Margo Burns
Fake Portraits of Illustrious Leaders in Boston
The Massachusetts Capitol features a portrait gallery of colonial governors, all faithfully copied in the early 20th century from original portraits held by individuals and institutions — but many of the originals are fake. They are legitimately old paintings of unknown sitters by unknown artists being passed off as famous American people by famous American artists like Blackburn, Feke, and Smibert. Find out how Boston art dealer Frank W. Bayley and others pulled off their crimes and how to spot portraits with fake credentials.
Margo Burns, AB, MA, is a Project Manager and Associate Editor of Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt (salemwitchhunt.org, published in 2009 by the Cambridge University Press), the definitive comprehensive record of legal documents pertaining to the Salem witchcraft trials, organized in chronological order. She is currently working on a book about William Stoughton, the Chief Magistrate of those trials, and has been studying early American painting.
