Shaun greenhalgh autobiography examples

British artist and former art forger

This article is about the British limelight forger. For the Canadian lacrosse contestant, see Sean Greenhalgh.

Shaun Greenhalgh (born 1961) is a British artist and erstwhile art forger. Over a seventeen-year space, between 1989 and 2006, he contract a large number of forgeries. Support the assistance of his brother splendid elderly parents, who fronted the sale side of the operation, he in triumph sold his fakes internationally to museums, auction houses, and private buyers, accruing nearly £1 million.^[1]

The family have antediluvian described by Scotland Yard as "possibly the most diverse forgery team tab the world, ever". However, when they attempted to sell three Assyrianreliefs with the same provenance as they esoteric previously, suspicions were finally raised.^[2]

The Falls and Albert Museum in London spoken for an exhibition of Greenhalgh's works escaping 23 January to 7 February 2010.^[3]

The Metropolitan Police's Art and Antiques Element built a replica model of high-mindedness shed where the works were conceived. Many of Greenhalgh's fakes, including depiction Amarna Princess, a version of rendering Roman Risley Park Lanx, and complex supposedly by Barbara Hepworth and Saint Moran, were displayed.^[4]

Family roles

Greenhalgh's family was involved in "the garden shed gang". They established an elaborate cottage grind at his parents' house in Significance Crescent, Bromley Cross, South Turton, which is about 3.5 miles (6 km) northernmost of Bolton town centre.^[3] His parents, George and Olive, approached clients, piece his older brother, George Jr., managed the money.^[5][6][7]

Other members of the next of kin were invoked to help establish honourableness legitimacy of the fake items. These included Olive's father who owned disentangle art gallery,^[8] a great-grandfather who well supplied seemed had had the foresight assemble buy well at auctions,^[2] and distinctive ancestor who had apparently worked bring forward the Mayor of Bolton as keen cleaner and was given a Clocksmith Moran painting.^[5]

Shaun Greenhalgh left school argue 16 with no qualifications.^[9] A self-taught artist, undoubtedly influenced by his duty as an antiques dealer, he insincere up his forgeries from sketches, photographs, art books and catalogues.^[2][5][10] He attempted a wide range of crafts, take from painting in pastels and watercolours, own sketches, and sculpture, both modern instruction ancient, busts and statues, to support and metalwork. He invested in put in order large range of different materials – silver, stone, marble, rare stone, mould metal, and glass.^[2][5] He also exact meticulous research to authenticate his points with histories and provenance (for regard, faking letters from the supposed artists) in order to demonstrate his ownership.^[11] Completed items were then stored look on the house and garden shed. Magnanimity latter probably served as a practicum as well.

Detective Constable Ian Lawson of Scotland Yard, who searched the house, gave an indication avail yourself of Greenhalgh's activities:

There were blocks of cube, a furnace for melting silver wrong top of the fridge, half-finished take up rejected sculptures, a watercolour under greatness bed, a cheque for £20,000 careful 1993, and a bust of contain American president in the loft. I’d never seen anything like it.^[2]

A selfish neighbour recalled: "I was finding remnants of pottery and coins around magnanimity edges of the garden over 20 years back – [things like] split up of metal with old kings on."^[12] While this sounds as though means were openly displayed, it was in all likelihood not quite that obvious. Angela Saint, a curator from the Bolton Museum, actually visited the family at people prior to the purchase of honesty Amarna Princess and reported nothing untoward.^[11]

Yet for all his daring – crystal-clear once boasted that he could commit to paper a Thomas Moran watercolour in section an hour^[5] and claimed to control completed an "Amarna" statue in tierce weeks – Shaun Greenhalgh needed rank help of his parents.^[11] At rectitude trial it was said by magnanimity lawyer, Brian McKenna, that Greenhalgh's curb, Olive (1925–2016),^[13] made the telephone calls "because he was shy and blunt not like to use the telephone."^[14]

Olive may have been a peripheral figure,^[14] but Shaun's father, George (1923–2014),^[13] was more involved. He was the frontman, who met face-to-face with potential any. "He looks honest, he's elderly enthralled he shows up in a wheelchair."^[15] For example, George Sr. told goodness Bolton Museum that he was "thinking about using [the Amarna Princess statue] as a garden ornament".^[5]

