A federal judge in Illinois sided with Scottish artist Peter Doig last month in an outlandish decades-long legal dispute over a desert landscape the painter denies creating. On July 29, the court upheld an earlier ruling that a Chicago art dealer, the disputed work’s owner, and their lawyer are liable for $2.5 million to be paid to Doig.
Reading more like Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors than a series of motions and appeals, the saga began in 2013 when former corrections officer Robert Fletcher and gallerist Peter Bartlow sued Doig, who denied authorship of the landscape painting dated 1976, which was notably signed “Pete Doige.” Fletcher purchased the disputed painting for $100 from an inmate at the Thunder Bay Correctional Center in Ontario, Canada, where he worked while attending nearby Lakehead University. Fletcher claimed he witnessed the inmate, whom he believed to be Doig, create the artwork and later helped him find employment through a local union.
In 2011, according to court papers, a friend of Fletcher’s suggested that the painting was by the renowned artist, whose work has fetched up to $39 million at auction. Fletcher contacted Bartlow, a Chicago art dealer, who reached out to Doig to authenticate the painting. Gordon VeneKlasen, a partner at Doig’s representing gallery Michael Werner, denied that Doig had authored the work.
Bartlow and Fletcher sued the artist and his gallery in 2013 for the right to attribute the painting to Doig, alleging that the artist and his gallery had “interfered with the prospective economic advantage” of the piece, according to court papers. They also sought up to $10 million in “tortious income interference.”
Doig’s lawyers responded with records indicating that Doig, who did live in Canada for some time, was never incarcerated there nor had a criminal record. Doig’s lawyers tracked down a woman named Marilyn Doige Bovard, who testified that her late brother Peter Edward Doige was incarcerated in the 1970s at the facility where Fletcher worked. While incarcerated, Doige’s sister said he created several paintings and that the disputed work appeared to depict an area in Arizona where the siblings had lived.
But Fletcher and Bartlow’s lawyer, William Zieske, continued to pursue the suit, despite mounting evidence, ending in a ruling in 2016 that Doig did not create the painting and that it was instead the work of an individual named Peter Doige.
Reached via email by Hyperallergic, Bartlow maintained allegations that Doig was the author of the disputed work and accused the artist of concealing a possible criminal record in Thunder Bay.
“His legal team in the trial was bigger than OJ [Simpson]’s,” Bartlow said.
Hyperallergic has contacted Doig, his lawyer, and Michael Werner Gallery for comment.
After the ruling, Doig sought sanctions against Fletcher and his co-plaintiffs, including Zieske, for allegedly handling the case frivolously and in bad faith. In July, a United States Court of Appeals upheld a 2023 decision to impose a $2.5 million sanction, including attorneys’ fees, against Fletcher.
At the time of the original ruling, Doig said he would donate the award to a nonprofit that creates art opportunities for incarcerated individuals.