Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in Country Roads magazine under the title "Clementine Hunter Fakes" on December 29, 2009. Its author Ruth Laney collaborated with The Bayou Brief and allowed her original report to be republished. For clarification, continuity, and context, we made a few edits.

If imitation is the most sincere flattery, then three years after the publication of "Happy Coast" in 1971, Clementine Hunter, who was already weak, officially became a painter. "In 1974, Hunter's reputation grew-and with it was the price of her work-inevitably happened: the panic of forgery," James L. Wilson wrote in his "Clemens Ting Hunter, American Folk Artist, wrote in the book.

"Rumors about grandsons or nephews grinding Hunter copies and selling them are beginning to prevail. In New Orleans, an artist was accused of copying her paintings and trying to sell them as Hunter's originals."

Hunter was working as a chef at the Melrose Plantation in Nachitosh, when she picked up the discarded paint tube and "marked a picture" on the curtain. A folk artist was born.

Clementine described scenes she was familiar with-weddings, baptisms, cotton picking, jukebox fights. At first, she sold them for $1 or less, but by the time she died at the age of 101 in 1988, her paintings had sold thousands of dollars when they were sold at dealers.

In September 2009, when the FBI raided the house of William and Beryl Toye in Baton Rouge, the artist's work became the center of a scandal, and they were suspected of selling fake hunters worth about $100,000. With a search warrant, the agents flocked to Toyes' house for five hours, dragging away paintings, art supplies, computers, typewriters, and documents.

The FBI document stated that toy and New Orleans antique dealer Robert Laki Jr. (now deceased) "participated in a conspiracy and plan to defraud several victims in Louisiana and other states... [and] Deliberately sell the fake as Clementine Hunter's original, authentic artwork." They are suspected of conspiracy and mail fraud.

Newspaper reports indicate that by the 1960s, William Toye was an artist in New Orleans. In 1969, he told the police that his apartment had been broken into and that 50 of his paintings had been stolen or destroyed.

In 1974, Toye was arrested on 22 counts of forgery for making and selling "Hunter" paintings. The case has never been prosecuted.

In 1996, Toys commissioned the paintings to the Louisiana Auction Exchange (LAE) in Baton Rouge. In the end, some works including "Matisse" and "Degas" were determined to be fakes. Toye is listed as Dr. W. Geoffrey Toye in the LAE catalog and accused LAE owner Ronald Causey of forging works. Toye filed a complaint against Causey with the Louisiana Auction House Licensing Commission, stating that Causey did not pay Toye for the paintings sold at the auction. The board did not suspend Cauchy's license, and Cauchy died in 2004.

Toye told several people that when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in August 2005, he and his wife were impoverished. He claimed that the warehouse where he stored the opera collections he designed was flooded, leaving him no source of income.

Around 2000, Robert Lucky Jr. moved from Natchitoches to New Orleans. According to FBI documents, around this time, new Hunter fakes appeared on the market. Lucky sold 50 to 100 toy paintings to buyers in Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, and New York, and misrepresented the origin of these paintings, telling the buyer that “the source of his paintings is from other Hunter collectors , Not Toys."

Although Lucky was named along with Toys in the FBI file, as of mid-December, he had not been searched or detained. Contacted by phone, he said that he was "not allowed to discuss" the case. He hired a criminal defense lawyer.

As a long-term resident of Natchitoches, Lucky owns an antique shop there, where he sells paintings. In 1991, he reported the theft of 32 Hunter paintings in his shop. Lucky told the local newspaper that the $80,000 loss was covered by insurance.

In 1999, Lucky was arrested in Shreveport on a felony of theft because he failed to deliver three Hunter paintings to a buyer who paid him $21,000. He was later released on bail.

In 2000, New Orleans doctor Robert Ryan sold part of his extensive Hunter series and received a verdict against Lucky for $12,000, which was reward for Lucky's paintings sold for him. Lucky was working at a large antique shop in the French Quarter. According to court documents, Ryan successfully requested to withhold Lucky's salary and received the last payment in 2005.

In November 2005, William Toy met Don Fussen, a Baton Rouge businessman and art collector. Although Fulson was not interested in Hunt’s work, he said he felt sorry for Troy. Troy told him that he “lost everything” in Hurricane Katrina and was forced to sell his wife Beryl. Hunter's paintings in the collection since the 1960s.

Fuson bought several works from Toye for $30,000 and sold some of them to friends. About a month later, one of the buyers called and told Fuson that he had shown his Hunter to the experts, who called it a fake.

Fusen immediately went to Toye's house, told them that he thought the paintings were fakes, and demanded that his money be returned. Beryl Toye told Fuson that she bought the paintings directly from Hunter. Within a few days, she wrote a letter to Fusen, saying: "We have no responsibility to prove that [the paintings] are real[,] You have a responsibility to prove that they are not."

