ARTINFO.com

Font Size Font Increase Font Decrease

Couple Under Investigation for Folk-Art Forgery

Published: October 30, 2009
BATON ROUGE, La.—William Toye was arrested in the 1970s for allegedly forging work by late folk artist Clementine Hunter, though he was never tried. Now the police have started visiting again.

The FBI says that its agents are currently investigating claims that Toye and his wife Beryl Anne have been painting works in Hunter’s style and selling them off to unsuspecting dealers and collectors for thousands of dollars.

The Toyes deny the claims, telling the Associated Press that, though they have actively sold paintings for decades, they have real Hunters and accuse collectors of creating fakes. “We had the real ones,” Beryl Anne Toye told reporters, “and everyone else was faking them."

The forgery allegations have affected not only local collectors but some museums as well. The Weisman Museum at the University of Minnesota says that FBI agents informed them that five of the 38 hunter works in their collection could be forgeries, perhaps sourced back to the Toyes.

Read more at the Associated Press.

advertisements