The Sly Fox

The painter was an illusion

At least seven C.J. Fox portraits of bygone legislators hang in House committee rooms in Washington. A C.J. Fox painting of Brothers Charles and William Mayo is in Washington's National Portrait Gallery. In fact, the name C.J. Fox adorns the mediocre likenesses of hundreds of wealthy and famous Americans, both living and dead. They include Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, Publisher William Randolph Hearst, Oilman H.L. Hunt, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, AFL-CIO President George Meany and Francis Cardinal Spellman.

At up to $7,000 apiece, the portraits are not cheap works of art. Nor were they painted by C.J. Fox, as was disclosed last week in a U.S. tax court in Miami by an extraordinary entrepreneur named Leo Fox.

In a sworn affidavit filed as part of his fight against an Internal Revenue Service bill for $40,000 in back taxes, he said that the "C.J. Fox" paintings he has sold since the 1940s were actually painted by others. From 1972 to 1974 alone, admitted Fox, an obscure Manhattan artist named Irving Resnikoff, 81, turned out 139 "Foxes"--all from photographs of the subjects--for a fee of $250 to $300 apiece. By his own admission, Fox could not have done the portraits if he tried: he cannot paint.

Sly Leo Fox, now in his 60s, pulled off his illusory act with remarkable ease. As part of his sales pitch, he circulated a brochure describing the imaginary Fox as the son of a well-known Austrian artist whose "guidance and expert tutelage was [the son's] inspiration." Fox portraits were always done from photographs, and sold as such. After a few well-placed sales, Fox's reputation spread by word of mouth. Said he: "I learned a way of being a good salesman. I don't steal from the poor." He even won some high praise. Ethel Kennedy wrote to say that she had been "moved" by his portrait of J.F.K. and was "looking forward" to his painting of her husband. Former Army Secretary Wilber M. Brucker called his own portrait "a tribute to both your artistic skill and powers of observation."

So far, none of Fox's clients has made any complaint. And Judge Samuel Sterrett will not decide for several weeks whether the real Fox owes $40,000 to the IRS.

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