ABOVE: poorly adulterated detail from Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Lady in a White Hat (1895). Renoir’s great-grandson, Pierre-Emmanuel, is embroiled in legal troubles over a scheme to license Renoir sculptures for mass production.

Whether Jean-Emmanuel Renoir, great-grandson of that Renoir, may or may not be a crook; that’s not for us to decide, but the Arizona courts, where the Renoir heir is facing lawsuits from other descendants seeking to stop him from using some of his great-grandfather’s greatest sculptures to make tacky lawn ornaments and bookends. The legal thicket of this particular family feud is beyond our expertise. But Mr. Renoir is obviously an irredeemable philistine.

An unnamed lawyer is quoted in The Art Newspaper as calling this “the biggest art fraud in history,” given that the manufacture of Renoir-stamped gewgaws was expected to bring in up to $1 billion in revenue. It’s not the dollar figure that offends us—everybody’s gotta eat—but the fact that 11 Renoir sculptures, including the Venus Victrix, described as one of the artist’s most complex creations, was to be used in products for “kitchen, bath, bar, furniture, patio & garden, office, novelty, clothing & accessories, cosmetics and toiletries, food & spirits, jewelry, sports & games and pet categories” and that the business plan explicitly called for marketing these things to “the most Neanderthal of art fans.” Popularizing art? We’re for that. Debasing it? No thanks. Hit the road, Johnny.

LINK: The Art Newspaper > Renoir’s great grandson embroiled in “$1 billion art fraud”