The loan had
been arranged through Michael Fawcett,
chief executive of the Prince’s Foundation
and a longtime aide to Prince Charles. A
former royal valet, Fawcett was caught up
in what became known as the Royal Butler
Trial, which led to him being investigated
for selling royal gifts and keeping a percent-
age of the prots. He was eventually cleared,
but the incident led to his nickname: Faw-
cett the Fence.
I ask Stunt if he dealt with Fawcett directly
on the loaned paintings. “I dealt with every-
one,” he says. “And Michael is one of the best
people I know. An amazing man! There’s
nothing nefarious about Michael Fawcett.”
The Mail pounced on the revelation.
“Why Does Prince Charles Let James Stunt
Loan Him Art?” the paper demanded. Royal-
watchers, it reported, were “aghast” that the
controversial Fawcett had become “chums”
with the ashy Stunt. To make matters worse,
Stunt had tried to use the paintings as col-
lateral to secure loans to pay o his mount-
ing debts, including a reported $ 3. 9 million
to Christie’s. (“Any such encumbrance
becomes irrelevant in the context of the
Dumfries House collection,” he said in one
court document.) As proof of their authen-
ticity, according to the Mail, he produced an
ocial letter from the Prince’s Foundation,
written on behalf of Fawcett, which con-
irmed that the artworks were “on public
display within various rooms of Dumfries
House for public enjoyment.”
Dumfries House is one of the few places
in the world, outside of major museums,
that can confer legitimacy on a work of
art simply by hanging it on the wall. The
grand property was in the process of being
auctioned o in 2007 when Prince Charles
stepped in to rescue it. “Christie’s vans
were literally rumbling across London, on
their way to Dumfries House to pick up the
furniture and paintings, and sell it all o,”
says Georgina Adam, a respected London
art expert. Using his own wealth as collat-
eral, Charles personally guaranteed a loan
of 20 million pounds to preserve the house,
and then led the charge to raise 45 million
more for restoration.
Today, everything at Dumfries is con-
sidered sacred for its authenticity—from
the furnishings, which include 10 percent
of all the Thomas Chippendale furniture
ever created, to the extensive collection
of art, including a room illed with water-
colors by Charles. Visitors are greeted by a
video of Charles himself, praising the house’s
“unique 18 th-century character,” and the
prince frequently takes a motorcade from
Balmoral Castle or the royal train from Lon-
don to revel in the house and its art. “He loves
it here!” says one longtime volunteer at the
Prince’s Foundation.
In fact, no one at Dumfries House ever
vetted the paintings that Stunt loaned the
prince. The royal family has long employed
art curators, most notoriously Sir Anthony
Blunt, who confessed in 1964 to having
served as a KGB spy. Today, that role falls to
Tim Knox, director of the Royal Collection.
But the paintings at Dumfries are not part of
the Royal Collection; they are mostly loans
from anonymous donors like Stunt. So Tet-
ro’s replicas went on the walls unchecked,
one more addition to the house’s vast
bounty of art. The prince, it appeared, had
unwittingly authenticated the art by virtue
of royal association.
It’s an association that Stunt himself men-
tions with pride. “I am so rich, I’ve got a mil-
lion dollars on my wrist,” he tells me, ash-
ing his 101 Audemars Piguet. A man of such
wealth and taste, he suggests, would have no
motive to dupe Prince Charles’s foundation.
Besides, he continues, “people like Patty
Hearst” go to Dumfries House. How could
all these “big prestigious people” not look
at the paintings and immediately recognize
they were fakes? “It’s a joke,” he says. “A tis-
sue of lies to frame a good man.”
Back in California, however, Tony Tetro
was panicking. Some of his fakes, according
to what he calls “buzz” in the art world, were
being exhibited as genuine masterpieces
someplace in Scotland. “I didn’t know where
Dumfries House is,” Tetro says. “I did nd out
that Stunt had something to do with it, and
he was in trouble. From what I’ve been told,
he was trying to get money through a loan.”
Informed that 4 of the 11 paintings he
made for Stunt were hanging at the Prince’s
Foundation, Tetro dug up photographs he
had kept of them. While he recognized the
paintings as his, the titles were invented:
Dalí’s famed Corpus Hypercubus ( 1954 ) was
now dubbed Dying Christ, and Picasso’s
On the Beach was called Liberated Bath-
ers. There was also Monet’s Lily Pads 1882
(“ridiculous as a name,” says Tetro’s repre-
sentative, “because Monet didn’t move to
Giverny or build the water lily garden until
later”) and Chagall’s Paris Con Amor (“to my
knowledge no Chagall painting ever had a
Spanish name”). The last one came easiest
to Tetro, who has imitated more than 200 of
Chagall’s works. “I’ve painted more Chagalls
than Marc Chagall,” he told the Mail.Tetro was terried. He had already served
time for forgery, and he was determined not
to let it happen again. “After I got out of jail, I
didn’t make a penny for four and a half years,”
he says. “I had to sell my cars, my house,
everything. My attorneys went through me
like an enema.” So he ew to London and
met with the media. “Prince Charles Hit by
Major Counterfeit Art Scandal,” the Mail
declared in a front-page headline.
What puzzled Tetro was why Dumfries
House accepted art that was so obviously
inauthentic. “They’re intentionally done so
you can tell instantly that they’re not real,”
he says. “If they were inspected by somebody
knowledgeable, this would have stopped.”STUNT, IN FACT, had asked several art experts
to authenticate at least one of the paintings
he loaned to Prince Charles’s foundation.
Nicolas Descharnes, considered the leading
authority on Salvador Dalí, says he received
an urgent call from Stunt in May 2015. “He
was so happy!” recalls Descharnes. “He said
he had discovered ‘a new Dalí.’ ” It was a lost
masterpiece, the ultimate sleeper—the third
depiction of Dalí’s Corpus Hypercubus ( 1954 ).
The original is displayed in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art; a study is on display in the
Vatican Museum.
“He wanted me to come to London imme-
diately,” says Descharnes, who had helped
Stunt purchase authentic Dalí pieces in the
past. Examining a photo of the painting, he
noticed that its back bore a stamp from the
collection of the late John Peter Moore. But
when he called Moore’s widow, she told
him that the painting was “never in our col-
lection.” Stunt ew Descharnes to London
and drove him to his oce in his Ferrari for
a midnight examination of the painting.
It took the Dalí expert only a few minutes
with his magnifying glass to reach a verdict:
The painting “stunk.”
“In my opinion it’s not by Dalí,” he told
Stunt. He felt sure he had seen the painting
on an Australian television show, along with
an artist identied as the world’s foremost
art forger. “It’s probably by Tony Tetro,” he
told his host.
“I know Tony Tetro,” Descharnes recalls
Stunt saying. “Let’s call him.”
Stunt put Descharnes on the phone
with Tetro. But the expert stood rm, and
Stunt grew “quite upset,” he says. When he
demanded a second opinion, Descharnes
suggested Frank Hunter, director of the
Salvador Dalí Archives. He promised not to
mention his own meeting with Stunt, so that
Hunter would remain “blind.” Back in France,
Descharnes emailed Stunt a four-page report
“which explains my negative opinion. I’m
sorry and understand you were upset.”
He thought that was the end of it. Then,
last summer, Descharnes heard from Hunt-
er, who sent him emails from individualsArt Forgery
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