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YOU ARE HERE:>>REAL or FAKE>>Museums make mistakes, 3

A rather sad ending.

A good synopsis of the story here>>

Also some detailed information  here.

This fairly  talented man has created many objects: not least the Risley Park Lanx  There is much information about this online  so I will not go into it here.

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It has not been revealed exactly what tests were taken or what criteria used to assess the authenticity of the Amarna Princess, beyond the declaration that provenance played "a vital part in the authentication because there was nothing to compare it with," apart from the Louvre Princess.

 More than just impressed by the provenance  experts also concluded that "although its head, arms and lower legs have not survived.. the statuette is the most impressive example of its kind in the world." It was noted that the back pillar which showed that it was "once part of a double statue."

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I have created these pages here because although there is a great deal about this fiasco on the internet it's actually quite difficult to find information about how and why these fakes were at last uncovered as fakes.

The principle reason not a single antiquities dealer in the world woud have touched the "Amarna Princess" is because the iconography is wrong!! (See the previous page  on the "short waist vz long waist). That's quite apart from the fact that a proper analysis of the patina would have uncovered it in a moment!

He also created amongst other things:

The atypical rendering of a horse's harness and misspellings in cuneiform raised suspicions of the museum experts, who informed the police.

The Greenhalghs created reliefs that were meant to embody a drawing made during an 1850 excavation of room 111 of the palace of Sennacherib, in what is now Iraq. The specific reliefs drawn during the excavation were labelled as having been "lost in history" by the excavating archaeologist, Sir Henry Austin Layard (1817-1894). George suggested that the reliefs might have been purchased by his ancestor at the Silverton Park sale, the catalogue of which he had used for the Amarna Princess provenance con.

• The Art Institute of Chicago disclosed that "The Faun," a half-man, half-goat sculpture attributed to Paul Gauguin, was also a Greenhalgh forgery.

More than likely, there are still some celebrated works enshrined on plinths or walls around the world produced by the Talented Mr. Greenhalgh.

In January this year, (2009)  Bolton Council  said that it might want to borrow the fake from the Metropolitan Police, who are currently holding it in secure storage.

A council spokesman said: "The Amarna statue remains the property of the Metropolitan Police, as ordered by the judge, and therefore could never be housed at [ the Museum] permanently.

"However, we are looking into the possibility of the statue being temporarily returned to be put on special display."

Good for them!

Maybe the British Museum will put this fine forgery of Tetisheri back on display! She presently sits in a dark little room in the basement.

And why not show these fakes too!?

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I certainly don't mean to carp about academic experts getting it so wrong. We all make mistakes. Every  collector has bought fakes and every serious dealer has unknowingly sold fakes. The point is, let's be open about this and try to share knowledge and learn from our mistakes! Don't hide them away!

An interesting update about the Greenhalgh fakes

And now for something somewhat alarming>>>>