Not a pretty picture

THEY met in Paris in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. He was a struggling painter with a tiny apartment in Greenwich Village; she was a ballerina who lived in Marin County and danced in San Francisco.

They married and had two daughters. He became successful enough to make a living with brush and easel. They moved to a tiny farm in Petaluma, where she taught ballet and he painted pricey Irish landscapes and Paris street scenes.

His name was John O'Brien, and cancer took him two years ago at age 53.

Her name is Martha O'Brien, and she was left with a mountain of debt in the aftermath of what law enforcement authorities contend was a widespread fraud. She often wakes up wondering how she will keep her home on the crumbs a ballet teacher makes.

In Martha's view, everything probably would have been different if a woman hadn't come to see John six years ago and persuaded him that there was a fortune to be made in selling high-end prints of his work. As Martha put it, the woman practically guaranteed that "everyone would live happily ever after."

The woman was Kristine Eubanks, and she ran a printing business in Los Angeles. According to O'Brien, Eubanks proposed to take advantage of a new technology called giclee (pronounced zhee-CLAY), which reproduces art without the telltale dots of color printing. Originals and copies are difficult to tell apart without close examination.

The term derives from the French verb gicler, which means "to squirt" or "to spray." It's most commonly used to describe a high-resolution digital process employed in the reproduction of fine art.

John O'Brien was enthusiastic. Martha recalled that Eubanks said she would produce and market high-quality limited edition prints of her husband's work, which he would sign, and perhaps bring in six figures a year. In the spring of 2000, he began shipping his work south to Eubanks' print shop.

For a while, it all seemed to be working. The checks arrived on a regular basis, a much-needed steady income.

Then, less than two years later, John began to think that something was amiss. He thought he had signed and numbered each of the prints produced by Eubanks, but nagging little incidents began to make him wonder, Martha said.

A friend called to say he'd seen one of O'Brien's works for sale on EBay, the huge auction website. But it wasn't one he'd signed, numbered and embellished, Martha said. To O'Brien's dismay, cheap knockoffs were finding their way into the art market. Then, according to Martha, he heard that his prints were being sold on Princess Cruise Lines.