The Art of Forgery – Karl F Sim

About to turn 86 on 6 December 2010, with his eyes sharpened by exercises, notorious NZ art forger, Karl Sim, was still at it…forging not only art, but a career as an eminently saleable artist.

Karl Feodor Sim, changed his name by deed poll in 1985 to Carl Feodor Goldie, in honour of one of NZ’s most revered artists, and also to enable him to sign his Goldie styled works using the famous, and by now, well practiced signature.  He’d been using it for years to sell forgeries reputed to be the great artist’s work, but he also forged and sold the works of many other well known artists, amongst them Petrus van der Velden, Rita Angus, Toss Woollaston, Colin McCahon, Renoir, William Dobell, Arthur Stretton, Frances Hodgkins, and Evelyn Page.

In fact all these works were original Karl F Sim works done in the styles of the artists whose signatures he forged. For instance, the original Goldie (Charles Fredrick) used a Maori master carver, Te Aho-o-te-Rangi Wharepu, as a model.  Sim reasoned that Goldie might well have painted some of the carver’s works, and he created a painting of ceremonial canoes hauled up on a beach.  Because the carver had come from Maketu, Sim decided to include Mt Maunganui in the background.

By reading widely and deeply about artists, studying painting techniques, researching referenced material, and visiting museums and galleries, Sim developed a broad knowledge of art which allowed him to create works in alignment with the artists whose styles he mimicked. Certainly he forged their signatures, but he also went to extraordinary lengths to use aged materials. His second hand shop in Foxton provided an excellent source of these, but perhaps the real forgery occurred in the magnificent provenances he developed for each work.

K F Sim, art forger who later changed his name to C F Goldie

Ultimately, a well written, well thought out provenance was the key to a sale, and the Foxton shop was an apparently legitimate connection for many of the works he moved. Art expert after expert confirmed various forgeries as being the works of the artist’s they were purported to be, including Janet Paul at Alexander Turnbull, the Rita Angus expert.  When shown a forged Angus, she confirmed it as perfect, a definite Angus.

In the end, when he was finally charged with 20 counts of forgery and 18 counts of uttering, Sim was fined $1,000 and sentenced to 200 hours of community work after a seven week highly publicised trial.

At 14, Sim studied art at Palmerston North Technical College under H Linley Richardson who had his students paint everything he could think of, including copying old masters. Through Richardson, Sim met C F Goldie who signed a print, the only original Goldie signature he ever owned.

He said in 2010, “Goldie’s work still talks to me. He did lovely faces.”

Ranked No.8 in the world for art forgery (The 10 Greatest Art Forgers by Bonnie Sheppard), and only eighth because NZ was such a small market, Karl Sim as C F Goldie works every day on art.  He no longer painted preferring to sketch with an 8B pencil for four or five hours a day.  He turned out at least one complete detailed sketch every day and in April 2010 exhibited at the Estuary Arts Centre in Orewa, north of Auckland.

Having never married, he was living as he had for the past twenty years in a caravan which seemed organically rooted to the ground upon which it sat.  Around him and forming a canopy overhead were pine trees and scrub.

“I talk to the trees,” he says. “This land belongs to someone else and it has changed hands six times over the years. Each new owner seems very happy to continue the arrangement of having me live here and sketch quietly in the bush.”

The light was less than ideal but Carl Feodor Goldie couldn’t  have been happier.

Karl F Sim, notorious New Zealand art forger who changed his name to by deed poll to C F Goldie

“My work sells now, as my own work,” he stated earnestly.  “It wasn’t my idea to start forging, but once I went along with it, I was being bought.  People didn’t know it was my work they were buying, but finally I was selling. It was a wrong thing I did, but nobody was hurt.  When I went to court I offered people to buy back the forgeries I’d sold them, but not one wanted to get rid of them.”

Despite not having sold a forgery in well over 20 years, they do still occasionally turn up.  In 2000, a 30 year old McCahon of Cape Reinga turned up at Sothebys and sold for over EU6,000.  Peter Webb Galleries in Auckland sold a Russell Drysdale of a swagman in recent years.  The forged Drysdale placed the swagman’s glass in the opposite hand to that of the original.

Forgeries in the art world abound and if they’re good enough to fool the art experts, then who should complain?

Resource: Theresa Sjoquist interview with Karl Sim, November 2010; Ref: Good as Goldie – Karl F Sim & Tim Wilson (Hodder 2003)

Karl Sim died on Monday 20 October 2013.  He was 89.

©Theresa Sjoquist