I’m a master forger charging thousands for copycats so good experts can’t spot them…my customers aren’t who you think
DAVID HENTY’S neat, whitewashed bungalow is easy to find – there’s a blue “English Heritage” plaque on the wall bearing his name.
When he opens the front door to greet me, I have to ask: “I thought you had to be dead to get a blue plaque?”
“Ah, it’s a forgery,” comes the reply.
Of course it is. The plaque even states: “David Henty, The world’s number one art forger.”
Stepping inside the house, near Brighton, it soon becomes clear that it is a well deserved accolade.
On one wall of the entrance lobby hangs an imitation of Van Gogh’s Irises, and below it a double of Vincent’s vase of 15 Sunflowers — the original now on display in London’s National Gallery.
On the other wall are copies of two paintings by Italian master Caravaggio.
Through the open door of the spare bedroom, I spot the Mona Lisa.
Perched against the wall of another room are a Rembrandt and a Picasso. On the stair down to his workroom hangs a Banksy.
David, 67, says: “I don’t know what the other artists think because they’re dead, but Banksy — he’s not happy with me.”
‘Rolex and sports cars’
“Are you a copyist?”, I ask. He replies with a smile: “Nah, me? I’m a forger. I’ve painted more Lowrys than Lowry himself.”
On an easel in his workroom there are two pictures of grim mills and matchstick people that look like they were painted by Manchester’s most celebrated artist, LS Lowry.
David reckons he has created about 1,000 replicas of the painter’s work — and even gifted me one.
He had put the finishing touches that morning to his latest Lowrys, on authentic 1960s hardboard.
Now, he has switched his attention to a huge nude by the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani — who died penniless in 1920 — which could make him as much as £25,000.
Palette in hand, he says: “The real one sold for more than 150million dollars. Imagine having that on your wall — you’d be terrified.”
David reveals that many people who commission him to make fakes are owners of the genuine paintings.
He says: “A guy wanted to fly me from Biggin Hill in Kent down to Monaco for the day to look at a Picasso he’s got over his mantelpiece.
The real one sold for more than 150million dollars. Imagine having that on your wall — you’d be terrified
David Henty
“But he’s got young kids and they’re playing football and stuff. He wanted me to copy the Picasso, so he could put the genuine one somewhere safe and hang mine in the room instead.”
When I ask about the most expensive painting he has ever sold, David admits: “One of Boris Johnson’s pals commissioned me to paint Caravaggio’s The Supper At Emmaus.
“It’s a massive painting that hangs in the National Gallery. We’d agreed on 100 grand but, in the end, he only paid me £50,000.”
Still, not bad for a man who has never had an art lesson and only began painting to fill his time in prison — where he was serving a five-year stretch for forgery.
It was the early Nineties, Hong Kong was soon to be handed back to China and there was a huge demand for fake British passports.
As part of a £3million scam, David managed to forge the security features on the old black British passports.
But the printer the gang had roped into their scam unwittingly included two mistakes — putting “Magesty” instead of “Majesty” and missing a letter “N” out of Britannic.
But father-of-two David says: “Apart from the spelling mistakes, the police reckon they were among the best forgeries that they’d ever seen, and apparently there’s a copy of one in Scotland Yard’s Black Museum.”
In Lewes jail, East Sussex, David wandered into the prisoners’ art class to pass the time.
The son of a dodgy antique dealer, he says: “I went to just read about art because I used to like buying and selling it. I always had an eye.
“But the teacher said, ‘It’s not a library. If you come here you’ve got to paint’. There was a two-page supplement in the paper with photographs of these dark paintings by Walter Sickert, who may have been Jack The Ripper.
“I painted one of those and put it in the pottery kiln next door, to age it. On a prison visit, I gave it to my brothers, who were antique dealers, and they got £1,000 for it.
“I had lots of time to perfect my craft. I was full-time at the art class, then I went back to my cell and I’d be up till midnight working. It was like school. Every two or three weeks, I’d give my brothers a few paintings and they’d take them up to Bermondsey antiques market [in London] and different places and sell them.”
