Antoine Blanchard Authentications & Appraisals

Separating Blanchard Forgeries and Imitations from Authentic Works

By Jeffrey Morseburg

My family began dealing in the works of the French painter Antoine Blanchard (born as Marcel Masson) more than forty years ago, and because of our long association with the artist, I am asked to authenticate and appraise his paintings for dealers, collectors and galleries.   There are few other 20^th-century painters whose market is as obscured by copies, imitations and forgeries as that of the Antoine Blanchard.   While it is good news that forgeries are less of a problem in the art market than the layman may believe, the bad news is that Antoine Blanchard’s works were copied early and often, and now even auction houses seem to be unable to discern the good paintings from those that are clearly fakes – if they even care to look at them with a critical eye.  (Sometimes, when a dealer is able to buy a Blanchard for a price that is well under market value, they should be – but are not always – suspicious as to its origins; more often, dealers and auctioneers can be as unsure of what characterizes a “good” painting as collectors are.) Blanchard forgeries are so common that they make up a significant part of the market for his work, a situation that clearly needs to be rectified so that collectors can regain confidence in what they are buying. I hope that this modest essay will shed some light on the problem of Blanchard forgeries and serve as a helpful guide in separating the authentic paintings from the imitations.

 An Inauthentic Antoine Blanchard

Antoine Blanchard Forgeries Began Early

In most circumstances artists only begin to copy or fake the work of other better-known painters decades or even centuries after the authentic works were done. This gives the researcher or expert an advantage, because a forgery pops up on the market long after the authentic works, which naturally attracts scrutiny. And in such cases, of course, in addition to the formal qualities of the composition, the materials, pigments, framing and dozens of details can be closely examined. However, when a forgery was done contemporaneously, in the same era or even at the same time as the originals, it is much more difficult to sort the bad works out, because the forgeries will have experienced the same effects of age and may share some of the characteristics of the authentic works. In the case of Antoine Blanchard, most of the imitations or forgeries were painted and sold while the artist was alive. Indeed, he was most actively copied while he was still a middle-aged man at the height of his career. The good news for collectors and dealers alike is that the vast majority of the forgeries can nevertheless be detected, and once that is done, Blanchard’s market can proceed apace with greater confidence.

Blanchard Kept a Low Profile 

Antoine Blanchard was not an outgoing painter like his contemporary Marcel Dyf. It was not his practice to attend openings and exhibitions and charm his audience.  Instead, he labored relentlessly in his studio, creating Parisian scenes that were inspired by artists like Edouard Cortes (1884-1969) and E. Galien Laloue but which relied on his own unique palette and fluid brushwork.  His romanticized scenes of fin-de-siècle Paris were not sold by the artist directly to galleries, but to agents, essentially art brokers, who then sent them to galleries in Europe, the United Kingdom and, especially, the United States.  And, Blanchard dealt with a number of dealers, because cash on the barrel counted more than good intentions.  He came of age in an era when dealers boughtand owned their inventory.  Galleries purchased the works of contemporary painters instead of taking work on consignment as is customary today.  So, Blanchard was more than willing to sell his paintings while knowing that his broker would mark them up when he sold them to the gallery, and then that the gallery had to make their profit as well.  In the 1960s, when Blanchards first became popular places like New York, Los Angeles and Texas, it took a lot more effort and a considerable investment for a broker to develop a network of dealers in the United States.  So the artist set his price and was usually content to work in his studio and allow others to do the traveling, marketing and promotion that will always be part of the art business.

 Once a European or American agent purchased a group of paintings from Blanchard, he would then in turn sell them to galleries in the United States, usually ones that he worked with and sold the work of other artists to.  A gallery bought the Blanchard paintings outright, usually sending a deposit and then the balance once the paintings arrived.  In the 1950s through the 1970s, most of these agents had a large inventory and they usually extended some credit to their dealers to encourage purchases.  The Blanchards were normally sent to the United States rolled in tubes. It was quicker,  less expensive and safer to send the paintings rolled in a sturdy tube than it was to stretch them in Europe, pack them in boxes and send them off on a long voyage.

