How a forgery scandal rocked the Canadian art establishment in 1962

How do you know when a piece of art — one that might fetch thousands or millions of dollars — is authentic? That question is asked every time an old master is “discovered” — is it a fake? a forgery? — and it’s a question asked about Canadian paintings, too. When art historian Jon S. Dellandrea came into possession of the last effects of artist William Firth MacGregor, he unlocked a now-forgotten scandal, which he chronicles in his new book “The Great Canadian Art Fraud Case: The Group of Seven & Tom Thomson Forgeries.” In the excerpt below Elizabeth Kilbourn, the Star’s art critic at the time, stands up at a public art auction and questions the authenticity of the Group of Seven paintings being sold, even as excited buyers raise their paddles to bid.

In the early 1960s, several art collectors from across Canada had contacted J. Russell Harper, curator of Canadian Art at the National Gallery of Canada, letting him know of their intentions to send works supposedly by Tom Thomson, Cornelius Krieghoff, and other notable Canadian artists to the National Gallery for authentication and inspection. The National Gallery’s team had identified many of these as fakes. But this wasn’t an occasional fake — it was more like a flood of forgeries, a new and disturbing phenomenon. Harper was already doing some preliminary detective work into the perplexing presence of forged Canadian paintings appearing on the Canadian market during the years 1961 and 1962. And he wasn’t the only leading figure in Canadian cultural circles who had detected the trend of forged works seeping into the Canadian art market.

Robert Fulford, the renowned journalist and cultural writer, who would go on to write a column on books and arts in the Toronto Star, published a piece in Maclean’s in December 1962. In a stinging column, Fulford chronicled a recent raucous evening at Ward-Price Auctions presided over by Ben Ward-Price, the proprietor and auctioneer. “[He] had knocked down about fifty paintings, at prices ranging from $65 to $325. There were about 250 people there, and they were bidding with enthusiasm,” Fulford wrote. “Ward-Price was auctioning a series of fifteen oil sketches, said to be by J.E.H. MacDonald, a distinguished member of the Group of Seven, when he was interrupted by a woman in the audience.”

Elizabeth Kilbourn, art critic for the Toronto Daily Star, had stood up in the crowd, shouting at Ward-Price, “Where do these pictures come from?”

“What has that to do with anything?” Ward-Price challenged, to which Kilbourn replied that she was questioning the authenticity of the paintings.

This was a shocking moment: a well-respected member of the national media was publicly accusing a reputable auction house and its owner — in front of a live audience and during the auction — of selling fake art. A minute later, Sheila Mackenzie, an art collector in the crowd, heightened the tension.

“They’re not by J.E.H. MacDonald, and you know it!” she bellowed.

In the hubbub that followed, Ben Ward-Price demanded that Mackenzie give her name, but she refused. An auction house assistant asked her to leave the sales room; this she also refused.

In an attempt to calm, assure, or persuade his audience of buyers, Ward-Price explained his selling policy. “An auctioneer’s job is to sell what is sent to him,” he said. The auction house did not guarantee the authenticity of the pictures it sold. They might be by J.E.H. MacDonald, or they might not. “This is the way we intend to go on,” Ward-Price concluded, and then in a jab at his accusers in the crowd, he added, “despite a few … Communists, perhaps?”

The audience booed him for this breach of manners, Fulford observed, but soon the bidding picked up again. A few minutes later, an oil painting advertised as an Emily Carr sold for $1,200. Later in the evening, paintings attributed to Franklin Carmichael, Tom Thomson, A.Y. Jackson, Frederick Simpson Coburn, Maurice Cullen, and many other artists were auctioned off at similarly handsome prices.

As Ward-Price later explained to Fulford, this was just business. “I don’t say they’re authentic, and I don’t say they’re not. I just sell them. We have previews, and people can see them before they buy. If they don’t think they’re authentic, then they don’t bid on them.” Fulford pressed: did Ward-Price get any authentication of the pictures before he sold them? No, Ward-Price responded. He took them as they were offered, by the people who gave them to him for auction.

The confrontation at the auction house on November 15, 1962, and Fulford’s subsequent column brought the national media into the fray and exposed to public scrutiny a situation that had been quietly worrying artists, collectors, and curators in recent years. Hundreds of fake paintings, attributed to Canadian artists, were hanging in galleries, museums, living rooms, and boardrooms across Canada. This was the flood that J. Russell Harper had described. “These paintings sell for prices ranging from around $50 to $2,000. They are fakes in the literal sense of the word — not false attributions but pictures painted by someone, somewhere, as forgeries (usually bad ones) of Canadian artists,” wrote Fulford.

Elizabeth Kilbourn, the Toronto Daily Star arts critic who had challenged Ward-Price in the middle of his 1962 auction, wrote a piece in December 1962 titled “Fake Paintings Attack Nature of Art Itself.” She offered this startling revelation: “Many artists told me they have been approached to paint fake G7 or Krieghoff paintings and one to paint a 18 x 20 Thomson sketch.” Unfortunately, Kilbourn did not share with her readers either the identities of the artists who had shared this with her or the person or persons who had approached the artists in the first place. (I spoke with Kilbourn about this in 2021. At age ninety-five and “full of beans,” as she described herself, she was willing to tell me the name of one artist who had been approached, but she made me promise not to quote her. I wish I could quote her, because the artist she named was quite famous.)

Although the articles by Fulford and Kilbourn placed art fraud in the public consciousness, in some ways it was no surprise that forgeries were finding their way into the Canadian art market. In the early 1960s, Canadian art — particularly the work of the members of the Group of Seven — was beginning to attract higher sale prices at galleries and at auction. Canadian art was coming of age, its value was increasing, and so was this new criminal enterprise.

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