this is just a little storeroom so
you've got a caravaggio
six and a half foot basket there's
another emoji there only there
oh is this a picasso i mean i do
picassos sometimes i can do two or three
in a day before breakfast you know
because they're
they're not that difficult and i gave
one to a friend of mine he sold it
someone bought it and they took it to
the auction
and they valued a million
[Music]
forgery is one of the greatest
challenges the art world faces today
with fakes and misattributions estimated
to be as high as 50
of all works in the art market sold 6
million too
to combat this there has sprung a
multi-billion dollar industry of
authentication services
however away from the premier arts
circuit there is a blind spot where
forgeries get through with ease
i'm on my way to meet david henty and
billy the brush mumford
two convicted forgers who have made
thousands selling their fakes on ebay
the two lads like to go to this car boot
sale to find historical materials
appropriate to whatever they're forging
although they claim to have hung up
their forgery boots they're going to
show me how they would fake painting
then i'm going to take that painting to
one of london's premier authentication
services to see if they can clock it's a
fake
greek philly sydney hiya
how you doing hi how are you doing hi
philly nice to meet you
take me through this license plate van
gogh's
i've got i've got i've got van gogh as
well
yeah and i've got all the van gogh
options yeah yeah
well i'm also i'm just buying one then
for 63r
forger what have you got here
philly's got a load of catalogs so i'm
going to be looking through these later
on this afternoon
and thinking oh if i get little canvas
like that you know i'll stick something
on
you know you get some good ideas for me
we're going to go down to the market now
but
just before that um unfortunately i
served uh
some time in a prison about two or three
minutes away
so we might go via there
before billy was caught under the
police's operations sketch
and sentenced to two years he had forged
one thousand pieces that had made their
way across the globe
detectives have only managed to find 40
so far meaning there's a lot still in
circulation
so how did you get into art forgery well
i was dismissed from
st martin's in 1968 it was something to
do with
me being intoxicated in a life
drawing class it was the either get a
job
or um use what limited artistic skills i
had and that's the road i went down
do you still uh forge art no
not at all wouldn't touch you with a
barge pole do you do any art
um yeah i doodle sometimes yeah do they
look any similar to any other pieces of
art
sometimes sometimes yeah so have you
served any time for art forgery
i serve time for forgery forging
passports
right i went into the um the prison art
department before i just go in there
read about art and learn about it
but the teachers there said no you've
got to actually paint when i came out
i thought this is what i want to do but
it's very difficult to sell your own
work
but then i painted a lovely little paul
henry irish
artist i put it on i've got a thousand
pounds and i was getting
i'm gonna say too much because i've
straightened the tax man out now i had
the criminal tax
investigation because i was making so
much money there we better go billy okay
we better go we're gonna miss all the
old canvases you certainly are
what's your favorite thing about the art
world oh the money mark rothko
a wonderful american abstract painter
said that to be an artist you have to
steal
a space on a rich man's wall and i love
that
i don't forge famous
artists per se i do the one that they
could have painted
when i used to do ebay and stuff like
that there was a caveat saying
there's no paperwork or provenance with
this painting so sold in the style of
after the artist that way you're covered
by law you could go to the auction and
put it in
and not say anything and if they go yes
then it goes through
you know and billy and i get all the the
art catalogs and quite often you'll open
it up and you'll see
so do you think uh auction houses kind
of profit off not asking questions
yeah yeah yeah i mean if they can turn a
blind eye
they want it to be right because if it
isn't right
they ain't going to earn a dime so how
would we go about
finding the tools if you want to get it
past the forensics
you have to use um age-appropriate
materials that's one for you isn't it
yeah yeah this is it does it have a look
yes
yep thanks yeah windsor and newton it's
an old one
about 1910 1915 perfect perfect for a
little uh
little painting i could do a larry on
there yeah it's good it's like an early
lower yeah how much are they
these are old ledgers look at that one
of larry's um things that he did he'd
drawn any of it you know any letters in
his pocket and envelopes and stuff they
turn up every now and again
and if they're from the 50s or 60s and
they've got a good chance of being a
lowry drawing
that was a good buy mate i should do a
little masterpiece from here later
oh and sweet home
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the whole purpose of coming here is for
david to have a look at some frames
how much of this billy nice selection
david let's get them out before we talk
dave i cannot talk money in the door in
case i
faint at the price says rusty nails
where did they get like that with a
saltwater aspect
why would anyone want rusty nails
pitched the hell out of me
i think it's time passenger time really
i i don't think it's a chemical process
no don't lump them all together though
they're individual prices david
individual price this one beautiful 90
quid
you're adding it up 70 quid what first
year
this one and a quarter don't
this one here for my friend as a gift
nothing
gornish that's nice yeah that's a little
italian paint in there are you in these
on
yeah good what's that 375. yeah i
thought yeah
40 quid 23 mazda
pleasure to meet you all i wish i could
say it was a pleasure
to me come here you schmuck
[Music]
should i take in these ones in here yeah
if you wouldn't mind
i've got to be so careful with that god
just don't say that hello
oh come on rook rocky
oh wow yeah this is insane
this is just a little storeroom with
some my uh
paintings in there so you've got
caravaggio caravaggio
i think there's another one oh there's
caravaggio there as well salvador mandy
who went for the most money ever at
auction
it did 450 million yeah six and a half
foot basket
you could take that and do the forensics
on it yeah and it would come back
as genuine really yeah there's another
emoji gliani there
basket how often are you doing these
paintings
every day i get up every day and then i
work seven days a week just
because i really enjoy it oh is this a
picasso i mean i do picassos you know
sometimes i can do two or three in a day
you know they're not that difficult and
i gave one to a friend of mine he sold
it
someone bought it and they took it to
the auction and they valued a million
they had quite a lot of interest in it
but um came out in the papers that
this forger said it's his the guy who
owned it started them threatening
and he told um a friend of mine that
goes in there that
buys stuff you know tell him i'm going
to get someone to burn his house down
i'll put
your house my house here put a uh
firebomb
for the letterbox so i reported it to
the police and i've got all cameras put
up in the front of my house and stuff i
just said
on twitter i said do due diligence you
know if you're selling a million pound
painting
get it authenticated itself and was all
the tv cameras were there and uh
the news channels and i said it flopped
i think they said they sold it for 8
000.
