image: This is a forged painting of a 19th century village scene signed and dated 'Sarah Honn May 5, 1866 A.D.' view more
Credit: Image courtesy of James Hamm (Buffalo State College, The State University of New York, Buffalo, NY).
A study attempts to detect paint forgeries created after 1950 using radiocarbon dating. The detection of forgeries in artworks requires increasingly sophisticated techniques. To determine whether radiocarbon (14C) dating is a reliable method to detect post-1950 art forgeries, Laura Hendriks and colleagues dated a known forgery created in 1985 by extracting microsamples from both the pictorial layer and canvas. The authors report that 14C analysis of the canvas was consistent with an 1866 attribution, which is the signed date on the canvas. Preliminary analysis of the paint revealed the presence of inorganic pigments in a mixed binding medium coated with a layer of varnish.The paint sample cleaned from the varnish yielded 19 μg carbon, in which the authors detected an excess of 14C, which is characteristic of the nuclear testing period during the 20th century. Specifically, the oil used to bind the pigments was harvested from seeds between either 1958-1961 or 1983-1989. The results contradict the dating of the support material and suggest that the forger recycled an older canvas to increase the counterfeit's credibility. According to the authors, radiocarbon dating of micropaint samples could help detect modern forgeries if suitable sampling locations are identified.
Article #19-01540: "Uncovering modern paint forgeries by radiocarbon dating," by Laura Hendriks et al.
MEDIA CONTACT: Laura Hendriks, ETH Zürich, SWITZERLAND; tel: +41-446337701; email: laurah@phys.ethz.ch
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Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences