Art: Greedy Grandson

Last week in Fontainebleau, where the Kings of France once hunted in the royal forest, and where swarms of U. S. art students now spend their summers trying to learn to paint landscapes, three black-hatted French judges sat down last week to try a notorious old case. On trial were Jean Charles Millet, pudgy grandson of the late great Jean null (The Angelus) Millet, and deaf Paul Cazot, charged with forging and selling at great prices an unknown number of presumptive Millet canvases.

French justice moves slowly. The original charge against Cazot & Millet was made nearly five years ago (TIME, May 19, 1930). At that time a French businessman and collector named Michaux discovered that a Millet painting for which he had paid 150,000 francs was a forgery. Police called at the shop of Grandson Millet from whom the picture had been bought, found him ready to confess.

“Of course I knew this whole business would end,” said he. “It was too good to last.”

There followed such a mass of charges and counter-charges that examining magistrates were glad to postpone the entire business, clap Grandson Millet into jail on the simple charge of passing worthless checks.

Grandson Millet started his career as dealer in forged paintings many years ago when he took one of his grandfather’s genuine paintings, in very bad condition, to Paul Eugene Cazot, an unknown artist, to be repaired. Cazot did his job much too well. The pair took to copying little-known Millets, then to producing original works of art by Millet. To do this they needed only the skill of Artist Cazot, a chemical analysis of the original Millet paints, and a supply of old canvases, which they bought at the Parisian flea market for two or three francs apiece. When the market for Millets ran low. they produced Monets, Sisleys, Pissarros. The forging of Millet paintings was greatly helped by the fact that old Jean null Millet was in the habit of signing his canvases with a copper stencil.

On trial last week, the pair again admitted their guilt, but insisted that they had bilked only citizens of Britain and the U. S., fair game to any Frenchman. Furthermore, they claimed that the particular picture for which they were being tried was a genuine Millet.

“You can sell anything to the Americans and the English,” said Grandson Millet. “They know nothing about art. They buy only pictures with pedigrees, but have not the slightest notion whether they are genuine or not. All you have to do is ask a fabulous price.”

Greatest single coup of Millet & Cazot was a “Millet” called The Binders, which they sold to the Edinburgh Museum for a million and a half francs ($97,410).

Imprudently, the director of the Edinburgh Museum insisted that his picture could not possibly be a fake.

“Scratch the gate in the painting,” said Grandson Millet, “and you will find a cow underneath.”

Under the gate was the cow.

An even more blatant forger was discovered in Paris fortnight ago in the person of Professor Andre Mailfert. For years he has lectured about the so-called ”Loire School” of 18th Century provincial furniture of inlaid lemon wood. Its leader, he said, was a certain Jean François Hardy. Hoping to attract attention to the real qualities of his lemon-wood masterpieces. Professor Mailfert deliberately admitted that he had not only invented Cabinetmaker Hardy, but during the past five years had kept a factory of 200 workmen busy turning out the entire product of the “Loire School.” Only foreign decorators, he insisted, had been gullible enough to buy his lemon wood.