The counterfeiters: Inside the world of art forgery
The booming art market means that crime really can pay, especially if you know how to knock up a phoney Picasso or dodgy Dali. Following the conviction of the most prolific counterfeiting gang in British history, Rob Sharp goes on the trail of a very crafty breed of criminal.
The Independent
In his dusty back office at the British Museum, John Curtis sat in slack-jawed disbelief. Down a crackly telephone line, an elderly man with a broad Bolton accent was describing three stone objects that had fallen into his possession, after apparently lying neglected in a garage for decades. The relics had battle scenes carved into their cracked surface and, according to the caller's story, had been bought by his father at a car-boot sale years before.
Curtis, one of Britain's foremost antiquities experts, felt as though he'd just been parachuted into one of the more colourful episodes of Lovejoy, or even Indiana Jones. It was 2005, the art market was booming, and from the caller's description Curtis had stumbled upon a rare and important discovery: Assyrian reliefs that (depending on their condition) could be worth tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds. Curtis cleared his throat, and urged the man to bring the spoils to London for further identification.
Days later, another man – the caller's son – drew up outside the neo-Classical facade of the British Museum. Driving a modest car, he was, observers later claimed, "an everyman" who wore an inconspicuous sports jacket, tie and brown shoes, and complained of traffic on the M1. Curtis, for his part, was so excited by the relics the man carried that he showed the traveller the rest of the institution's collection of similarly rare Assyrian reliefs and agreed to take the recently discovered items to Bonhams, with a view to purchasing them for the museum's collection.
Thankfully, for Curtis at least, the sale never came to pass. A few months later, he started to smell a rat about the authenticity of the artefacts, and called in the police. Scotland Yard, in turn, revealed that the "everyman" offering him items for sale was a suspect in one of the biggest and longest-running art-forgery cases in history. His name was Sean Greenhalgh, and along with his 84-year-old father, George, and his mother, Olive, 83, he was suspected of having spent almost two decades creating fake paintings, sculptures and artefacts in a council house garden shed.
At a subsequent trial, it emerged that the Greenhalghes, who became known as the Bolton Forgers, had copied works by LS Lowry, Paul Gauguin and Barbara Hepworth. Among their victims had been Bolton Museum, which paid £440,000 for one of their phoney Egyptian statues (its experts believed the object dated from 1350BC). All three admitted to defrauding art institutions between 1989 and 2006, and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to conceal and transfer £410,392.
Last month, Sean Greenhalgh was sent to prison for four years and eight months. His mother received a suspended sentence; his father's case was adjourned while medical reports were prepared. Police experts said that in 17 years, phoney artworks worth £10m had been produced at the family's home in Bromley Cross. Scotland Yard described the eccentric Greenhalgh family as history's most diverse art forgers.
(Continued here.)
The Independent
In his dusty back office at the British Museum, John Curtis sat in slack-jawed disbelief. Down a crackly telephone line, an elderly man with a broad Bolton accent was describing three stone objects that had fallen into his possession, after apparently lying neglected in a garage for decades. The relics had battle scenes carved into their cracked surface and, according to the caller's story, had been bought by his father at a car-boot sale years before.
Curtis, one of Britain's foremost antiquities experts, felt as though he'd just been parachuted into one of the more colourful episodes of Lovejoy, or even Indiana Jones. It was 2005, the art market was booming, and from the caller's description Curtis had stumbled upon a rare and important discovery: Assyrian reliefs that (depending on their condition) could be worth tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds. Curtis cleared his throat, and urged the man to bring the spoils to London for further identification.
Days later, another man – the caller's son – drew up outside the neo-Classical facade of the British Museum. Driving a modest car, he was, observers later claimed, "an everyman" who wore an inconspicuous sports jacket, tie and brown shoes, and complained of traffic on the M1. Curtis, for his part, was so excited by the relics the man carried that he showed the traveller the rest of the institution's collection of similarly rare Assyrian reliefs and agreed to take the recently discovered items to Bonhams, with a view to purchasing them for the museum's collection.
Thankfully, for Curtis at least, the sale never came to pass. A few months later, he started to smell a rat about the authenticity of the artefacts, and called in the police. Scotland Yard, in turn, revealed that the "everyman" offering him items for sale was a suspect in one of the biggest and longest-running art-forgery cases in history. His name was Sean Greenhalgh, and along with his 84-year-old father, George, and his mother, Olive, 83, he was suspected of having spent almost two decades creating fake paintings, sculptures and artefacts in a council house garden shed.
At a subsequent trial, it emerged that the Greenhalghes, who became known as the Bolton Forgers, had copied works by LS Lowry, Paul Gauguin and Barbara Hepworth. Among their victims had been Bolton Museum, which paid £440,000 for one of their phoney Egyptian statues (its experts believed the object dated from 1350BC). All three admitted to defrauding art institutions between 1989 and 2006, and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to conceal and transfer £410,392.
Last month, Sean Greenhalgh was sent to prison for four years and eight months. His mother received a suspended sentence; his father's case was adjourned while medical reports were prepared. Police experts said that in 17 years, phoney artworks worth £10m had been produced at the family's home in Bromley Cross. Scotland Yard described the eccentric Greenhalgh family as history's most diverse art forgers.
(Continued here.)
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