Fine Art Registry Investigation of Fingerprints Claimed to Authenticate Possible Pollock Paintings

A recently issued preliminary report from Thomas Hanley, Chief of Police in Middlebury, Vermont, and veteran fingerprint examiner with close to 30 years experience in fingerprint identification, casts doubts on Paul Biro’s claims of proving “authenticity” of a possible Pollock painting belonging to the Parker family of Long Island. Biro claimed that the “Jackson Pollock fingerprint” he found on the back of the Parkers’ painting was “the same print as the one on Teri Horton’s painting.” Biro’s much media-hyped work on the Horton painting has been withheld from peer scrutiny by Horton and Biro.

Thomas Hanley, retained by Fine Art Registry, visited the Parkers on Long Island and the Pollock Krasner House in East Hampton, accompanied by Fine Art Registry CEO Theresa Franks, professional photographer and videographer and Legal Correspondent. Also present at the Parkers' was retired Detective Sergeant Larry Rooney, another veteran fingerprint expert with 27 years experience in fingerprint ID. Chief Hanley examined the Parkers’ painting, located a number of fingerprints and other items, and photographs were taken. At the Pollock Krasner House, he examined all the paint cans and other items mentioned by Biro in his report on “Teri’s Find” and photographed the fingerprints used by Biro in his “authentication,” as well as others he found.

The fingerprint claimed by Biro to be a match of the one found on the paint can in the Pollock Krasner House (according to him, the same fingerprint he found on Teri Horton’s painting) does not look like any fingerprint that has been on a piece of wood for 50 years and it does not appear to have been made evident by any of the usual methods used by fingerprint experts to expose prints for identification, according to the expers.
Thomas Hanley said, “With no known exemplar of Jackson Pollock’s fingerprints, there is no way to know whose print that is on the back of the stretcher of the Ken Parker painting. We can be reasonably sure, however, that this print is not over 50 years old. Bare wood is a poor surface to hold prints, even in the short term, let alone for half a century, and given the history of this painting and its storage and handling as we know it, it is unlikely a residual print of this quality could last that long.”

Thomas Hanley’s preliminary reports can be read in full on the Fine Art Registry website along with the full story of the Parkers’ painting and their quest for authentication.

Chief Hanley is in the process of examining all the photos of the fingerprints taken at the Parkers' and at the Pollock-Krasner House, in great detail and will publish a final report of his findings on the Fine Art Registry website.