Canadian Conservation Institute helped expose Canada's largest art fraud case

A federal lab revealed paint-by-numbers guides hidden beneath fake Norval Morrisseau paintings. Over 1,000 forgeries have been removed from the market so far.

Federal lab uncovered paint-by-numbers codes hidden in fake Morrisseau works

In a darkened photo lab near Ottawa in 2021, art analyst Mylène Choquette stepped back from her equipment and looked again. The imaging system had just revealed what lay beneath the surface of a painting attributed to celebrated Indigenous artist Norval Morrisseau — and what she saw stopped her cold.

Scattered across the underpainting were letters: R marked on a red patch, LB on a light blue one. Someone had embedded a colour-coded guide directly onto the canvas before applying paint — a paint-by-numbers system hidden within a supposed Morrisseau original.

Google News CA — Crime (EN) reports that Choquette's discovery formed part of what investigators now describe as the largest art fraud case in Canadian history, a sprawling affair that has moved through courtrooms, police interrogation rooms, and the country's most prominent galleries and museums.

More than 1,000 counterfeit Morrisseaus have since been pulled from the market. Police believe further fakes remain in circulation. One lawyer estimates at least 6,000 forged works are still being sold or held by unsuspecting owners.

A federal agency few had heard of

Choquette worked for the Canadian Conservation Institute, a little-known federal body housed within the Heritage Department. The institute serves roughly 2,700 museums, libraries, and archival organizations across Canada, providing investigation, preservation, and conservation services that smaller institutions cannot afford to run themselves.

Its 65-person staff has helped identify what stained a hockey sweater worn by Maurice "Rocket" Richard in the 1959 playoffs, advised on transporting a 356-year-old Hudson's Bay charter, and restored stained glass panels recovered from the 1914 wreck of the Empress of Ireland. Rarely, however, are they called upon by police to assist with a criminal fraud investigation of this scale.

Ontario Provincial Police first contacted the institute in 2020, decades after pieces purportedly painted by Morrisseau had begun flooding the art market.

The artist and his legacy

By then, Morrisseau — a residential school survivor raised on a reserve on the shores of Lake Nipigon in Ontario — had long been regarded as the Picasso of the North. He is credited with founding the Woodland School, a style defined by bold, interconnected black lines on vibrant backgrounds depicting spiritual figures and Indigenous stories.

His 1962 exhibition at the Pollock Gallery in Toronto marked the first time an Indigenous artist's work had been displayed in a contemporary Canadian gallery. Despite struggling with alcohol abuse and Parkinson's disease in his later years, his paintings grew increasingly valuable. Some sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars before his death in 2007 at the age of 75.

Morrisseau himself raised the alarm about forgeries. His lawyers sent letters in the early 2000s warning that significant numbers of paintings sold through Toronto gallery Maslak McLeod, and others in Ontario and Alberta, were fraudulent. Shortly before his death, he publicly distanced himself from the Morrisseau Family Foundation — an organization formed by his seven children to authenticate his work — whose seal later appeared on certificates lending false credibility to forgeries.

The purchase that opened the investigation

In 2005, Kevin Hearn, keyboardist for the rock band Barenaked Ladies, bought a painting called "Spirit Energy of Mother Earth" from Maslak McLeod. Hearn had developed an interest in Morrisseau's work after seeing it on the cover of a 1979 Bruce Cockburn album. The piece, allegedly dating to 1974, showed serpent-like forms against a backdrop of greens and blues.

Hearn lent the painting to the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2010 for an exhibition. Within two weeks, curator Gerald McMaster had removed it, deeming it inauthentic.

Hearn and his lawyer Jonathan Sommer pursued the matter further. They found that two of the three prior owners listed by the gallery had never seen the painting, let alone owned it. Experts also noted that the dry-brush signature and thunderbird symbol on the back were not consistent with Morrisseau's known practice — the artist did not sign the backs of his canvases, preferring instead a syllabic signature on the front.

Hearn sued Maslak McLeod and its owner Joseph McLeod. In a statement of defence filed with the court in 2013, the gallery and its owner denied all allegations, calling accusations of involvement in a criminal fraud scheme "entirely false" and characterizing the claims as "scandalous, frivolous and vexatious." The gallery subsequently closed as the case continued through the courts.

Choquette's findings

It was against this backdrop that the Ontario Provincial Police turned to the Conservation Institute and Choquette. Her 2021 analysis using multi-spectral and infrared imaging technology penetrated beneath the painted surface of the works under examination — a process that standard visual inspection cannot replicate.

The colour-coded letters she found beneath the paint pointed to a systematic method of production inconsistent with an artist working from his own creative vision. The findings added a forensic dimension to a case that had, until then, relied heavily on provenance records, expert testimony, and witness accounts.

The investigation has resulted in the removal of more than 1,000 suspected forgeries from the Canadian art market. Authorities have indicated the inquiry is ongoing.

Source: Google News CA — Crime (EN)