Chang Dai-chien / Zhang Daqian: (1899-1983) Chinese

Regarded by many art experts as one of the most gifted master forgers of the twentieth century and was renowned for being a professional forger but also as a dealer used to sell genuine paintings.
When he noticed that his buyers couldn't tell the difference he turned to fakes!  Chang produced outstanding works reminiscent of the Ming master Shitao, as well as controversial imitations often regarded as forgeries during the early part of his career.

Zhang Daqian

A. Beers. (19C) Belgian

A. Beers, was a faker of fakes.

A 19th-century Belgian artist who according to art historian Hans Tietze;  "because Beers didn’t have time to fill all his commissions, he had inferior artists make copies of his paintings. When they were well done he signed them himself. [Tietze wrote.] When they were not, he had the copyists sign them with his name for him, thus, if they aroused suspicion, he could disown them.

By this method, Beers himself helped to forge genuine and even fake A.Beers paintings!

No image available

Yves Chaudron: (C 1900) French

Chaudron w as reputed to be one of the most gifted counterfeiters in the art world.  

He certainly was a well respected conservator but  also really a master forger.

From his studio in the Bohemian artist district, Montmarte, Chaudron would copy great paintings which had been lost or stolen, which his collaborator the Edouardo Marquis of Valfierno would then sell on to collectors.

He was most notoriously responsible it's believed, for copying Da Vincis La Gioconda in the famous 1911 Mona Lisa painting theft from the Louvre.

Elmyr de Hory: (1906-1976) Hungarian

De Hory was a Hungarian art forger who lived on the island of Ibiza. De Hory made hundreds of art forgeries and duped collectors with his Picassos, Modiglianis and Matisses but also painted works signed Van Dongen.

The Dutch artist himself, towards the end of his life and in need of money, is said to have endorsed more than once the validity of such de Hory fakes which were sold on as original by Fernand Legros. 

In the 1950s and 1960s claiming to have sold over a thousand works in his career, de Hory was featured with Clifford Irving in Orson Welles' documentary, F for Fake, but was never successfully convicted of the crime of forgery or fraud.

Following his death, de Hory's paintings have since became very valuable. His paintings now becoming so popular that even forgeries of his forgeries have appeared on the market!

Elmyr de Hory

Tom Keating: (1917-1984) British

Thomas Patrick Keating, was a true Cockney born in Lewisham. He made a particular speciality out of producing forged water-colours by Samuel Palmer and fine oil paintings by Dutch, Flemish, English and French old masters.

The infamous yet loveable British rogue was a remarkable forger who certainly showed up all the experts in a forgery career which landed him in jail charged for conspiracy to defraud!

Born into a poor family, he failed to achieve any real fame in the art world and felt himself shunned and just like many artists before and indeed after him, He turned to faking to prove his talent.

This was likely to get his own back on society as Keating saw the art world and in particular the gallery system as 'utterly rotten.'

As he himself wrote;

"avant-garde fashion, with critics and dealers often conniving to line their own pockets at the expense both of naive collectors and impoverished artists".

Tom Keating effectively avenged himself by producing forgeries of all sorts in a prolfic and remarkable career. Oil paintings, water colours and drawings flowed out of his studio, all which were certified as genuine works by artists such as Gainsborough, Renoir, Van Dongen, Degas, Fragonard, Boucher, Modigliani and of course Samuel Palmer. One clear and important point that was missed was that Keating planted "time bombs" in all his pictures, Often writing snide or blatantly rude comments in lead white on the canvas before he started the painting, knowing full well that if the works were examined properly in the first place and x rayed, they'd show up!

Not satisfied with just that, he would always plant obvious flaws within the compositions and often used materials which out dated the original time frame of the fake he'd painted by hundreds of years.

Admitting to painting over 200 Kornelius Kreighof pastiches which are still floating around Canada somewhere today, he was prolific to say the least and of his John Constables and other fine reproductions and there is only an guestimate of what is out there!

He is reported to forged over 2,000 paintings by something like 100 artists.

One remarkable piece was the Haywain - which he painted backwards!

Ironically, after confessing in 1976, he was to star in his own major television program on Channel 4 in the UK on how to paint like the masters!

Tom Keating

Derek Hughes: (1925 -2003) British

An unsung gentleman British master of faking English Naive and Provincial School primitives, usually executed on timber panels and old canvas pot boilers which he cleaned off with thinners.

His supplies of wood, canvasses and particularly old paint tubes, were bought in to his studio in Fowey regularly, purchased from local auctioneers in Cornwall.
Looe, Lostwithiel and Par were his own favourite haunts before he contracted Parkinsons and couldn't get around as much but he had a regular team of 'friends' supplying him with product on which to paint.

He principally concentrated on the production of fake animal art. Old Gloucestershire spot pigs, prize bulls and sheep, but very successfully reproduced many works purportedly by Eugene Boudin which he turned out in profusion..

He lived, taught painting and worked vociferously from a small ground floor studio on the Espanade in Fowey, where many of the fake paintings were exhibited in his bay window for holidaymakers to see and of course, buy!

