Ringleader in Norval Morrisseau art fraud ring sentenced to 5 years on fraud charges

Fraud experts, Morrisseau estate say long journey to weed out fakes remains
Michelle Allan · CBC News

A camera captures a picture of a man walking by a painting done in the woodland style.

A reporter walks past 'Androgyny' by Norval Morrisseau (right) and 'Tweaker' by Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun during a media tour of the Canadian and Indigenous Art: 1968 to Present at the National Gallery of Canada's contemporary art galleries Tuesday May 2, 2017, in Ottawa. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press )

One of eight people charged in what Ontario Provincial Police say is the largest art fraud investigation in Canadian history has been sentenced to five years incarceration, with credit for one year of time already served.

Gary Lamont pleaded guilty on Dec. 4 to a charge of making false documents, mainly artwork, that was attributed to Morrisseau and a count of defrauding the public in an amount exceeding $5,000.

Lamont oversaw the production and distribution of hundreds of forged artworks falsely attributed to Morrisseau starting in 2002, according to the agreed statement of facts submitted to the courts. According to the statement of facts, 190 "Lamont Ring Forgeries" have been identified to date, with 117 of them seized by investigators.

"To have one of the key figures that we've been interested in admit to his guilt in terms of creating fake Morrisseaus, that's a huge step forward," said Jonathan Sommer, a lawyer who specializes in art forgery.

Sommer represented Barenaked Ladies keyboardist Kevin Hearn in a lawsuit against a Toronto art dealer for allegedly selling him a fake Morrisseau painting. The Ontario Court of Appeal sided with Hearn and awarded him $60,000 in damages. It used to be very difficult to convince police and courts to take art fraud seriously, said Sommer.

"They treat it almost like an amusing spectacle, you know, a tale of charming rogues that defraud people who have more money than they know what to do with," he said. "There's a lot of really ugly criminality that's connected with this art fraud, Sommer said." Sommer estimates there are significantly more fraudulent works in circulation than genuine Morrisseau paintings. "It severely muddied his legacy," he said. "They undermine the relationship between viewers of the art and who Morrisseau really was."

Police laid more than 40 charges against eight people this past March after a years-long investigation into the forgery of the famous Anishinaabe artist's work. The investigation led to the seizure of more than 1,000 pieces of forged Morrisseau artwork

"There is likely at least another 5,000 fraudulent artworks out there, " said Cory Dingle, executive director of Norval Morrisseau's estate. "The real battle hasn't even started." Morrisseau's estate faces an expensive and fraught task — finding, investigating and denouncing the thousands of fake works to preserve Morrisseau's authentic legacy.

Norval Morrisseau as artist-in-residence in the Thomson Shack at the McMichael Gallery in Kleinberg, Ont., on July 11, 1979. (Ian Samson/McMichael Canadian Art Collection Archives) The sheer volume of fakes to identify combined with the difficulty of legally proving them as inauthentic is an undue burden for the estate to bear, said Dingle.

"Canada really needs to have a federal arts-fraud division, because truly we are talking about our culture and our heritage that is being defrauded," he said. Some other countries allow police to work with artist's estates to identify and destroy fake paintings, said Dingle. "That's how they clean up their market. Right now, Canada has no mechanism such as that."

Diane Marie Champagne, Benjamin Paul Morrisseau, Linda Joy Tkachyk and David John Voss will be in court in Thunder Bay. Also charged are Jeffrey Gordon Cowan of Niagara-on-the-Lake, James (Jim) White of Essa Township and David P. Bremner of Locust Hill. They will be appearing in Barrie for pre-trial.

A legacy diminished, but not destroyed
As the founder of Woodlands style art, Morrisseau's influence is so pervasive that the impact of the fraud reverberates throughout the Indigenous art scene, said art gallery owner Sophia Lebessis, who is Inuk.

"You're filled with rage and disappointment on a cultural level because it's like, here's another aspect of our lives that are just taken over and destroyed," said Lebessis, who owns Transformation Fine Art, a Calgary-based gallery of Inuit and First Nations art.

While fraudsters have damaged Morrisseau's legacy, Lebessis said they can't take away the positive impact his art has on the people who view it.

"What these criminals are not going to take away from us is that magical moment when you're walking into a gallery or you're walking into a museum and you're seeing a Morrisseau for your very first time," said Lebessis,

"That feeling that you felt, and all of a sudden your worldview changes, of Indigenous culture and Indigenous people. All of a sudden you're connected to this master artist who you might never have met."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/norval-morrisseau-art-fraud-sentencing-1.7059535