Blog'Art

By Marcus Leroux, The Times

AN ACCOMPLISHED forger who paid for his son’s school fees by selling fake Victorian oil paintings to art dealers, including an expert on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow, was jailed for two years yesterday.
Robert Thwaites, 54, conned Rupert Maas, a gallery owner and television art specialist, into paying £20,000 for a worthless fake called The Miser, supposedly by John Anster Fitzgerald, a Victorian artist who specialised in fairy paintings.

He then targeted a dealer, Christopher Beetles, who paid £100,000 at auction for a fake called Going to the Masked Ball. When detectives raided Thwaites’s home they discovered an art forgery manual and Victorian newspapers that were used to back the paintings.

Thwaites also forged Poppies with Imps and Fairies and Foliage, and planned, with his younger brother, Brian, to sell it to eminent dealers.

The brothers admitted deception between April 1999 and February 2004. Another man, Gordon Strong, 57, a teacher from Portishead, Bristol, who lied to a solicitor about one of the paintings, pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice.

He acted as a middleman, but at first thought that the painting he handled was genuine.

The brothers asked for an additional count of attempted deception to be taken into account: painting and attempting to sell a picture called Boy with Greyhounds by the French artist Agasse for £6,000 at auction in Knutsford, Cheshire.

Simon Wild, for the prosecution, told Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court that Robert Thwaites had “specialised in fairy paintings, which enjoyed popularity in Victorian times.

“A genuine John Anster Fitzgerald painting these days fetches significantly more than £100,000 at auction.”

Brian Thwaites, 50, a former soldier, modified sketches on his computer and e-mailed them to his brother, who would then paint them.

Mr Maas, who appeared on Antiques Roadshow as an expert and who owns the Maas Gallery in London, bought The Miser in April 1999. He became suspicious when Robert Thwaites returned with another painting. The painting was checked by Libby Sheldon, an art historian.

She found that some of the paint used had not been developed until after Fitzgerald’s death. “It’s a very good forgery, but there are some puzzling features,” she said.

Brian Thwaites then returned to Mr Maas with a third painting, which Mr Maas also refused.

Stuart Denny, defending Robert Thwaites, said that since 1998 his client had paid £54,000 for his son’s school fees and that failing eyesight had forced him to give up his job as a graphic designer.

He added that Robert Thwaites’s marriage was collapsing. “He was at a low ebb, he was broke and miserable.”

Mr Denny added: “What it has done is rip his family apart. He lives apart from his wife. He sees his beloved son once a week and finds it very difficult to look them in the face.”

Strong’s charge of perverting the course of justice relates to producing fake proofs of the authenticity of the painting to solicitors representing the auction house during civil proceedings with Dr Beetles. He was sentenced to 180 hours of community punishment, while Brian Thwaites was given a suspended sentence of 12 months.

Mr Maas has said that he would like to keep The Miser, even though it was a forgery.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,14933-2363905,00.html