Derek colluded rather well with the local baker who happily 'baked' his works in the large bread ovens 'to give them age' in return for the odd masterpiece, many of which lined the walls of his three story town house.

As he told me many times and much like Tom Keating, Derek turned to his tongue in cheek faking simply to get his own back a bit on an art world. A world that did not truly recognise his own talent. But more often than not, he painted fakes just for fun!

A prime example of his dry humour, he exibited many of his works at Constables Studio which was housed in the Old Fowey Police Station and Jail!

Derek Hughes

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Lothar Malskat:(1913-1988) and  Dietrich Fey. German

This pair were German master forgers who swamped the German art market with up to 2,000 expert imitations of 71 ancient and modern masters. Everything from Rembrandts to Utrillos. They masterfully copied such artists as Degas, Corot, Gauguin, Renoir, Rousseau, Chagall and Munch, with Malskat doing all of the faking work. Sometimes he would copy famous old paintings, sometimes imitate the style of old masters. Incredibly, Malskat could forge one a day and was so good at faking the French impressionists that they took less than an hour to make. Fey then forged the signatures on the paintings. 

Unfortunately, the pair went too far when they were involved with the 'restoring' of Gothic murals and Frescoes which magically appeared whenever they worked.

Feys firm were commissioned to restore the frescoes of a cathedral, the Marienkirche in Lübeck which had been severely damaged in World War II. The medieval frescoes on its walls had nearly disappeared! Fey's company happily did the work usefully, behind closed doors!  The restorations finishing in 1951.

The restorers were immediately praised for their good work and for discovering upreviously unknown Frescoes. The new treasures were unveiled with great ceremony during the 700 anniversary celebrations of the founding of the Marienkirche; Embarrasingly as it would transpire, with dignitaries in attendance at the unveiling which included various government ministers such as Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, the West German government celebrated the finds by printing 2 million postage stamps depicting the newly found frescoes!

In 1952, Malskat, Feys assistant, announced that he had painted the frescoes himself and instead of restoring the original frescoes, had whitewashed the walls and painted them with new works. Both were arrested.

Fey got 20 months and Malskat 18. The frescoes were rapidly removed from the church walls.

When asked why had he confessed? Malskat said that he was angry that his partner Fey grabbed all the glory over the restoration of St. Mary's old frescoes!

Lothar Malskat

Eric Hebborn: (1934-1996) British.

It's written that: "Hebborn was a rogue who had no limits to his skulduggery."

Eric Hebborn was a British master art forger who defrauded the art world in the 1960s with purportedly over a thousand Old Master drawings, single handedly, ruining the art market for such works in the process. In his memoir published in 1993, [Drawn to Trouble: Confessions of a Master Forger" (Random House),] Hebborn disclosed the scary details of a lifelong career spent faking the works of Old Masters, some of which hung in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum and the Pierpont Morgan Library.

Eric began his career in the seedy London studio of the mysterious George Aczel, 'Picture Restorer to the Trade'

Hebborn copied the style of artists such as; Corot, Castiglione, Van Dyck, Poussin, Savelli Sperandio, Francesco del Cossa, Mantegna, Ghisi, Rubens,Tiepolo, Piranesi and Jan Breughel, with huge success, duping great art auction houses, including Christie's and Sotheby's and made a good living out of duplicating works of art for owners who didn't want the real thing hanging on the wall.

Apparently even the Foreign office were clients of his.

Hebborns forging was unmasked by Art dealers in the late 1970's, though he never actually faced any criminal prosecution.

Hebborn died from headwounds in Italy under 'mysterious circumstances' in 1996? the art world probably breathing a huge sigh of relief!

Eric Hebborn

David Stein: (1935 - 1999) French

Master forger of Picasso.

David Stein is a French born forger who never physically copied a painting but painted original paintings in the style of: Chagall, Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Paul Klee, Miro, Jean Cocteau and Rouault and got away with it.

That is until he was jailed for forgery in the 60's.

See the book "Three Picassos Before Breakfast"

Having served a prison term in the USA, he was deported to his native France, where he served another jail sentence.

David Stein

Konrad Paul Kujau: (1938-2000) German

Included here as a master forger and the German author of the Hitler Diaries. Again it is very well recorded. lesser known is that he was a forger of many things.

Many of the manufactured relics he sold included military helmets, uniforms, flags, medals, forged letters and documents allegedly by former SS officials. Yet, of all the items he sold, his most popular were actually paintings purportedly created by Hitler.

