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''The Faun'' is a sculpture by British forger Shaun Greenhalgh. He successfully passed it off as a work by Paul Gauguin, selling it at Sotheby's for £20,700 in 1994. Three years later, in 1997, it was bought by the Art Institute of Chicago for an undisclosed sum, thought to be about $125,000. It was hailed by them as "one of its most important acquisitions in the last twenty years." 〔Bailey, Martin (December 12, 2007). ("Revealed: Art Institute of Chicago Gauguin sculpture is fake" ). ''The Art Newspaper''. December 12, 2007. Archived from (the original ) on December 15, 2007.〕 For a decade the sculpture remained on display, and was part of a major joint exhibition on Gauguin with the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. However, following revelations about its existence at Greenhalgh's trial in 2007, ''The Faun'' was tracked down by ''The Art Newspaper'' to Chicago and exposed as a fake. In October 2007, the Art Institute removed the statue from display, and announced that it was seeking compensation from Sotheby's. What the ultimate fate of ''The Faun'' is to be has not yet been revealed.〔〔Vogel, Carol (December 13, 2007). ("Work Believed a Gauguin Turns Out to Be a Forgery" ). ''New York Times''. Accessed December 14, 2007.〕 ==Background to the forgery== In the early to mid 1990s, Shaun Greenhalgh was predominately involved with paintings. He sold a Samuel Peploe, but in particular he was successful with his Thomas Morans. He sold one to Bolton Museum in 1994 and at New York auctions in 1995 he sold seven, and is reckoned to have produced as many as 40.〔("Amarna Princess statement" ). Bolton Museum. November 29, 2007.〕〔Milmo, Cahal (November 17, 2007). ("Family of forgers fooled art world with array of finely crafted fakes" ). ''Independent''.〕〔 Yet at the same time, he must have been researching the possibility of at least one Gauguin work. As well as ''The Faun'', he is known to have also forged a Gauguin vase, possibly at a later date.〔Lovell, Jeremy (November 17, 2007). ("Octogenerian British art forger sentenced" ). ''New Zealand Herald''. Accessed December 26, 2007.〕 Gauguin is significantly less well regarded for his sculptures than for his paintings. It is likely that Greenhalgh was aware of that, and saw it as an opportunity. Forgers typically focus on the lower priced artworks of major artists, for though they offer fewer returns, they are subject to much less scrutiny.〔Thompson, Clive. ("How to make a fake" ), ''New York Magazine'', May 24, 2004. Accessed December 26, 2007.〕 Moreover, Gauguin himself had left just enough of a record to indicate he may have been interested in producing such an item, a drawing of a faun sculpture in a sketchbook from 1887. This was backed up by suggestive historical events: at a Gauguin exhibition in 1906, a "faun ceramic" was displayed,〔 and another listing for a work entitled "Faun" was found for a 1917 Nunes and Fiquet gallery exhibition.〔 Scholars in the 1960s dutifully recorded these possibilities. Even in 2007, experts were still uncertain about how many ceramic sculptures Gauguin had actually produced. Estimates range from 55 to 80.〔 Of these, between 30 and 60 are thought to be lost or destroyed.〔Storch, Charles; Artner, Alan (December 21, 2007). ("Taken in by a complete fake" ). ''Los Angeles Times''. Accessed December 24, 2007.〕 Greenhalgh was adept at obtaining and working in a wide variety of materials,〔("The artful codgers: pensioners who conned British museums with £10m forgeries" ). ''London Evening Standard''. November 16, 2007.〕 and not only used a stoneware that fitted in well with what Gauguin demonstrably used, he managed to produce something "which had no obvious features to reveal it as a modern fake".〔 At 47 cm, it was modest, yet typically sized for a Gauguin. The gallery caption of ''The Faun'' read "unglazed stoneware with touches of gold gilding".〔Art Institute of Chicago. (''The Faun'' (slide 02) ), in ''Slideshow: Van Gogh and Gauguin: The studio of the south''. Art Institute of Chicago. September 22, 2001. Archived from the original on June 12, 2007.〕 Use of the gold gilding was deft; it was similar to investments Greenhalgh had made on previous forgeries. In 1991, for example, he is thought to have melted down genuine Roman silver coins when reconstructing the Risley Park Lanx.〔Chadwick, Edward (November 17, 2007). ("Antiques rogues show: update 3" ). ''The Bolton News''. Accessed November 30, 2007.〕 Any anomalies in ''The Faun'' that were detected were explained away.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Faun」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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