The cry for help came from J. Russell Harper, curator of Canadian art at the National Gallery of Canada, in a 1962 letter to the Ontario attorney general. The problem: Fake paintings were flooding the Canadian art market. Inspector James L. Erskine, of the Ontario Provincial Police, was ordered to investigate.
Most of the forgeries, as outlined in a riveting new book about the sensational art fraud that will be released Oct. 18, were falsely attributed to Tom Thomson or artists in the Group of Seven. Works supposedly by Cornelius Krieghoff, Emily Carr, David Milne and other artists were also identified. The fakes were mainly being sold at the Ben Ward-Price auction house in Toronto.
Erskine, a future commissioner of the OPP, was the first to admit he knew nothing about art or the workings of the art market. But determined to learn, he read everything he could find in the library about the Group of Seven. Then he hired A.J. Casson, a member of the group, as his art consultant. Casson was even given a police badge.
Jon S. Dellandrea (photo by Doug Nicholson)
While some forgeries were skilful, many were so bad Casson feared they would damage the reputations of the group’s real artists. “Fraudulent works will go on year after year working against their reputations,” he said at the time.
The story of the investigation, the charges laid – or not laid – and the subsequent trial and conviction of two Toronto art dealers, Leslie W. Lewis and Neil Sharkey, is recounted in this lively and entertaining whodunit by self-described “art sleuth” Jon S. Dellandrea, a former vice-president of the University of Toronto. The bare bones of the fraud were revealed during the 1964 trial. But Dellandrea has done extensive research to put flesh on those bones, including new details about one of the artists involved in making the forgeries.
In his book, The Great Canadian Art Fraud Case: The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson Forgeries (Goose Lane Editions), Dellandrea asks intriguing questions about why some people were never charged. They include Ben Ward-Price, the Toronto auctioneer who sold most of the fake art from the two convicted dealers. Ward-Price had links to Ontario’s then-premier, John Robarts. As an experienced art auctioneer, how could he not know he was selling hundreds of fakes a year?
Self-portrait by William Firth MacGregor (courtesy Goose Lane Editions)
And why was the artist producing the fakes, William Firth MacGregor, never charged? MacGregor is presented as a tragic figure, whose early paintings were shown at the National Gallery. He had worked and exhibited alongside some members of the Group of Seven in Vancouver in the 1920s.
But MacGregor, believed to have shell shock from his First World War soldiering, later became penniless in Toronto and cranked out unsigned copies of Group of Seven paintings for $10 or less for a dodgy art dealer. MacGregor claimed he was unaware the paintings he copied from art books sprouted signatures of the famous artists before being sold for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Was he really that blind?
William Firth MacGregor after J.E.H. MacDonald, "Mountain Stream," no date (collection of Jon S. Dellandrea) A fake signature, JMac, is visible on the bottom right.
Still to be discovered, Dellandrea writes, is what happened to the hundreds, if not thousands, of forgeries sold in the 1950s and 1960s. They include a hundred or so fake paintings that were used as evidence in the court case. Erskine kept them in his basement for years after the trial, and their current whereabouts are unknown. The same goes for hundreds of other paintings never brought to court. Are they still hanging in living rooms across Canada? Is the Tom Thomson or A.Y. Jackson bequeathed by your grandparents actually a fake?
William Firth MacGregor after Franklin Carmichael, "Go Home Bay, Georgian Bay," no date (collection of Jon S. Dellandrea)
Both Casson and Jackson praised MacGregor’s ability to copy their paintings, although his reproductions sometimes left out details. For instance, MacGregor’s rendering of Jackson’s Entrance to Halifax Harbour, 1919, was faithfully reproduced, except he neglected to include three warships in the harbour.
MacGregor died at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto in 1979, aged 84, destitute, almost friendless and largely forgotten.
Tom Thomson's sketch "Nocture," painted in oil on a panel measuring 8 inches by 10.5 inches in 1916, sold at a Cowley Abbott auction earlier this year for $1.5 million. (courtesy Cowley Abbott)
However, Dellandrea says the story of this great Canadian art fraud is far from over. Paintings by Thomson and members of the Group of Seven now fetch stratospheric prices. The most expensive artwork ever sold at a Canadian auction is Mountain Forms, by Group of Seven artist Lawren S. Harris. It was auctioned by Heffel in 2016 for some $11 million. Earlier this year, Thomson’s 1916 sketch, Nocturne, fetched $1.5 million at a Cowley Abbott auction.
“Wherever they are, those faked paintings are an artistic time bomb,” says Dellandrea. “Should they surface in the market all these years later they will be difficult to distinguish from the genuine as many of them, thanks to William Firth MacGregor, are rather well done.” ■
The Great Canadian Art Fraud Case: The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson Forgeries, by Jon S. Dellandrea: Goose Lane Editions, 2022.
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