Save Our Fake

This fake of a painting by Marc Chagall, entitled Nude 1909-1910, which was investigated in yesterday's Fake or Fortune? programme, has hit the headlines (CLICK). The Chagall Committee, to which it was submitted, ordered its destruction as a fake. It is due to be burnt in Paris in the presence of a French magistrate. Its owner, Martin Lang, paid £100,000 for the fake and wants it back. He likes it, fake or not, and has taken legal action to delay its burning. There is no doubt the work is a fake, because one of its pigments is modern (post 1940, if I remember correctly), but the previous week the Fake of Fortune? team proved that two John Constable oil sketches which had been rejected as fakes are genuine. So the French law that allows the Chagall Committee to order the destruction of iffy works of art is insane!