Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Folk or Fake?


This may be one of the most interesting and instructive pieces in the Fenimore Art Museum’s folk art collection. As such, it has a special status in relation to all of the other paintings in the collection.


That’s because it is a fake. A rare fake by a famous forger.

In 1990 Robert Lawrence Trotter was sentenced to 10 months in Federal prison for the forgery and sale of American folk paintings. Trotter was a talented artist in his own right, but was unable to sell his works. So he started forging the works of other historical painters whose works did have a ready market. One FBI agent explained: “He’d go into antiques shops, buy old frames, use square nails and ultraviolet light to cause certain cracks to occur. He wouldn’t copy, but he’d paint in the famous artist’s style. Sometimes he would sign their name, sometimes he wouldn’t.”


When Trotter was sentence to federal prison, he was ordered to give four of his fake paintings to Yale University so that they could be studied for future use in identifying forgeries.

There are 55 known Trotter fakes, only 16 of which have ever been recovered. That’s what makes our example so rare.

Looking at the piece, you can see right away why Trotter was successful, at least for a while. It is beautifully painted in a style consistent with what one might expect for 19th-century New England portraiture.


To my eye, however, there are some red flags. The baby here is too stylized and awkwardly proportioned in relation to the mother. The mother herself bears too much resemblance to the works of known folk artists like Noah North and Milton Hopkins. Overall, the work strikes me as a pastiche of different styles rather than one uniform manner of painting. I'm sure there are other technical ways in which a conservator could determine that this work is not authentic as well, but in the field one has to rely on a practiced eye.

The real clue, for me, is the reverse, which most people don’t inspect when they buy a painting. You can see quite clearly here that although the stretcher is clearly old, the canvas is not. Dead giveaway, in my opinion.


There are 55 known Trotter fakes, only 16 of which have ever been recovered. Ours and the four at Yale are the only ones I know of in public collections. Ours was donated by a private individual who wanted a public record of Trotter's fakes so that others would not be fooled. So like those at Yale, our Trotter is available for study by any qualified individual interested in learning more about the technical process of creating a work of art that isn’t what it appears to be.

13 comments:

  1. Who wouldn't check the back of a painting? That's pretty crazy because as you say, it's one of the easier ways of determining age.

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  2. And how valuable are the rest of the 55 that have not been discovered? Inadvertently, these will probably increase in value as time goes by and Trotter dies (if he hasn't already).
    Interesting post.

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  3. I agree it's crazy not to look at the back, but you would be surprised how few actually do it. This one was, in my opinion, an obvious fake. And yes, the remaining Trotters are probably getting more valuable in relation to their true market value once they were known as fakes. The problem is that they were purchased at prices well above that value when they were thought to be authentic. It's been difficult for some owners to accept this reality.

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  4. Or maybe some at least, actually love their painting and don't wish to lose it.

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  5. I guess this baby's probably too cute to include in the ugly baby exhibit I recommended?

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  6. I think you're right, CC. A number of the "victims" actually refused to part with their paintings.

    And yes, Christine, this baby is way too cute (and problematic) to include in your show :-)

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  7. Very interesting post...if I owned one of the fakes I think I'd keep it under my hat...

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  8. Even if the backs are seldom checked as you say, I still find it amazing that Trotter didn't take a short time to try to better disguise the new canvas, if only to complete the illusion he was creating with the painting, old frames and square nails. It would at least cast doubts on any questions if the back was exposed.
    What a shame someone with his obvious technical ability couldn't find an avenue for his own work.

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  9. I agree that his abandoning his own artistic career is a real shame, as he did have talent. It was interesting to find out, though, that some time after he got out of jail he was approached by a museum to make a (legitimate) copy of a painting in their collection to help preserve the original. I'm not sure whether he ever completed the commission, though.

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  10. I own two trotter paintings which i purchased years ago from a gallery in nantucket, ma. Where is trotter today and have any of the other paintings been located?

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  11. I met Trotter in the 90's he commissioned a painting for an investment firm and he hired students to reproduce an old watercolor civil war piece of art it was a 3 part mural graphed out in squares obviously.I scraped the old mural/wallpaper that was well over100 years old and the new mural/s had 1 large in the center & two smaller ones on each side of the very large center. But when my brother and I went to hang the center/ larger mural it had shrunk. So my brother ( in charge of hanging the new one) contacted the CEO of the firm and he contacted Trotter.We had to wait several hours for Trotter to get there... He brought several bottles of windex (the ammonia in the windex helped relax the fibers of the canvas) we sprayed,stretched & stapled canvas to the floorand continued to do this for several hours & during our wait time he told me how he had become famous or should i say infamous... I thought it was pretty cool meeting a living legend

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  12. Is anyone familiar with the reproduction I'm speaking of it was in an old building in downtown Baltimore and I'm pretty sure it was an investment firm.. Another thing that I remember was Trotter talking about it being worth the time spent in prison he told how he was getting thousands of dollars for tiny paintings I be 8x10's and some much larger. But basically his "value/worth" had gone up WITHOUT Having to DIE FIRST

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  13. I'm thinking now,it may have been T.Roe Price...does anyone know for sure

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