The Art Frauds, and the Masterpieces They Copied That Fooled The World

Fakes that made a fortune

They say imitation is the highest form of flattery. But it can also be lucrative work if you can pass off a fake worth a fortune as the real thing. 

Read on to see some of the most high-profile master forgeries around. All dollar values in US dollars.

Han van Meegeren

Dutch painter and portraitist van Meegeren wasn't successful as an original artist, but blossomed as a forger of Dutch Golden Age masterpieces. He developed a technique to simulate centuries-old dried oil paint, and specialized in faking Vermeers, exploiting the Dutch master’s small known body of work to occasionally ‘discover’ new pieces. In 1942 he sold a ‘Vermeer’ – Christ with the Adulteress – to Nazi number two Hermann Göring for $625,000 at the time, equivalent to $7 million today.

Han van Meegeren

After the war, van Meegeren was sent to prison for being a Nazi collaborator and plunderer of Dutch heritage due to his deal with Göring. Facing the death sentence, van Meegeren revealed his forgeries. His defense was to paint one final fake during the trial to prove his skill. The treason charges were dropped, but he was convicted of forgery and died in prison in 1947. There are 18 known van Meegeren forgeries, which netted him tens of millions of dollars in today’s money.

John Myatt

British artist and forger John Myatt (pictured) sold around 200 forgeries (120 are said to still be somewhere in circulation). Between 1986 and 1994, he duped art critics and auction houses alike with some of his paintings which earned auction blocks at Philips, Sotheby’s and Christie’s. His “Albert Gleized” painting was bought for $32,805 by Christie’s.

John Myatt

In 1995 he was arrested by Scotland Yard and was sentenced to one year in prison in 1999 for conspiracy to defraud, but only served four months. Since his release, he has made it as an artist in his own right and one of his reproductions of famous pieces – a copy of Monet’s water lilies – fetched over $26,200. Pictured is a copy of his 'original fake' of Claude Monet's Waterlilies which can be found on his website johnmyatt.com.

Walter Keane

You may have heard of Walter Keane, an American artist who became famous for paintings of sad, big-eyed children which became a melancholic sensation in the 1960s. Millions of paintings were sold, but in reality someone else in the household was the artist, not him.

Walter Keane

For decades Walter took credit from his talented artist wife Margaret (pictured), who was left slaving away for 16 hours a day to create ‘his’ masterpieces. In the end, the con was outed by Margaret and she was awarded $4 million in compensation from her ex-husband; unfortunately Walter had drunk away the fortune. In 2014, a film about their lives was released entitled Big Eyes.

Wolfgang Beltracchi

In 2004, actor Steve Martin bought what he thought was an original artwork by German-Dutch modernist Heinrich Campendonk entitled Landscape With Horses from a Parisian gallery. He paid $850,000. What he had actually bought was not a Campendonk original, but part of an elaborate scam by mastermind Wolfgang Beltracchi. 

Wolfgang Beltracchi

Landscape with Horses (pictured) was one of 44 paintings that Beltracchi's gang – his wife Helene, her sister Jeanette and accomplice Otto Schulte-Kellinghaus – sold over a decade. Beltracchi claims the forgeries sold for millions of dollars. In 2011 Beltracchi was jailed for six years and his wife for four. In his website, Beltracchi claims that "from a penal perspective [the] works are described as forgeries. From an artistic point of view each painting is an independent, original work."

Elmyr de Hory

In 1946 a destitute Hungarian World War II refugee artist in Paris, Elmyr de Hory, sold a pen and ink drawing to a British woman who mistook it for a Picasso. After that de Hory sold his faux Picassos all over Paris and eventually the US, where he moved in 1947. He expanded his repertoire to include Matisses, Mondiglianis and Renoirs too. After a close brush with detection, he tried to go straight but it never lasted and de Hory kept returning to forgery.

Elmyr de Hory's 'Portrait of a woman' in the style of Amedeo Modigliani

The forger was eventually caught, but took his own life before being extradited to France for trial. By then a book and film based on his life had made him a celebrity. Some of his works are still in circulation today; his fake Modigliani and Monet pieces were auctioned not so long ago. Before his death de Hory insisted he had never signed his forgeries – a vital detail as painting in the style of an artist is not a crime, only signing a painting with another artist's name makes it a forgery.

The Greenhalgs

Over a 17-year period between 1989 and 2006, Shaun Greenhalgh (left) along with his brother and elderly parents, George (center) and Olive (right), duped museums, auction houses and private buyers internationally into buying his forged sculptures, paintings and rare artifacts. The family gang netted nearly $1.3 million through the scam. Shaun produced replicas of the likes of Barbara Hepworth, Paul Gauguin and LS Lowry, but the artwork he was most famous for was the Amarna Princess.

The Greenhalgs

The 20-inch Amarna Princess statuette (pictured) was bought for $577,400 in 2003, after being authenticated by experts at Christie’s and the British Museum as a 3,300-year-old work. Shaun Greenhalgh was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison for conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering. After his release from prison he launched a website selling his lawful artworks. 

Michelangelo

Now this one might shock you! The talented Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo, who created masterpieces like the Sistine Chapel, shot to fame for a forgery. In 1496, at the age of 20, Michelangelo created a marble statue of a sleeping cupid. To make the work look like a unearthed item, he threw the sculpture into acid earth – this way he could get a higher price as buyers were unlikely to consider the work of a novice sculptor.

Michelangelo

The sculpture made its way to the collection of a cardinal when it was discovered as a fake. But there’s a happy ending to the story; the cardinal saw Michelangelo’s talent and allowed him to keep the money from the sale. The rest, as they say, is history! 

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