| Ernest Durig | |
| Birth Date: | 1894 |
| Birth Place: | Zürich, Switzerland |
| Death Place: | Washington, D.C., United States |
| Occupation: | Sculptor |
| Known For: | Art forgery |
Ernest Durig (1894–1962)[1] was a sculptor and art forger, known for his faking of drawings by Auguste Rodin.[2]
Durig claimed to have been a pupil of Rodin, but the only documentation of their having ever met is a single photograph.
As a sculptor, Durig, no doubt helped by his claimed link to Rodin, modelled busts for a number of notables in the United States establishment. His sitters included Mussolini,[3] US President Harry S. Truman, and the actor Will Rogers.[4] He sculpted a peace memorial for Greenwood, Wisconsin,[5] from an artificial stone made using concrete and fine white sand.[6] Unveiled in 1937, it was restored in 1982.
In July 2016 BBC Television screened an episode of Fake or Fortune?, in which a privately held watercolour of a Cambodian dancer, supposedly by Rodin, was exposed as a Durig fake.
The New York Museum of Modern Art holds a collection of his drawings. Others, previously thought to be by Rodin, are in the French: [[Musée d'Orsay]] in Paris. Durig's extensive career of forgery was first exposed in the 4 June 1965 issue of LIFE.