Revisiting recent themes on the blog, (strange art crimes and even stranger art discoveries), we bring you the news that The Art Institute of Chicago has discovered a forgery in its collection. From the Chicago Tribune:

For about a decade, "The Faun," a ceramic sculpture, has been at the Art Institute of Chicago, presented as a work of the 19th Century French master Paul Gauguin. ... The museum announced that the work, which it bought in 1997, is a forgery. "The Faun" has been confirmed to be one of a long string of contemporary forgeries by the Greenhalgh family, which Scotland Yard had been investigating for 20 months.

The sculpture has long been the subject of a great deal of analysis and contemplation--critics have wondered whether the statue spoke to the artist's failing marriage, or reflected the artist's resentment of his brother-in-law--but its authenticity was never questioned until charges relating to the forgery of an Egyptian Amarna Princess sculpture were bought. Scotland Yard revealed the existence of a forged Gauguin sculpture, but couldn't speak to the forgery's whereabouts. It wasn't until The Art Newspaper tracked the piece down in Chicago that the whole story came to light.

Why was the forgery so successful?  The Art Newspaper reports that it appeared to be based on a sketch in Gauguin's 1887 sketchbook. And, a work entitled “Faun” was listed in a Gauguin exhibition held at the Nunès and Fiquet gallery in Paris in 1917. Again, from the Chicago Tribune:

For 17 years, the [Greenhalgh] family carried on one of the most sophisticated forgery operations in modern history, faking scores of objects including antiquities, watercolors, paintings and modern sculpture, authorities said. Many of the pieces were copies of ancient objects or artworks thought to be lost.