At London Auction, Art’s Not Real, It’s Memorex

A man from Barcelona who copies famous works of art brought 244 of them to London and sold them all Friday for $238,600.

“They represent the work of about six months in my studio,” said the painter Miguel Canals in an interview during the sale.

“I am an artist and this is my hobby, but as I am a Catalan, people say it’s my business,” he confided as auctioneer Nicholas Bonham briskly rattled through the copied Titians, Monets, Goyas and van Goghs.

They took from 20 to 40 seconds to sell for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars each in the packed Bonhams salesroom in Chelsea.

“I am happy with the prices,” said Canals, a short, dark man in his mid-50s, watching the sale impassively with his wife Fernanda.

From across the floor the Renaissance Madonnas, Dutch interiors, English hunting scenes, life-size portraits and sun-kissed impressionists looked very much like their celebrated originals.

Some had been treated to look aged, and tiny, deliberate mistakes could sometimes be spotted, “so that future experts will be able to distinguish them from the originals,” said Bonham.

Naturally, a copy of the world’s most expensive painting, Vincent van Gogh’s “Irises,” was there. The original sold for nearly $54 million at Sotheby’s in New York in 1987 but the copy cost only $4,080 after 40 seconds’ bidding on Friday.

Top price was $7,500 for a canvas after Claude Monet of the bridge over the artist’s famous waterlily pool in his garden at Giverny near Paris.

The Canals are the same size as the originals, in the same media-- oil, pastel, crayon or watercolor-- and set in elaborately gilded plaster or wood frames. On a quick glance they appear to be the real thing. Each is stamped on the back, “From the Studio of Miguel Canals.”

Among the buyers were interior decorators who said the pictures would look good in smart homes and restaurants.

Irish rock singer Bob Geldof looked in and said: “I think these are a good buy. After all, half the paintings hanging on the walls of the world’s museums are fakes.”

Merle Birkmyre, a Londoner, said when asked why anyone would buy one of the paintings from Spain, said: “I feel people will buy a copy of a painting after growing up with a print of it which they love.”

An attorney who specified that he not be identified--”because I have two van Gogh original drawings”--said he bought a “van Gogh” and a “Seurat” because “they look authentic and they will look very nice, and most of my friends won’t know the difference from the originals by midnight.”

One copy of a familiar beach scene by Eugene Boudin, was miscatalogued as “After Eugene Canals.”

“That’s wrong,” said Bonham to giggles from the floor. “This is definitely a Boudin.”

It went for $600.

Bonham said later that Canals’ clients include owners of very expensive works of art who commission him to paint a copy for the wall while they keep the original in a safe.

Canals has half-a-dozen assistants who may all work on one painting as each is a specialist in something--faces, dresses, flowers, trees or ships.

He said, yes, he also paints originals--”but it is not important.”