Konrad Kujau

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Contents:

Greatest art fakers

1/Romans, Sculpture forgers,  Chinese, Italian stone carvers, Jacopo di Poggibonsi, Filippo Lippi, Piero del Pollaiuolo, Sandro Botticelli, Michelangelo Simoni, marble cupid, Wolfgang Küffner, Albrecht Dürer, William Henry Ireland, Shakespeare, painting forger, Paul Désiré Trouillebert, Corot forger, Eugenio Lucas Velasquez,  Goya faker, Giovanni Bastianini, Faked Italian Old Masters, Italian Old Masters,

2/ Emile Schuffenecker, van Gogh faker, Earl M. Washington, Print forger, Icilio Federico Joni, paintings forger, Joseph van der Veken, Fake Miniatures,

old master paintings, Giorgio De Chirico, stolen art, Johann Georg Paul Fischer,  Alceo Dossena, sculpture, Han van Meegeren,  faker of Vermeer, Otto Wacker, Spanish Forger, medieval miniatures, Christian Goller, Guy Hain,  Faker of Rodin, Renoir, Maillol, Camille Claudel, Carpeaux, Barye, Fremiet, Mène sculptures.

3/ Chang Dai-chien, Zhang Daqian, A. Beers, Yves Chaudron, Elmyr de Hory,

Faker of Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse, Tom Keating, Samuel Palmer, Derek Hughes, Boudin, English primitive paintings, Lothar Malskat , Dietrich Fey,

Eric Hebborn, Forger of old master drawings, David Stein, Picasso, Chagall, Matisse, Braque, Paul Klee, Miro, Cocteau, Rouault, Konrad Kujau, hitler watercolours, 

4/ Jean-Pierre Schecroun, Picasso forgeries,  Pamela Ivan Liberto, Rover Thomas forgers, Geert Jan Jansen, Appel, Cocteau, Dufy, Erfman, Eyck, Gestel, Matisse, Miro, Picasso, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Peter Paul Reubens,  John Myatt, John Drewe, Dubuffet, de Stael, Chagall, Sutherland, Ben Nicholson, Alberto Giacometti,  William Blundell,  Blackman, Monet,

John Douglas O'Loughlin,  Tjapaltjarri paintings, Tony Tetro,  Painted, Chagall, Rembrandt, Dali, Rothko, Paul Cezanne, Gustav Klimt, Robert Thwaites, John Anster Fitzgerald, Ely Sakhai: Gauguin faker, duplicator of Monet,  Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, Paul Klee, Greenhalgh family, Garden Shed Gang, Faked Gaugin, Peploe, Lowry, artefacts, treasures, Jeremy Broadway: Faked pottery, Leach, Lucie Rie,

Master Copyists

5/ Hendrik Goltzius, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Peter Paul Reubens, Eugenio Lucas Velasquez, Paul Désiré Trouillebert, Giovanni Bastianini, Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin, Paul Cezanne, Gustav Klimt, Miguel Canals, Christophe D. Petyt, The Posin Brothers Leo Stevenson, Professor Daniele Ermes Donde

Fraudsters, frauds & scandals

6/ Otto Wacker,  Vincent van Gogh, Edouardo Marquis of Valfierno, Mona Lisa art theft, Real Lessard,  de Hory, art scandal, Fernand ,Legros,  de Hory conspiracy,

Elizabeth Durack, Amiel family, Mail fraud, fake prints, Shinichi Fujimura, fake artefacts, Ethem Ulge, Fake paintings on ebay, Pierre Marcand: Distributor of fake prints, Andrew Behrman,  Dealer in fake art, Kenneth Andrew Walton, Kenneth Fetterman: Selling fake art, Ebay, Lucien Radu Stanciu, fake Brancusi sculptures,

The Counterfeiters

1/ Mary Peck Butterworth: Rhode island, currency forger, Catherine Murphy,  Coining, Robert forger Spring, letters forger, Reinhold Vasters, Ancient texts, antiquities forger,  Denis Vrain Lucas, Manuscript, Historical forger, Tadeu Hasdeu,   Sinaia lead plates, Eugene Boban: Ancient artefact,  antiquity forger,  Mudlark Forgers, Billy William Smith , Charley Charles Eaton, Mario Terenzio Enrico Casalengo, Baron Charles Weisberg, manuscripts, letters, signatures,

2/ Giovanni Cavino, Pirro Ligorio, Coin counterfeiters,  Historical documents, scripts, Riccardo Riccardi , Alfredo Fioravanti,  Ricardi family,  Terracotta Warriors ,Alfred André, Jewellery Counterfeiter, James Edward Little,  Polynesian, Maori artefacts, Gokhman Brothers,  Israel Rouchomovsky, Jean de Sperati,  stamp forger,  Joseph Cosey , Martin Coneely, autograph forger,   Ellic Howe,  Bernhard Kruger, Espionage   forgeries,  Eugene Pinny Field.

3/ Enrico, Piero Penelli, Egyptian artefact forgers,   Konrad Kujau, author of the Hitler diaries,  John Laflin,  aka, John Laffite, Historical document forger, Thomas McAnea, Bank note forger,  Lawrence Cusack,  Kennedy papers, Mark William Hofmann,  Pedro Castorena Ibarra,  Identity document forgery,  Brigido Lara, pre-Columbian,  antiquities , Lavender Hill Mob, bank note forgers, counterfeiters and distributors, Anatasios Arnaouti,, Operation Dealer no Deal, alleged production and distribution,  fake limited edition prints.