Painting of the Day: The "Spanish Forger" Jonah and the Whale, 1900

"Jonah and the Whale"
by "The Spanish Forger"
c. 1900
The Victoria & Albert Museum

The artist who was known as “The Spanish Forger” was the “Neal Caffrey” of the early Twentieth Century—except maybe for the sparking blue eyes and cool fedoras. In the mid Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries both in Europe (especially Britain) and in the U.S., the fashionable elite turned their attention to collecting medieval panel paintings and illuminated manuscripts. “The Spanish Forger” seized upon this opportunity, noting an opportunity to not only make some money, but to put his talents to good use, and soon became one of the most skilled and prolific forgers in history.

This forger was responsible for a host of paintings which the V&A says are, “of sweet faced figures set against a background of steep hills and castles derived from the study of illustrated books on the Middle Ages.”

For decades, these expert forgeries were attributed to the Fifteenth Century Spanish painter, Jorge Inglés. The works were discovered to be forgeries in the 1930s. And, yet, we know almost nothing of the person called “The Spanish Forger.” He’s given this name because of the nature of the paintings he produced, but we can’t be sure that he was Spanish. In fact, it is thought that the artist was active in France in the late 19th century and early 20th centuries.

Here we see one of the Spanish Forger’s works--one of a group of five or six miniatures of similar size and borders. The miniatures are very cleverly painted on the back of cuttings from a real Fifteenth or Sixteenth Century page from an Italian choir book.

The scene depicts Jonah and the Whale from the Biblical Old Testament--at the moment when Jonah is thrown overboard from the ship upon which he sailed. The whale can readies himself to swallow Jonah.

The work of the forger is very convincing. Chemical dating would have indicated that the page itself was quite right in age. However, the forger, as clever as he was made one mistake. The headdresses that the men are wearing had not been developed in the fifteenth century. This anachronistic error gave away his entire con.