The Meadows Museum in Dallas Admits its 'Annunciation' by El Greco is a Forgery

On the Meadows Museum's website in Dallas, it is now acknowledged that 'The Annunciation' hanging in its galleries is not by El Greco and is "a modern forgery." Without specifying the copy's authorship, the museum dates it between the 19th and 20th centuries. Juan Carlos Arias, a private detective from Seville, revealed that the painting was bought by oil magnate and museum founder Algur H. Meadows from New York dealer Stanley Moss in 1956.

According to Arias, the copy was made "almost certainly" by a Sevillian painter, Eduardo Olaya, a genius of forgeries, and was provided to Moss by another Sevillian, the controversial antique dealer Andrés Moro.

It is known that Olaya forged hundreds of paintings by great masters, especially El Greco. He painted them on old canvases obtained from looted, bombed, and burned churches during the Spanish Civil War, ensuring his copies passed age tests.

Persecuted during Franco's regime for his homosexuality, Olaya was in and out of prison for fraud, embezzlement, and child abuse. Known in Seville as 'The Baroness,' he worked for Andrés Moro, alias the Moor, who died in 1999 and owned antique shops in central Seville.

This antique dealer and shady art dealer sold Olaya's forgeries to Stanley Moss, a writer, poet, and New York art dealer based in Spain in the mid-20th century, who traded in copies of Velázquez, Murillo, Ribera, or El Greco.

Through Moss, several American magnates bought works by great masters of the 16th and 17th centuries, believing them to be originals. One of them was Algur H. Meadows, who fell in love with Spanish painting during his visits to the Prado Museum in Madrid from 1953 onwards, while on oil exploration trips in Francoist Spain.

One of the paintings he bought from Moss was 'The Annunciation,' whose falsehood is now admitted by his Texan museum. 'The Annunciation,' Forgery of El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos) (1541 – 1614), -"'The Annunciation,' forgery of El Greco"- reads the museum's label, warning that it is not an original work.

Meadows purchased countless works of Spanish art, many of which are now displayed in the museum bearing his name in Dallas, popularly known as 'The Prado of America' for its abundance of Spanish paintings.

Arias claims that the Prado Museum and the Thyssen also have fake works by El Greco painted by Olaya. In the case of the Prado, it would be 'A Fable,' a painting of which there are three versions, two unsigned. The Prado's version was sold by Stanley Moss in 1993 for over three million euros. The other unsigned version is in Edinburgh, at the National Gallery of Scotland. The third, the only signed one, belongs to a private collector who does not allow specialists access to the painting.

The Thyssen's work is another 'Annunciation' displayed in room 11, purchased by the baron from Moss in 1975. In both cases, "evidence of their authenticity is lacking," stated the detective.

Juan Carlos Arias is the author of 'Franco's Forger' (Samarcanda), where he exposes a fraud scheme that implicated Franco himself and filled major museums, aristocratic villas, and even the Pardo Palace with forged paintings. He claims that almost perfect copies of works by Velázquez, El Greco, Zurbarán, Mengs, Picasso, Ribera, and many others were shipped from Seville.

José Arias Galán (1914-1992), the detective's father and a police inspector, had already investigated the "brilliant copyist" Sevillian Eduardo Olaya, who he considered a scapegoat in a network of unscrupulous antique dealers, art dealers, fraudsters, and opportunists.

Arias estimates that Olaya painted around 300 copies and believes some are "in stately homes in Seville and Madrid, in the Alba collection, in national galleries in the United Kingdom, Australia, Washington, Greece, Ottawa... and other parts of Europe."