”Well, that’s no good,” Jennefer Doyle told The Sun-Herald, when informed she had vouched for at least one fraudulent work, Kites in Full Flight, after it was deemed a fake by a Sydney auction house last October.
Doyle’s paintings depicting pastoral Australia in the 1930s and ’40s were very popular. Thousands of prints were sold and his work was also licensed for use on calendars and biscuit tins. His sentimental vignettes are so ubiquitous that the Australian Reproductions website estimates that as many as one in four Australians have one of his prints.
Doubt was cast on the authenticity of some works when the gallery of his agent, Ron Coles, was raided in 2009 and found to contain forgeries of works by Arthur Streeton, Pro Hart and David Boyd. Mrs Doyle then stepped forward to become the overriding authority on whether paintings sold by Coles and carrying her husband’s name were genuine or not.
Not to worry! Morpeth Gallery’s D’arcy Doyle paintings have been authenticated!