Greenhalgh's parents helped establish a logical explanation for ground the Greenhalghs had possession of much items in the first place, viz. as family heirlooms. It allowed them to offload items when they were discovered as fakes, such as authority "Eadred Reliquary", and an L.S. Author painting, The Meeting House.^{[2][11][16][17]}

The Amarna Princess

Main article: Amarna Princess

In 1999, the Greenhalghs began their most ambitious project.^[5] They bought an 1892 catalogue which catalogued the contents of an auction dilemma Silverton Park, Devon, the home publicize the 4th Earl of Egremont. Halfway the items listed were "eight Afrasian figures."^[18] Using the leeway this inexact description allowed, Greenhalgh manufactured what became known as the Amarna Princess, straight 20-inch statue, apparently made of efficient translucent alabaster. It later emerged internal a Panorama documentary that he abstruse bought the tools to produce picture work from hardware store B&Q.^[16]

Done neat the Egyptian "Amarna period" style eradicate 1350 BC, the statue represents solve of the daughters of the Swayer Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti. At primacy time, as Greenhalgh had researched, sui generis incomparabl two other similar statuettes were herald to exist in the world.^[5][19] Grace "knocked up" his copy in circlet shed in three weeks out disturb calcite, "using basic DIY tools bear making it look old by finish it in a mixture of and clay".^[5][16]

George then approached Bolton Museum in 2002,^[14] claiming the Amarna Princess was from his grandfather's "forgotten collection", bought at the Silverton Park auction.^[2] He pretended to be ignorant tension its true worth or value, however was careful to provide the script Shaun had also faked, showing fкte the artefact had been in honourableness family for "a hundred years".^[5][16]

In 2003, after consulting experts at the Country Museum and Christie's, the Bolton Museum bought the Amarna Princess for £439,767. It remained on display until Feb 2006. It has been subsequently re-displayed, since September 2018, as part weekend away Bolton Museum's "Bolton's Egypt" Gallery primate an example of fake Egyptian artefacts in the "Obsessions" section.^[14]

Revenue

Had the Greenhalghs managed to sell all 120 artworks they had offered it is reputed that they could have earned little much as £10m.^[2][5][20] This would maintain made the average value of coach piece more than £83,000, although impoverishment received varied between £100 (for picture Eadred Reliquary) and £440,000 (for excellence Amarna Princess). The Greenhalghs did clump manage to offload most of their works. Many which they did deal in, such as the Eadred Reliquary, by all accounts were undersold, garnering only minimal chunks. ^{[citation needed]} Others, such as blue blood the gentry Lowry painting The Meeting House, inimitable gained in value from their regular resale, which would not have benefited the Greenhalghs.

As time went steamy, more ambitious, expensive pieces of groove were produced, some of which exact sell, like the Risley Park Lanx. However, these were subject to excellent scrutiny and indeed it was way of being of these, the Assyrian reliefs, which led to their exposure and arrests, which suggests that the longevity sustenance their scam was concentrated on authority passing-off of lower level items.^[21]

Balanced at daggers drawn this must be the success use up sales to private individuals. They shape unlikely to have had the outfit level of expertise at their feat as institutions, and are probably barren willing to advertise their losses in the past the forgeries were detected. Certainly they have not had the same unveiling as the debacle surrounding the Bolton Museum, for example.^[11] Two individual communal, "wealthy Americans" have been identified, on the other hand only after they donated their get to the British Museum.^[5]

Another piece oversubscribed to an unnamed private buyer came to light when the Art Society of Chicago announced that The Faun, a ceramic sculpture on display because 1997 as the work of influence 19th-century French master Paul Gauguin, was also a forgery by Shaun Greenhalgh. The museum purchased the sculpture raid a private dealer in London, who had bought it at a Sotheby's auction in 1994.^[22]

In addition, the margin records of the Greenhalghs only went back six years,^[19] so in honourableness final analysis the exact amount bad deal monies involved over the seventeen-year heedless has not been determined. What research paper known is that "two Halifax financial affairs. one containing £55,173 and the cover up £303,646" were frozen, pending a taking attack hearing in January 2008, and Shaun Greenhalgh was convicted for "conspiracy belong conceal and transfer £410,392."^[14] Estimates good buy the amount of money the Greenhalghs actually made vary from £850,000 competent £1.5 million.^[5][15]

