On January 19th 2006 artfakes.dk received
a nice letter from Julie M. Harmia
Name: Julie Harmia
IP Address: 63.17.39.229(1Cust2021.an3.sfo17.da.uu.net)
User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSNIA; Windows 98)
Email: jmharmia@hotmail.com
Subject: Raoul Dufy painting

Comment:
Hello. I saw where you have my painting and name on your site.As the extensive forensics testing would attest to the painting was produced plus or minus ten years to the turn of the last century. The signature is under the aged varnish which has not been organically nor chemically treated.I could go on and on about this or the fact that it is a study done for a larger piece owned(and has been authenticated) by a David Rickhuss in London. It was probably signed and presented to the villa owner although that is only conjecture as a art historian I talked to said it was a common practice and most probable if signed. I think I shall probably just get to the point. You apparently are only familiar with his later works but he went through four major style changes before the one you are familiar with. I would recommend you search out his earlier styles and study them before you take such action that will get you into trouble as it already has with me. Denmark is not so far away that legal action cannot be taken against you, your webmaster and your server. You have TEN DAYS to 1.) Print and apologetic retraction that will stand on your home page for 6 months. 2.) Remove all current references to me or my ebay account on this or any other site you are associated with and never darken my doorstep again and 3.) When you have completed those tasks contact me to let me know it has been done...I will check. To make things perfectly clear from the start I will go after you,your "team" and your webmaster. If you have any questions I would ask your lawyer. But...Be quick. Like I said. YOU HAVE TEN DAYS!!!!!
Wishing you a great day. Julie M Harmia

artfakes.dk:
artfakes.dk has informed the seller that this is not an original work of art by Dufy. It’s true that the picture is not sold by the seller for being an original work of art, but the way on which it is sold more than suggests that it is genuine, so eventually it comes to the same thing.