The windmill, copy

This very good copy was not originally made with forgery in mind: it was etched for publication in an 18th-century art book. The Smith brothers of Chichester – George, John and William – were English painter-etchers known for their picturesque landscapes, but also for their reproductive prints. John (c. 1717-1764) was the youngest of the three.

 

In 1770, six years after John’s death, the print dealer and publisher John Boydell (1720-1804) published a number of his etchings – including The windmill – in A Collection Of Fifty-Three Prints, Consisting Of Etchings And Engravings, By Those Ingenious Artists Messrs. George And John Smith, Of Chichester, After Their Own Paintings And Other Masters. The book was made up of thirty picturesque landscapes, accompanied by reproductions after the Dutch Old Masters, including nine after Rembrandt.

 

Since this impression is a counterproof, it would not have been intended for binding into the book, and instead would have circulated independently. A counterproof is an image that is not printed directly from the plate, but from another freshly printed sheet of paper with the ink still wet. The resulting proof faces the same way as the image etched onto the plate (and the other way around from a standard print).

 

A counterproof should not have plate marks (the indentations left by the edges of the copperplate as it is pressed onto the sheet of paper during printing). Since counterproofs are not printed from a plate, their edges are not marked in this way. But The windmill, though clearly a counterproof, does have plate marks: at some point in this print’s history, someone has forged them! They might have done this by scoring a line around the edge of the image, or by running it through a printing press with a blank copperplate.

 

The point of adding this seemingly obscure detail was to pass off Smith’s counterproof as an original Rembrandt, printed from a copperplate by the great master himself. Before the days of easy photographic comparison, it would have been very difficult for the unlucky buyer to spot the fake.

 

This impression was originally part of the collection of Old Master prints in the so-called King George IV album, acquired by the Dominion Museum in 1910. A few years later, however, James McDonald, art assistant, photographer and sometime acting director, crudely removed all the Rembrandt prints and copies, with their separate exhibition in mind. They have not been returned to the album. 

 

References: New Hollstein Dutch 200, copy b (counterproof); Hollstein Dutch 233, copy 6 (counterproof)

 

Adapted from Anna Rigg, 'Faking Rembrandt: Copies in the Collection',  http://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/2016/02/16/faking-rembrandt/

 

Dr Mark Stocker    Curator, Historical International Art             September 2017