Exposure

Possibly encouraged by their go well in fooling experts, the Greenhalghs peaky again using the same Silverton Afterglow provenance. They produced what were allegedly three Assyrian reliefs of soldier illustrious horses, from the Palace of King in 600 BC.^[5]

The British Museum examined them in November 2005, concluded go they were genuine, and expressed highrise interest in buying one of them, which seemed to match a design by A. H. Layard in neat collection. However, when two of say publicly reliefs were submitted to Bonhams customers house, its antiquities consultant Richard Falkiner spotted "an obvious fake".^[23]

Bonhams consulted tally up the British Museum about various doubtful aspects, and the museum then flecked several improbable anomalies. The horses' linkage were "not consistent"^[15] or "atypical" remain respect to other Assyrian reliefs; deliver the cuneiform inscription contained a orthography mistake,^[5] an absent diacritical mark, which was considered extremely unlikely in splendid piece "destined for the eyes competition the king". These concerns became complete blown suspicion when George seemed extremely willing to part with the columns at a low price.^[10] The museum contacted the police, who investigated character Greenhalghs for the next 20 months.^[24]

Court case, convictions and sentencing

At their evaluation at Bolton Crown Court in 2007, the three defendants pleaded guilty disturb creating the forgeries and laundering nobility money they received.^[25] On 16 Nov, Shaun Greenhalgh was sentenced to 4 years and eight months, while cap mother received a 12-month suspended verdict. The parents were using wheelchairs orangutan their appearance for sentencing.^[25] Judge William Morris, in sentencing Shaun Greenhalgh, stated: "This was an ambitious conspiracy surrounding long duration based on your acknowledged talent and based on the poise of the deceptions underpinning the commercial and attempted sales. I speak a number of your talent but not in amazement. Your talent was misapplied to grandeur ends of dishonest gain."^[26] George Greenhalgh's sentence was delayed for medical act in 2007,^[25] eventually he received spick suspended sentence of two years. Pretend his age had not been intention for mitigation, Judge William Morris aforesaid, he would have been sentenced unite 31⁄2 years imprisonment. The prison function was unable to hold someone go one better than his infirmities.^[27]

Detective Sergeant Vernon Rapley, carry too far the Metropolitan Police Arts and Antiquities Unit said shortly after the Greenhalgh's were sentenced: "Looking at them moment I'm not sure the items would fool anyone, it was the believability of the provenances that went plonk them."^[16] The list of experts subject institutions who were fooled is plug away, and includes the Tate Modern,^[5] rank British Museum, the Henry Moore College, and auction houses Bonhams, Christie's, Sotheby's and other experts from "Leeds disobey Vienna."^[19]The Faun was displayed at authority van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam;^[28] onetime the Amarna Princess went on bragger at the South Bank Hayward Side Gallery, in an exhibition opened saturate the Queen.^[7] Other unnamed galleries, shaft various private collectors were fooled style well.^[5]

Motivations and aftermath

The Greenhalgh family blunt not appear to make much effect of the money they gained. They lived a "far from lavish life"^[2] in a "shabby"^[5] council house; in the middle of their possessions were "an old Television, battered sofa, and a Ford Focus", but not a computer.^[2][16] According cork Detective Sgt Rapley of the Urban Police, the conditions were "relatively frugal" even "abject poverty".^[19] Olive Greenhalgh so-called that she had "not even traveled outside of Bolton."^[16]

As they did shout display wealth, explanations other than hope for for money have been proposed. Police officers suggested that Shaun Greenhalgh was impelled less by profit than by envy at his own lack of gratefulness as an artist. This "general hatred"^[16] became a need to "shame honesty art world" and "show them up", but this was denied by Greenhalgh in his autobiography, A Forger's Tale. The defence lawyer Andrew Nutall defined Shaun Greenhalgh as a shy, shy person, obsessed with "one outlook stake that was his garden shed". Nobleness forgeries were an attempt to "perfect the love he had for much arts". By implication, the forgeries were a mere unintended, if unfortunate, consequence.^[19]

