Examining Great Paintings, Finding the Artist's Signature

1916

Difficult to Find Sometimes and Not Always Reliable

Many of the works of the old masters are not signed. Experts rarely rely on signatures alone in determining the authenticity of an old work, but trust rather to their knowledge of the painter's technique.

False signatures can be easily detected. Spirits of wine or turpentine will usually remove a name of later date than the painting. In the course of time signatures often become very difficult to find. Painted originally in a shade slightly lighter than the ground, perhaps, they sink in, darken and merge into the ground color or they are almost rubbed away by successive cleanings. Recognizable one day in a specially favorable light, they may not be visible again for weeks.

Experts speak of "will-o'-the-wisp" signatures, and many collectors have encountered accidental strokes and cracks that tantalizingly suggest a signature, though it can never be made definite. On the other hand, there have been remarkable cases of such marks, after careful study, resolving themselves into a famous name. Sometimes the painter's name is most conspicuous — as, for instance, in Raphael's "Sposalizio" at Milan. Proud of having surpassed his master, the youthful genius wrote on a frieze in the very center of the canvas "Raphael Urbinas."

Reynolds hardly ever signed his work. But upon the completion of the portrait of Mrs. Siddons as the "Tragic Muse" he wrote his name large on the gold embroidery of her dress. He was unable, he said, "to resist the temptation of sending my name to posterity on the hem of your garment."

With reference to unsigned paintings there is told in Germany an amusing story. Achenbach. the German artist, enjoyed a vogue about ten years ago. A certain collector had bought from an art dealer a marine represented as a genuine Achenbach. Afterward it was pronounced to be a copy. The buyer brought an action against the dealer, who turned the tables by declaring that his picture was genuine and the other was a copy.

Achenbach himself was summoned by the court to tell which was which. Amazed at the similarity of the two paintings, the artist gazed at them for a long time, inspected them closely front and back and then frankly admitted that he could not tell which was the original and which the copy.— Harper's Weekly.

—Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, July 29, 1916, page 7.