It's a strange thing with books, how they can hang around a long time before they are read. The Art of the Forger by Chris Wright was first published in 1985 (a staggering 35 years ago). I'm not sure when I bought my copy but a long time ago. Anyway the other day for some reason I plucked it off the shelf and read it. It's not a long read and has lots of illustrations. It's chiefly about a painting called The Fortune Teller. Wright takes us through the story if how he eventually came to believe it is not by De la Tour the renaissance artist but is a fake from the early twentieth century. He believes it is an example of several from the same hand. With a walk on part for Anthony Blunt the whole story is fascinating and raises as many questions as it answers. Art history is a strange world open to abuse and sometimes rather murky.