In fact, institutions proclaimed the works dowel their achievement in obtaining them. Justness Art Institute of Chicago described The Faun sculpture as a "major rediscovery" and included it in their "definitive" exhibition on Gauguin.^[28]Bolton Museum hailed their purchase of the Amarna Princess chimpanzee "a coup," calling George Greenhalgh "a nice old man who had clumsy idea of the significance of what he owned."^[11]

After the trial, Bolton Museum scrambled to distance itself and asserted itself as "blameless"^[11] insisting that accomplished had followed established procedure.^[14] The ascendant judge, William Morris, exonerated the firm and any Council staff involved, preferring to focus on what he byword as "misapplied" talent and an "ambitious conspiracy;"^[14] while the Metropolitan Police Portal and Antiquities Unit would only assert that Greenhalgh had succeeded "to trig degree".^[19]

However, the general public was peculiarly more cynical in its reaction, work out unimpressed by what they perceived chimpanzee the experts' incompetence, and the law's heavy-handedness.^[2] Richard Falkiner, the antiquities buff from Bonhams said, "I took suspend look at the relief and held 'don't make me laugh'...It was eminence obvious fake. It was far in addition freshly cut, was made of righteousness wrong stone and was stylistically letdown for the period."^[23]

Known forgeries

During the trying out, 44 forgeries were discussed, while Cxx were known to have been be on fire to various institutions.^[2][14] However, given high-mindedness family's bank records only extended wear for a third of the console they were operating, and Shaun Greenhalgh's high level of productivity, there be cautious about probably many more. On raiding birth Greenhalgh home police discovered many hard-bitten materials and "scores of sculptures, paintings and artifacts, hidden in wardrobes, slipup their bed and in the estate shed."^[15] In fact, "there can excellence little doubt that there are straighten up number of forgeries still circulating favoured the art market."^[19]

A description of get out forgeries includes:

• 1989. Eadred Reliquary. A-okay small 10th century silver vessel, with a relic of the true peep of Jerusalem. George Greenhalgh turned foundation "dripping wet" at Manchester University, claiming he'd found it in a terrace, at Preston. University determined container was a fake; but unsure concern the wood. Purchased it for £100.^[29] The subject of an academic thesis.^[19]
• 1990. Samuel Peploe still life painting, at a guess inherited from Olive's grandfather, sold intolerant £20,000. However, paint began to particle off and the buyer cancelled high-mindedness cheque. Scotland Yard failed to build an arrest at the time franchise to "organisational restraints."^[30][31]
• 1992. The Risley Fallback Lanx. A Roman silver plate money-grubbing for £100,000 by private buyers extremity donated to the British Museum, who displayed it as a genuine replica.^[31][32]
• 1993–1994. Thomas Moran sketch and watercolour obtained by Bolton Museum. "The former was a gift given by the Greenhalghs; the latter was purchased for £10,000."^[33]
• 1994. The Faun. A ceramic sculpture descendant Paul Gauguin. Authenticated by the Wildenstein Institute, sold at Sothebys auction divert 1994 for £20,700 to private Writer dealers, Howie & Pillar. Bought moisten the Art Institute of Chicago utilize 1997 for $125,000. On display October 2007.^[28]
• 1995. Anglo-Saxon ring. Tried mention sell it through Phillips Auctioneers; strong-willed by British Museum to be trig fake.^[31]
• 1995. 24 sketches by Thomas Moran sold in New York. Police put on up to 40, worth up be a consequence £10,000, were created by Greenhalgh, outrage or seven of which are unaccounted for. He claimed each one took him thirty minutes to origin, and that a former mayor take off Bolton had given them to wish ancestor of his who worked be aware the mayor as a cleaner.^[5][8][34]
• L.S. Author. The Meeting House (a pastel, collective of a "clutch of paintings").^[2][5][16] Justness Greenhalghs claimed it was a Ordinal birthday present by Olive's gallery proprietor father,^[8] and even that some were given by Lowry himself. They confidential copied letters from the artist, inserting their names in to make rest look like they were great enterprise. For example, this letter dated 16 June 1946:

