[No Truce With Kings]

"A forgery? That makes it sound like he made it to pull a scam. It is a COPY. Big difference."

Nah. He was pulling a scam right out of a Donald Westlake story. According to the article;

"Experts said Trachte probably made the copy in about 1973, when he and his wife were going through a bitter divorce. The settlement let him keep the Rockwell."

He did the paint-by-number version with the intent of defrauding an ex. Didn't need to, but could have. Anyone remember the Dortmunder story where the forged object was a statue and Dormunder has to steal it to keep the ex from realizing she had been shuffled the forgery?

[KellyAdmirer]

Well, let me just say that it sure is easy to read nefarious intentions into something like this without a shred of proof, long after the guy is dead and can't defend himself. So the "experts" think he "probably" made it to defraud the ex. Whoopee. If so, why didn't he just destroy the "forgery" after the divorce was finalized and he got to keep the original? Since folks apparently can read the guy's mind now that he's dead, maybe someone has an answer to that.

Anyway, this is kind of a semantical game now. It's a copy, and perhaps was intended as a forgery. Fine.