Fulson met with William Toy and the painting manager Margaret Moreland, who cleaned up several paintings for Toy. Moreland is a respected commercial protector with a history of 25 years. She said that she cleaned many paintings for Troy. After Hurricane Katrina, Toye took a few so-called hunters to Morland for cleaning.

"He kept asking me'Do you think these are real? I don't want people to think they are fake,"' said Morand, who attached a condition report to every painting she cleaned. She now believes that Toye has shown her condition report to potential buyers as proof of authenticity. "I can't prove them," she said. "These are just notes I made for myself to keep track of them."

Janice Delerno sells art in her Baton Rouge frame shop and gallery. She bought 5 Hunters from Toye, but soon questioned their authenticity. "I started to doubt him," she said. "He has an endless collection of paintings with anything you might want. You can name the subject and size. I was just wondering what happened."

Delerno took her paintings to the Hunter expert, who told her they were fakes.

Shannon Foley of New Orleans is another dealer who buys from Toys, and one of the few dealers to go to their home. "It's dirty," she recalled the room where the painting was displayed. "There is dust everywhere. Three, four, maybe five cats are nearby. I'm pregnant, and the stench of cat urine hits my face. I thought,'Omigosh, this is crazy. I have to leave there.

"You will meet a lot of weird people in the art world, they live in a strange environment, but they have precious things," said Foley, who bought five paintings that day. She quickly sold four of them and bought another fourteen via mail. In total, she paid $44,000 for 19 paintings.

Foley sells some of her Hunter paintings on an art website and an auction house in New Orleans. Within a few days, she knew they were considered fakes. She called Toys and asked for a refund of her money. "They said all these people were jealous of them, and the others were forgers," Foley said.

Foley filed a lawsuit against Toys. Like Fuson, who also sued, Foley was never able to get them to receive the documents. "They hide and don't open the door," Fusen said.  

Stephanie Hardy, the owner of a financial services company in Baton Rouge, said that William Toy asked her for a loan in 2006 or 2007. When she rejected him, Troy offered to put some of Hunter's paintings as collateral. Hardy said she liked primitive art, and she offered to buy five of them. She was hesitant about Toye's asking price of $7,500, and he lowered it to $2,500. "Some are rare, such as Christmas trees," she said. "When I asked him what else he had, he gave me a spiral bound notebook with Polaroid pictures of these paintings. He told me,'I can provide you with any of these in multiple sizes.'"

According to FBI documents, a 1973 letter from Mark Anthony of the 331 Gallery in New Orleans was pasted in the notebook, which closed in 1966. The letter stated that Toys owns 438 Hunter paintings valued at approximately US$45,000. (Toye gave a copy of this letter to Delano and Foley as the source of these paintings.) Hardy gave the notebook to the FBI, which said it contained 60 photographs of the artwork. .   

The FBI’s investigation extends from Louisiana to the Weisman Museum of Art at the University of Minnesota. "The FBI took photos of all thirty-eight hunters of us," said Lindel King, the museum's curator. "In March last year, we heard that five of them might be fakes." Jin said that these paintings were donated to the museum by local collectors and their families.

Toye, 78, said he was not worried that he and his 68-year-old wife might be prosecuted. He accused the dealer Robert Lucky of forging Hunter's paintings. "He may be taking pictures of them and copying them," Toye said, and he also accused the FBI of carrying fakes during the raid on his house. "They have a painting, said to be Clementine, I have never seen it before," he said. "They must carry it with them. We don't even know it is there."

Those who bought from Toys stated that their modus operandi was to accuse the plaintiff. "[William Toy] turned the situation around and accused him of copying it from the people he sold the art to," Delano said. "This is ridiculous."

Foley said, "It's like they are writing their own reality."

Fuson is angry at the damage Hunter's reputation may have been damaged. "Clementine is a poor black woman, and she paints for pennies and nickels," he said. "These people copied her work and signed her name in exchange for thousands of dollars, and she could have received 30 dollars. She is the most violated person." Postscript: This 2012 presentation explains in great detail How to best verify Hunter originals. 

When all of us are adapting to a world reshaped by the global pandemic, we cannot lose the storytellers and slanderers; their jobs are now more needed than at any time in the past half century, but also more than ever At times, they are even more threatened by the turbulent economy.

Donate here through ActBlue or send a check to Bayou Brief at 3208 Pine Street, New Orleans, Louisiana 70125.

We need your contributions, our readers, to ensure Bayou Brief can continue its work. In the first two years, Bayou Brief has become more than just a Louisiana news media; it is also an online community, which has become even more important as the global pandemic forces us to find new ways to get together.

Bayou Brief is the only statewide, completely free, membership-supported digital-oriented publication in Louisiana.

We believe in providing readers with reliable, research-intensive, fact-based reports and reviews about Louisiana, this land and her people, without any fees or interference from advertising.