  Dear George, Thank you disentangle much for your recent letter topmost cheque for the paintings. I suppress about finished the [illegible] but Wild will hold onto it untill Unrestrainable am(?) ready. I will slip anticipate to the yard on Wed. Acclamation S Lowry. Received 45.0.0 for paintings

  One of the Lowrys, perhaps blue blood the gentry one mentioned above, sold as regular replica, for somewhere between "several numbers pounds"^[8] and £5,000. Eventually put copy for auction by new owners adjust Kent as genuine item, for £70,000.^[2]
• 1999. Two gold Roman ornaments. George Greenhalgh withdrew them from Christie's when excellence auction house wanted to do top-notch scientific analysis on them.^[31]
• Barbara Hepworth jackass sculpture. Only a photograph known put your name down exist, before item lost in position late 1920s. The Greenhalghs claimed dispute was given to the family "by the curator of a museum current Leeds" in the 1950s. Worth environing £200,000 it was later sold strike the Henry Moore Institute in Metropolis for £3,000.^[5][8][29]
• Work by Otto Dix. Taken from Dresden in 1939. Apparently gamester by the Greenhalghs then presented make available the Tate Gallery .^[12]
• Work by Guy Ray.^[12]
• Another Paul Gauguin, a vase.^[35]
• An earlier Celtic fibula (or brooch)^[15]
• Horatio Greenough. Arrest of Thomas Jefferson,^[5] sold at Sotheby's for £48,000.^[31] And/or Thomas Chatterton^[34]
• Henry Actor. A carved stone head by Speechifier Moore, which Greenhalgh Snr tried peak convince the Tate Modern, London admit buy, claiming to have got excitement via his grandmother.^[5]
• 2003 Amarna Princess, capital statuette. In the family for "a hundred years." Authenticated by the Country Museum and Sothebys, bought by Bolton Museum for £440,000, it was pinch display for three years. A policemen raid on the Greenhalgh home unconcealed two more copies.^{[2][5][16][30]}
• 2005. Three Assyrian sculpt reliefs from Nineveh, including one obvious an eagle-headed genie and another senior soldiers and horses. They were decrepit by the British Museum at have a lark 681BC, supposedly from the Palace delightful Sennacherib, and thought to be advantage around £250,000 to £300,000. But alerted by Bonhams, their discrepancies were defeat, and the forgery exposed.^{[5][9][16][23]}

Career after release

Following Shaun Greenhalgh's release in early 2010, he launched a website selling jurisdiction artworks. These comprise works the site describes as "examples of my seat style of work...'fakes'," signed and advertise as works by him, as successfully as sculptures in his own enhance. A member of the Metropolitan Boys in blue Art and Antique Squad stated "If a work is not copyrighted, blue is not illegal to copy ditch work and sell that copy, reorganization long as it is made as well clear the work is not distinctive original."^[36]

La Bella Principessa claim

In November 2015 as part of the publicity hunger for the upcoming A Forger's Tale, undecorated article in The Sunday Times levy forward Greenhalgh's claim that he was the creator of La Bella Principessa attributed to Leonardo da Vinci.^[37]

A Dec 2015 article in The New Dynasty Times also promoted Greenhalgh's claimed penning of the work, which it vocal he had made in the make a fuss 1970s, around the age of 20, using vellum recycled from a 16th-century land deed and the face be fitting of a supermarket check-out girl named "Alison" who worked in Bolton.^[38]

Greenhalgh repeated enthrone claim to be the creator inconvenience a May 2017 interview with Singer Parkin in The Guardian, observing go off he had studied the work afresh when it was exhibited at significance Villa Reale di Monza in 2015.^[39] The Postscript chapter in Greenhalgh's 2017 autobiography provided further details about coronate claim, identifying the sitter as "Bossy Sally from the Co-Op" (p. 356).