Sizes Are an Important Key Toward Determining Blanchard Authenticity

Now, dealers of the 1950s and 1960s were usually more practical than those of today, some of whom have never learned to stretch or frame a painting.  So it was second nature for them to stretch the paintings that came from Europe themselves. And, it is the fact that the paintings were stretched here in the States – the land of the inch and foot – that accounts for the slight variation in sizes that is found in authentic Blanchards on the American market.  Blanchard painted his work to fit standard size French stretcher bars.  In the early years, tourists often purchased Blanchard’s paintings in Paris. His smaller works could be taken home in a suitcase. These would mostly have been framed in France. As an export market developed, however, he sent his paintings to his agent – who could be in France or Austria for example – who then shipped them onto dealers in the United States or the U.K.   These paintings were painted roughly to the size of 35 x 45cm or 45 x 55cm, which works out to be precisely 13.7” x 17.7” and 17.7” x 21.65” respectively. These are anything but standard sizes on our market.  So, when the dealers stretched the paintings here in the United States, they had to go to the expense of ordering or mitering “custom” stretcher bars. This meant the small paintings were usually stretched and framed to 13” x 18” and 18” x 22” when Blanchard gave us enough overage or sometimes 13” x 17 ½” or 17 ½” x 21 ½”. As a young man, it was my job to take the Blanchard paintings out of the shipping tubes and then stretch them. After thirty-five or forty years, I still remember trying to see if I could stretch them to fit the 13” x 18” and 18” x 22” bars we normally stocked for them. Now, I know that all this discussion of sizes seems arcane, but it must be the first and most important factor in determining the authenticity of paintings by Antoine Blanchard.

Antoine Blanchard Knock-Offs, Fakes, Forgeries and Imitations

Because Blanchard became quite successful at selling his views of Paris, the “knock-offs” or forgeries of his work arrived early, with many of them date back to the 1960s.  Because the imitations had to be sold for much less than an authentic Blanchard, they were painted abroad to fit standard American stretcher bars and frames.  When a real Blanchard was sold for hundreds of dollars retail and the knock offs were twenty- or thirty-dollar items, no one was going to go to the time and expense of stretching them on custom stretcher bars. Not when a Mexican frame was available for a few dollars. There was at least one dealer – now long gone – who sold originals and imitation Blanchards at the same time because he used to say that “anyone can take one look and tell the difference.”  It is true that the “knock offs” or “copies” as they were referred to in those days were well known by buyers and sellers to be copies and were sold for a fraction of what the authentic Blanchards sold for, but this is no longer the case.  More than forty years ago my father was prescient enough to tell the minor dealers who sold the “knock offs” that the sales of hundreds of fakes would eventually cloud the Blanchard market, when both the originals and the imitations had dulled down, yellowed and taken on the patina of age.  And, unfortunately, this is just what has happened.

From my observations of the day, most of the old faux-Blanchards were painted in Europe in a sort of series production by a reasonably good painter or perhaps even more than one painter. They were painted in standard American sizes of either 16” x 20” or 20” x 24” and then usually framed in Mexican-made frames, which were the inexpensive choice in the 1960s and early 1970s. (Later they were often framed in Taiwanese frames.) If you look at them closely, the technique and especially the palette is clearly different from Antonie Blanchard’s work. Most of the forged Blanchard paintings are reasonably nice depictions of Paris, but the colors are usually more intense, bolder than Blanchard used, and are best described as garish, lacking the subtlety of a more sophisticated painter. So, when you see a Blanchard in these sizes, 16” x 20” and 20” x 24,” bells should go off.  Another thing to look for is the signature. Sometime a signature would be painted out and a replacement “Blanchard” signature applied after a painting was imported – even with a marking pen for expediency’s sake or because the faker wasn’t proficient with oil paints!

Now, on occasion, Blanchard did paint works that were designed from the start to be stretched and framed here in the United States, to fit in our standard sized frames, but those were usually large 24” x 36” works that were intended for our market from the beginning. These large works are quite rare and consequently were expensive even when they were painted. Virtually all of these works date from the last two decades of Blanchard’s career. There are roughly fifty or more of the smaller works for each painting of this size. In my father’s gallery and most others, these large paintings were usually stretched and framed in rather baroque French “Louie-Louie” style frames that were imported from Belgium or France, and this is how most of the large works are found today.

In conclusion, while I hope I have given the collector some well thought-out clues to determine the authenticity of Antoine Blanchard paintings, there is, of course, no substitute for experience. Looking at and dealing in an artist’s work for a number of decades is the best education and is necessary to make an educated determination as to which works are indeed by Antoine Blanchard and which ones are forgeries or imitations. If you need assistance in authenticating and appraising a work by Antoine Blanchard, please contact us.  By examining the painting and its history, we can establish whether it is indeed authentic, and if so, estimate a range of value.  copyright Jeffrey Morseburg 2011; not to be reproduced without express written permission.

About the Author: Jeffrey Morseburg is a curator, appraiser, archivist, writer, researcher and dealer in American and French art. He has written extensively on 19th and 20th century art. Morseburg grew in the art business and as a young man, he stretched and framed Blanchard paintings as they arrived from Europe in mailing tubes.  Today, he assists collectors with authentications, appraisals and the sales of works by Antoine Blanchard and other French painters like Edouard Cortes, E. Galien La Loue and Luigi Loir as well as many other artists.  If you need assistance – an authentication or appraisal, please e-mail images of the front, back and signature of the painting in question to midcenturyart@yahoo.com