amazing quite a view yeah yeah it's good
did you often work out here yeah if i
can
i love to work out here just because
it's uh yeah it's nice it's peaceful you
know and i painted a little seascape
so how much like have you studied larry
then to to understand how he paints like
down to a tee so i've been to his
the lowry gallery um i bought
every book i can find um about lowry
when you've stepped in their shoes you
understand a bit more than uh
than an academic you're actually living
it but this one i'm making up
oh so i'll put a bit of sky so it could
be like a lost lowry that's just ended
up at auction
well it might well do do you think
they're like any problems
with art forgery well i think there's a
lot of problems with uh
people making money off of dead eyes
you know and that didn't make any money
in their own lifetimes you know there's
more of a problem with that with a
thought you know you're an
ordinary girl you love picasso or you
love mo diglia
you haven't got 5 million or 10 million
or 100 million but i still want to paint
him
i don't want to print a lifeless print
so
you know is that wrong i think the basic
thing is
i don't i don't care about the money i
love the art when i go to bed at night i
can't wake you up in the morning if i'm
working on
you know something i really really like
you're in your own world
basically if i was a multi-millionaire
i'd still get up in the morning and
paint pictures obviously technology's
advanced do you think that makes it
harder to make
good forged forgeries no no no no
i think you can beat the uh the
forensics and the rest is about good
craftsmanship really so what do you
think
well passable
[Laughter]
okay well give me a call when it's ready
and i'll take it to the lab okay
and i'll let you know how it goes as
long as we get half something okay
so i dropped off david hensey's lowry
the other day and they're going to run a
few tests so
fingers crossed for david
hello i'm sydney
there it is here it is so here's the
lowry um
basically dismantled in taking it out of
its frame
the tape's still quite sticky which
means it wasn't on there for a long time
taking the painting out he's clearly
used one of these
old notebooks 1955 so no question about
it this
is old this isn't particularly
impressive now
we're going to take that and have a look
down the microscope straight away we can
see that it's
it's very yellow looking and this is
typical of forgeries because
you want the object to look old and if
you just paint it in nice fresh bright
colors
it's going to look new there's no
obvious cracking
and yes we've got an
obvious fake patina you see it right
away
we did find what we think is a pet hair
they have tea dogs
old master artists we're really careful
about their materials
and you don't find dog hairs so now that
we've um
with our tiny scalpel taking our tiny
samples
we're going to take them to the lab and
see what we've got
hi we brought a stub with some samples
from the lowry painting
so what's this machine it's actually one
of our best tools for looking for
forgeries
it does the best job of anything in this
room for looking for modern 21st century
pigments
is there any way that anyone could trick
these machines
no so now we'll go have a quick look at
our
imaging room where we'll be taking an
x-ray as well as the lowry
the way this works is the the painting's
placed in the chassis
and then the camera moves so it's like
google earth you get lots of little tiny
images
that are then put together in a computer
and you can zoom in and zoom out it's
like having a microscope without a
microscope
so one of the most famous quotes which
is actually on david hunty's website
is i am a simple man and i use simple
materials ivory black vermillion
prussian blue yellow ochre
flake white and no medium however we
found
cadmium red instead of vermilion we're
accumulating evidence
and the evidence it's not looking good
it's not pointing in the right direction
here's our x-ray of the lowry as you can
see
it's kind of not very
controlled looking strokes and looking
at other lowries
um we see that there's kind of a
control so david was often selling heat
on ebay do you think
that means that there's a bit of a blind
spot for getting these kind of lowries
through
yeah i mean it's for all sorts of things
people love to make discoveries
but it's really buyer beware if you're
not an expert
if you're getting a bargain it's
probably not a bargain
i think for the market he's shooting at
for doing something to sell on ebay
he's going to fool the average punter
who's not an expert but
copying things for profit that's
deception and that's where it becomes a
criminal act
forgers will speak about channeling you
know the the dead artist as if it was
some sort of psychic gift they had
which is all hugely dodgy it's just
justification for profiting on someone
else's genius
so it's david henty fears he he's not an
artist he's a criminal
yeah basically um and he's a
bit overrating himself to say judge is
the best
copyist in the world okay won't let him
know
hi david how are you it's sydney
hi hey i'm good i just left art analysis
i think it went well oh really well
we sound surprised there's one problem
with like the paint the type of white
paint and there was the vermilion
apparently the vermilion was wrong
i didn't know that i didn't think they'd
pick up on it i mean i didn't do it
to fool anyone really no of course not
david
[Laughter]
there's literally no way you could have
got past her
honestly yeah there's enough no way
bye david oh he's so sweet
i thought he was going to get a bit
miffed but um that's easy i've
encouraged him
to keep keeping
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you