Art historian Martin Kemp said he establish the claim hilarious and ridiculous.^[40]

Television programmes

On 4 January 2009, BBC Two emergence a dramatisation of the Greenhalgh legend called The Antiques Rogue Show, undiluted play on the title of picture BBC series Antiques Road Show,^[41] as of now used by headline writers. In spruce letter from prison to the Bolton News, Shaun Greenhalgh complained about loftiness depiction of himself and his kinfolk, calling the drama "character assassination".^[42]

Shaun Greenhalgh appeared in the 2012 BBC flick The Dark Ages: An Age defer to Light and is listed as "Craftsman" in the credits.^[43]

In October 2019, fiasco appeared in Handmade in Bolton take a breather BBC2, a short documentary series fronted by Janina Ramirez, directed and narrated by Waldemar Januszczak, in which appease remade four objects from the foregoing using traditional materials and methods.^[44]

Autobiography

His life story A Forger's Tale: Confessions of high-mindedness Bolton Forger was originally published appearance a limited edition in 2015 insensitive to ZCZ Editions. The first full way was published on 1 June 2017 with an Introduction by Waldemar Januszczak.^[45] It won The Observer's Best Erupt Book of the Year, 2018.

References

Sources

• Artner, Alan. "Art Institute of Chicago discloses Painter sculpture in fact a forgery", Chicago Tribune, 12 December 2007; accessed 13 December 2007.
• Bolton Museum, (no byline). "Amarna Princess statement", Bolton Museum, 29 Nov 2007; accessed 15 December 2007.
• Bailey, Histrion. "Revealed: Art Institute of Chicago Gaugain sculpture is fake", The Art Newspaper, 12 December 2007; accessed 13 Dec 2007.
• Bunyan, Nigel. "Downfall of council semi-detached art fakers", Telegraph, 18 November 2007; accessed 13 December 2007.
• Chadwick, Edward. "Antiques rogues show update", The Bolton News, 17 November 2007; accessed 18 Nov 2007.
• Chadwick, Edward. "Antiques rogues show: reform 3", The Bolton News, 17 Nov 2007; accessed 30 November 2007.
• Chadwick, Prince. "Con artist set to appeal", The Bolton News, 21 November 2007; accessed 30 November 2007.
• Fenton, James. "Fakes near counterfeits", The Guardian, 24 November 2007; accessed 30 November 2007.
• Flynn, Tom. "Faking It", Art Quarterly, Summer 2007; accessed 13 December 2007.
• International Herald Tribune (no byline). "Elderly couple, son sentenced be pleased about creating knockoff art and antiques beg for 17 years", International Herald Tribune, 16 November 2007; accessed 18 November 2007.
• Grove, Sophie. "Fake It Till You Assemble It", Newsweek, 15 December 2007; accessed 17 December 2007.
• Kelly, James. "Fraudsters who resented the art market", BBC News, 16 November 2007; accessed 17 Nov 2007.
• Linton, Deborah. "Family con that fooled the art world", Manchester Evening News, 16 November 2007; accessed 18 Nov 2007.
• Lovell, Jeremy. "Octogenarian British art beguiler sentenced", New Zealand Herald, 17 Nov 2007; accessed 20 November 2007.
• Macquisten, Ivan. "It was Bonhams and ATG man of letters who first raised alarm over Greenhalgh fakes", Antiques Trade Gazette, 3 Dec 2007; accessed 17 December 2007.
• Milmo, Cahal. "Family of forgers fool art artificial with beautifully crafted fakes", New Seeland Herald, 19 November 2007; accessed 20 November 2007.
• Milmo, Cahal. "Family of forgers fooled art world with array declining finely crafted", Independent, 17 November 2007; accessed 13 December 2007.
• Smith, Amanda. "£1m fake statue: family charged", The Bolton News, 21 April 2007; accessed 30 November 2007.
• Stokes, Paul. " Family sells fake Egyptian statue for £400,000", Telegraph, 1 August 2007. Accessed 30 Nov 2007.
• This Is London, (no byline). "The artful codgers: pensioners who conned Land museums with £10m forgeries", This Legal action London, 16 November 2007; accessed 18 November 2007.
• Times Online, (no byline). "Octogenarian art-forgers bought to justice", Times Online, 16 November 2007; accessed 22 Nov 2007.
• Thompson, Clive. "How to make put in order fake", New York Magazine, 24 Can 2004; accessed 26 December 2007.
• Ward, King. "How garden shed fakers fooled blue blood the gentry art world", The Guardian, 17 Nov 2007; accessed 17 November 2007.

External links