But after doing his porridge, David ended up back behind bars — this time for stealing cars.
David, who was nicked on Spain’s Costa del Crime, says: “We had a contact in London who was nicking brand-new Toyotas and four-wheel drives from the docks.
“We were getting £30,000 to £40,000 for them. In my best week, I made over 50 grand. Me and my mate made so much money, we had diamond Rolex watches and were driving Mercedes sports cars. I don’t drink, but one night we ended up buying this nightclub. Eventually, we got nicked because the police thought we were selling drugs. Then they found out the truth.”
David spent a year in Madrid’s maximum-security jail awaiting extradition over the car crimes, where his cellmate was James Hurley, the man suspected of masterminding the Millennium Dome diamond heist.
‘Unscrupulous people’
He says: “There was a Mafia guy — Vincenzo — who was fighting extradition back to Italy. He was trying to paint a picture of his wife but he was a terrible painter.
“He couldn’t speak English, I couldn’t speak Italian, but I painted his wife half a dozen times and ended up doing portraits of all the members of his family. Then I started creating fake Van Goghs and Vincenzo sold them.”
Eventually, back in the UK, David was sentenced to two-and-a-half years, but walked free from court due to time served.
He began making copies of famous paintings and flogging them on eBay.
To bullet-proof himself and stay on the right side of the law, he described his forged pieces as “in the style of”.
David says: “That was it — I was flying. I did the research to make sure they were actually good fakes.
“I started noticing my paintings were going through the auctions.
“One of them was on the front page of an auction catalogue. The painting even had D. Henty written in pencil on the back — I didn’t write it — but it went through as an original and sold. There’s some unscrupulous people about, you know. Meanwhile, I was making so much money from eBay that I got nicked by the tax-man, who phoned me up and wanted 80 grand.
“I ended up having to settle and have been paying tax ever since.”
David’s fake paintings on eBay were exposed by a posh national newspaper, but he simply started up again as “David Diamond”.
A year later, he was exposed again — but the publicity only brought him more customers and even a sell-out exhibition of his work.
While researching one of his books, author Peter James, creator of Queen Camilla’s favourite fictional detective, Superintendent Roy Grace, was looking for an art forger to quiz.
The cop who had nicked David for the passport scam introduced the two men, who have since become firm friends.
Peter even bought one of David’s fake Lowrys and, when Bargain Hunt’s Tim Wonnacott saw the picture, he was unable to confirm it was a forgery.
So, when Peter was writing his novel Picture You Dead, he asked David to create a “lost” painting by 18th-century French artist Jean- Honore Fragonard — that was so good it could not be exposed as a fake.
He says: “Peter wanted to know every detail about art forgery — how you get the correct paints, where the canvas comes from, how you can beat an X-ray.
“I created a painting for him that would have been worth £20million if it was real.
“Pablo Picasso once said, ‘Good artists copy, great artists steal’ . . . I do both.”
IN THE FRAME FOR TV DRAMA
PICTURE You Dead is being filmed for the new series of TV’s Grace, starring John Simm.
It is also a stage play – currently touring the UK – which tells how an unsuspecting couple unwittingly buy a “long-lost” masterpiece at a car boot sale.
However, as word spreads of their dream find, it quickly turns into their worst nightmare.
Only Detective Superintendent Roy Grace can stop them from paying the ultimate price.
Former Coronation Street actor Peter Ash plays an art forger based on David Henty.
David, who was brought up on a Brighton council estate, says: “It is surreal – Peter playing me with a beard and a northern accent.
“He’s quite a cheeky chappy so I think he’ll be a good match.”
Peter – who starred as Paul Foreman in Corrie – says: “David Henty has led an incredibly fascinating life. To be playing a character based on his story is a unique opportunity.
“The audiences are already loving it.”
- The Picture You Dead UK tour runs until July 26. For tickets see peterjames.com.