Dulwich Picture Gallery fakes its own Fragonard

This article was first published on Apollo magazine’s blog

The latest addition to Dulwich Picture Gallery’s permanent collection display was a bargain at $88. For weeks the cheap Chinese copy after Fragonard’s Young Woman – commissioned by contemporary artist Doug Fishbone – stood in for the original, unmarked and slotted into the old frame, as a challenge to visitors. Could they spot the ‘fake’? They could not, as it turns out. Of the 3,000 people who made a guess, only 12 per cent correctly identified the impostor. The rest of us walked past without a second thought – though perhaps with a slightly diminished opinion of poor Fragonard.

Last week, when the original was finally brought back to hang alongside its copy, I stood for a while with Fishbone and Dulwich’s chief curator Xavier Bray, spotting differences. What a lot of them there are. The copy’s colours are brighter, the tonality lighter, and the quality worse.