The Spanish Forger (fl.1890s-1920s) - photo 1
The Spanish Forger (fl.1890s-1920s) - photo 2
The Spanish Forger (fl.1890s-1920s) - photo 3

The Spanish Forger (fl.1890s-1920s)

Lot 44
10.12.2025 12:00UTC +00:00
Classic
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CHRISTIE'S
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
Buyer Premiumsee on Website%
ID 1514490
Lot 44 | The Spanish Forger (fl.1890s-1920s)
Estimate value
£ 4 000 – 6 000
The Spanish Forger (fl.1890s-1920s)
A Game of Dice, historiated initial 'N' on a cutting from a 15th-century choirbook on vellum [Paris, early 20th century]
A delightfully playful courtly scene by one of the great forgers of the modern age.

c. 223 x 304mm. A courtly scene with two lovers playing dice, the reverse with remains of three lines of text and music on four-line staves in red, two large penwork initials in red and blue (some light craquelure, else in excellent condition). Provenance: Private collection, Switzerland.

Illumination:
A delightfully playful miniature by the Spanish Forger, a painter and illuminator active in Paris from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. The vibrant palette of blues, pinks, reds, and greens mimic the appearance of late medieval illumination, yet the Forger’s use of green copper arsenite (synthesized 1814), ultramarine blue (synthesized 1828) and Scheele’s green (synthesized 1775) reveal it to be a 19th-century imitation. As is typical of the Spanish Forger's work, the composition is an enchanting and anachronistic amalgamation of diverse motifs: a verdant landscape crowned with a foreshortened castle and linear rows of cypresses unfolds beneath a sky burnished with gold. In the foreground, the figures play within a fanciful hortus conclusus, where two towers and a walled enclosure hint at a secluded, idealised space. This composition, with small variations is repeated at least twice in the Spanish Forger’s oeuvre (W. Voelkle and R.S. Wieck, The Spanish Forger, New York, 1978, n°L5 and L95).

Unmasked in 1930 by Belle da Costa Greene, then director of the Pierpont Morgan Library, the Spanish Forger is known today as one of the "most skillful, successful, and prolific forgers of all time." He takes his misleading name, the Spanish Forger, from a false attribution of a painting once thought to be by a 15th-century Spanish artist. The name has stuck. Despite the growing evidence that the Forger supervised an atelier in Paris (remnants of old Parisian newspapers have been found inside the frames), no trace of his real identity has come to light. Hundreds of works are attributed to him, and in 1978 a retrospective exhibition of his art was organized at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York and revisited again with an exhibition in 2014 at the Binghamton University Art Museum. His work is of great interest to both private collectors and museums: in 2009 the Victoria and Albert Museum in London acquired five paintings by the Spanish Forger 'for what they tell us about late 19th-century perceptions of the Middle Ages.'
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
Preview
10.12.2025 – 10.12.2025
Phone +44 (0)20 7839 9060
Email
4FQ.AYGKAGLUQ@FO3G@
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