The Art Forger

Claire Roth has been blacklisted by the entire art world. Rather than producing original art which no gallery, museum, or dealer will ever touch, she spends most of her time recreating other people's art for Reproductions.com.Want Vincent Van Gogh's starry night? It - or a virtually undetectable copy - can be yours thanks to Claire's ability to mimic other artists' style and technique. (In fact, this skill is what got her blacklisted from the art world.) Her real test comes when a dealer approaches her about copying one of the stolen Degas paintings from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. In accepting this assignment, though, Claire finds herself delving into both the underworld and a spiraling mystery. This master forger's ability to save herself depends on her ability to prove that the lost masterpiece is, itself, just a finely crafted forgery.

I wasn't familiar with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, or the theft of art from this museum, until I read B. A. Shapiro's The Art Forger. Not only did I learn a great deal about this museum and its artwork (both stolen and not), but I also learned a tremendous amount about painting techniques and how, specifically, one goes about creating forgeries. (Anyone who has ever seen my stick figures knows this will not be my next career move.)

Shapiro writes well and has created an engaging and credible mystery around the facts in the case. Claire's back story is woven in carefully, as is Isabella Stewart Gardner's "correspondence," although the latter is a bit of a crutch to resolve the mystery in a realistic way. My only criticism is of Claire, whose "struggling artist" persona can be a bit grating at times. Even this, though, feels genuine and credible, as though Shapiro wants Claire to antagonize the reader just a bit. Well done.