Complicated Situation

When the Winnipeg Art Gallery last year invited Dr. Ferdinand Eckhardt to come from Vienna as the director of the museum, he was immediately attracted by the idea of building up the young (established in 1932) institution. But he was not impressed by the gallery's collection of "old masters." Last week, addressing the gallery's Women's Committee, Director Eckhardt publicly announced the awful truth: The museum has been the victim of a mammoth hoax. Said he: "With the exception of the Canadian paintings and the eleven old German paintings on permanent loan, there is almost nothing which is really worthwhile in the permanent collection . . . The Titian is not a Titian, the Rubens is not a Rubens, and the Correggio not a Correggio."

The majority of the questioned paintings have no signatures, and most were donated by James Cleghorn, a wealthy Winnipeg hardware merchant, who died in 1936. Of the supposed old masters donated to the gallery from the Cleghorn collection, which was once insured for $250,000, declared Eckhardt, all are either copies or outright fakes. Items:

P:In Early Holland, a landscape attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Younger (1564-1638), valued by Cleghorn at $2,000. It was probably painted much later, says Eckhardt: "I would not hang this picture in my own home or anywhere."

P:A woman's head, attributed to Joshua Reynolds, valued by Cleghorn at $1,500. Former Gallery Director Alvan Eastman thinks that the actual painter was one Angelica Kauffmann.

P:A stiff religious painting, called a Rubens and valued at $5,000, which was probably painted by a follower of Van Dyck.

P:A Madonna and Child attributed to Correggio. Says Eckhardt: "There are not more than 125 paintings by Correggio in the world, and this is definitely not one of them."

P:Holy Family with Saint, called a Titian, was probably painted by a contemporary.

Who fooled whom? With Cleghorn dead, it is impossible to tell; he had bought most of his pictures through an English "artist" who kept his eyes open for European purchases. "It's a very complicated situation," says Eckhardt with a sigh. "I don't know what to do."

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