J.E.H. MacDonald oil sketches declared fake

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Image credits: (left) “Sketch for Tangled Garden,” c. 1916, oil on paperboard, Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Gift of Ephry and Melvin Merkur; (middle) “Untitled (Algoma),” c. 1915, oil on paperboard, 8.66" x 10.62," Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Gift of Ephry and Melvin Merkur, Photo: Rachel Topham, Vancouver Art Gallery (right), Untitled (Batchawana Rapids), c. 1919, oil on paperboard, 8.46" x 10.43," Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Gift of Ephry and Melvin Merkur

After eight years of debate and scientific study, the Vancouver Art Gallery has declared that 10 oil sketches supposedly done by the Group of Seven’s J.E.H. MacDonald and donated to the gallery in 2015 are fake.

The news broke Thursday in The Globe and Mail. Charles Hill, a Group of Seven expert intimately involved in the eight-year investigation, independently verified the verdict to Galleries West.

Lessons to be learned — be cautious and do your research,” says Hill, the former curator of Canadian art at the National Gallery of Canada. “Look a gift horse in the mouth.

Hill said he did not think a police investigation into the fake sketches would be “useful.” He added: “Just a waste of money.”

But a big question remains, Hill told Galleries West: “Who painted them and inscribed them?”

Among the findings revealed by The Globe story: Paint used in some of the sketches was not manufactured until after the sketches were supposed to have been created; MacDonald’s name was misspelled on the back of one of the sketches; the sketches had purportedly been authenticated on the back by MacDonald’s son, Thoreau, but Thoreau’s last name is misspelled three different ways.

In a video created for a VAG exhibition opening this weekend, Ian Thom, the senior curator who brought the works into the gallery, addresses what happened, The Globe reports.

When it first started, I thought this is one of the great experiences of my life. And then it just got worse and worse and worse,” says Thom, who retired from the gallery in 2018. “It was one of the worst experiences of my life, frankly.

Hill sympathized with Thom: “Poor Ian Thom got caught in the middle of it all but he has had the courage to admit his error.”

The VAG had been scheduled to make the official announcement on the sketches authenticity at a media preview Friday at the gallery of the exhibition J.E.H. MacDonald? A Tangled Garden. The exhibition, running from Dec. 16 to May 12, 2024, includes the 10 controversial sketches plus other sketches from the Group of Seven. The Group’s artists commonly did rough oil sketches of a landscape in-situ and then used the sketches as a guide for creating larger, more polished oil paintings back in the studio.

The sketches were donated to the gallery in 2015 by Toronto-based collectors Ephry and Melvin Merkur. But the story goes back to the 1930s when MacDonald and his family lived in Thornhill, a village north of Toronto.

At the time of the donation, the VAG said that in order to preserve the works, MacDonald and his son Thoreau MacDonald wrapped them in layers of cellophane and tar paper, placing them inside boxes which were then buried underground in the backyard of the family house. They remained buried, as the story goes, until 1974, when Thoreau MacDonald revealed the existence of these artworks to his friend Max Merkur, a commercial high-rise developer and art collector in Toronto. Merkur purchased all of the buried artworks. 

Since the unearthing of these sketches, according to the chronology of events presented by the VAG, they have been kept within the Merkur Family for the past four decades, never exhibited anywhere or made known to the public. After Reta Merkur (Max Merkur’s widow) passed away in 2012, their son Ephraim Merkur discovered the artworks in pristine condition. The sketches were presented to the Vancouver Art Gallery’s senior curator and art historian at the time, Ian Thom, who identified them as authentic works of J.E.H MacDonald.

Another prominent Group of Seven expert, Dennis Reid, a former director of collections and research at the Art Gallery of Ontario, agreed with Thom’s assessment. Reid has since died.

But other experts disagreed. Most declined to be identified publicly. An exception was Ken Macdonald, a retired but still active art dealer and consultant in 2015, who saw the paintings at a private viewing at the VAG the same week the gallery announced the extraordinary find. 

“When I walked in and saw those paintings, my instincts just said, ‘whoa,’” the Winnipeg-based Macdonald told the The Globe. MacDonald only saw the sketches on the wall and did not see their backs. According to the newspaper, MacDonald phoned Thom later that day to express his concerns, and urged him to send the paintings for testing to the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa.

“I can be wrong, I’ll be the first to admit it,” Macdonald told The Globe. “But there are so many people across Canada that have their doubts.… It’s my opinion that there’s an excellent chance, a very excellent chance, that they are not right, and they absolutely have to be tested.”

The VAG did send the sketches be tested by the Canadian Conservation Institute, a federal government agency with expertise in determining the authenticity of artworks. The results of that study are to be included in great detail in a book, J.E.H. MacDonald Up Close: The Artist’s  Materials and Techniques, set for publication in January. The authors are Kate Helwig, a conservation scientist at the Canadian Conservation Institute, and Alison Douglas, a conservator at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ont. ■

Sources: Galleries West staff, Vancouver Art Gallery and The Globe and Mail

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