps that had been working on them thought they'd make a bit on the side and did another version at home and sold it to the burgomaster, or their wife's brother or a tourist for cash. Strictly this is a copy though the painter had worked on the original and the dating is still within a very few years of the first version.
And then Rubens died and Albrecht died, but Clara Eugenia lived on and on and on and retired to a convent and to honour her they wanted a pair there too (after she died) so another version was made by an artist who, as a young man, had worked briefly with Rubens and knew the technique and had access to the Royal Palace to see the originals. We call these circle of Rubens without defining to closely how wide the circle might be. Prints had been made straight away after the painting (like black and white photos), which greatly helped in making of these later images but no one was being deceived. And royalist princelings in their castles in Germany wanted images of their illustrious earlier relatives to show what a great line they came from: they commissioned contemporary artists (in the eighteenth century) to go to Vienna or Brussels and copy the portraits. Ancient valuations for probate and family division show these being sold for smallish sums compared to paintings by the hand (as defined above) of Rubens. They knew the truth about these paintings.
Marie de Medici, Queen Regent of France ordered a set of magnificent canvases from Rubens which now hang in a special gallery in the Louvre. The contract exists, carefully stipulating the price and that they should all be executed entirely by the Master's own hand. She too knew he had a studio and she wanted none of it. She was after all the queen and could order the best so he signed the document and he certainly designed and delivered the paintings - but not one modern scholar believes that he painted a brush stroke on them himself.
Some people now say, wrongly I believe, that the portraits of Albert and Clara in Vienna are not genuine - what do they mean? What is genuine? We operate a simple code which is explained in every auction catalogue and gets longer every year - Sir Peter Paul Rubens, PP Rubens, Rubens, circle of, studio of, manner of, after. etc. Where after is not followed by a date it means that an original is known AND thought to antedate this particular picture by rather a long time. But note that this code is just professional shorthand for knowledge of the craft and how artefacts were created and why and as outlined above, it does not properly cover all the variations. The code is no kind of fraud, but neither is it a totally precise instrument to describe how a work came to be made and who might have made it. It is just what it says - a shorthand code.
On the other hand the phrase attributed to seems to cause endless trouble. This does NOT mean it is rather less the work of the artist or a something between fully by and and studio. Attributed to should refer only to the Art Historian (or dealer or auction house). It may be a wonderful work of the highest quality but either we are just not quite sure who made it or else we are quite sure in our souls but in fact we cannot find a shred of hard evidence. The phrase is a genuine and sincere admission of humility - "I am not quite sure" or "I can't prove it". (I have written more about the problems caused by the phrase attributed to in the next essay.
The position in sculpture is more difficult still - an artist makes a design maybe in clay, and then makes a plaster cast of it which he works on (the original plaster). The clay may or may not be fired - usually it is lost. From the plaster either a marble is carved by assists (carvers) or a mould is made from which a wax model is cast (maybe several times) and cast in bronze. The foundry does not belong to the sculptor. The foundry gives the works to a chiseller to clean up and then it is patinated or gilded (maybe by a goldsmith). Then it maybe given back to the sculptor for sale or delivery.
The foundry goes on making the model after the artist's death, other people, other foundries take casts from some of the bronzes (or from the plaster), other sculptors copy freehand the model and reproduce through foundries and chisellers as above. The model is still given (attributed to) the original creator of the idea. A porcelain factory may take a mould (or commission a sculptor) and reproduce it in porcelain.
Who's it by? None of these objects are fakes in any logical sense of the word.
When a work of art is made in a style of another artist or period - as for instance when a the Victorians made items in what they fondly thought was the Gothick style - this is properly described as a pastiche, but it is still not a fake.
The Musée Rodin will cast a bronze from the mould if you pay for it. Delivery in a few months. That is surely a fake - made tomorrow. Is it? Rodin left the moulds in his will with permission to go one casting - the casts are numbered and dated. To the untutored they do not look so different to a cast made in his life time (and he never touched marble with a chisel himself at all). In a hundred years will a cast made today be different from a cast in his lifetime.
Degas never cast anything in bronze, & furniture was made in workshops, which replaced legs when they broke. And altered them for the owner when he wanted it.
The mistake lies in the romantic and entirely modern notion that only that thing is genuine, which was made by the genius of an artist all by himself with his own fair hands and his native talent. But this myth totally ignores how and why most works of art came to be made in the first place. Without a sense of history, art (old art anyway) is meaningless. Learn history or stay with the art of our time and ask the artist what he means - he may tell you if he knows; can you always stomach the answer.
Topic 3. in this series on attribution continues the discussion of nomenclature. There is a large literature on the subject of fakes - most of these are just silly novellas (even if factual) in which dishonest 'experts' and venal pseuds are taken in by clever artisans and disgruntled artists. For a serious discussion of an important subject see Prof. Nelson Goodman's various works but especially The Languages of Art Hackett 1976.
Topic 10 discusses a e-mail correspondent's problems with a work in a museum, which she believes (for all I know rightly) to be fake or at least wrongly attributed.
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