Tom Keating (March 1, 1917 - February 12, 1984) was an art restorer and famous art forger who claimed to have forged more than 2,000 paintings by over 100 different artists. March 1 is the 60th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (61st in leap years). ... Year 1917 (MCMXVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar (see: 1917 Julian calendar). ... February 12 is the 43rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Art restoration involves the clean, repairing of, or reconstruction of art work. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

Thomas Patrick Keating was born in Lewisham,London - a Cockney - into a poor family. After World War II he began to restore paintings for a living, though he also worked as a house painter to make ends meet. He exhibited his own paintings, but he failed to break into the art market. Lewisham is an area within the London Borough of Lewisham in south-east London. ... This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ... The term cockney refers to working-class inhabitants of London, particularly east London, and the slang used by these people. ... Combatants Allied Powers Axis Powers Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000,000 Total dead: 50,000,000 Military dead: 8,000,000 Civilian dead: 4,000,000 Total dead 12,000,000 World War II (abbreviated WWII), or the Second World War, was a worldwide conflict...

Forger with a cause

Keating perceived the gallery system to be rotten, dominated, he said, by American "avant-garde fashion, with critics and dealers often conniving to line their own pockets at the expense both of naive collectors and impoverished artists". Keating retaliated by creating forgeries to fool the experts, hoping to destabilize the system. A work similar to Marcel Duchamps Fountain Avant garde (written avant-garde) is a French phrase, one of many French phrases used by English speakers. ...

Keating planted 'time-bombs' in his products. He left clues of the paintings' true nature for fellow art restorers or conservators to find. For example, he might write text onto the canvas with lead white before he began the painting, knowing that x-rays would later reveal the text. He deliberately added flaws or anachronisms, or used materials peculiar to the twentieth century. Modern copyists of old masters use similar practices to guard against accusations of fraud. Lead paint is paint containing lead, which was used until the 1970s as a white pigment. ... In the NATO phonetic alphabet, X-ray represents the letter X. An X-ray picture (radiograph) taken by Röntgen An X-ray is a form of electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength approximately in the range of 5 pm to 10 nanometers (corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 PHz... Look up Anachronism in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Technique

Keating's own approach of choice in oil painting was a Venetian technique inspired by Titian's practice, though modified and fine-tuned along Dutch lines. The resultant paintings, though time-consuming to execute, have a richness and subtlety of colour and optical effect, variety of texture and depth of atmosphere unattainable in any other way. Unsurprisingly, his favourite artist was Rembrandt. For building painting, see painter and decorator. ... Titians self-portrait, 1566. ... This article is about the Dutch painter. ...

For a 'Rembrandt', Keating might make pigments by boiling nuts for ten hours and filtering the result through silk; such colouring would eventually fade while genuine earth pigments would not. As a restorer he knew about the chemistry of cleaning fluids; so, a layer of glycerine under the paint layer ensured that when any of his forged paintings needed to be cleaned (as all oil paintings need to be, eventually), the glycerine would dissolve, the paint layer would disintegrate, and the painting - now a ruin - would stand revealed as a fake. Clay earth pigments are naturally occurring minerals that have been used since prehistoric times as pigments. ... Glycerin, also known as glycerine and glycerol, and less commonly as 1,2,3-propanetriol, 1,2,3-trihydroxypropane, glyceritol, and glycyl alcohol is a colorless, odorless, hygroscopic, and sweet tasting viscous liquid. ...

Occasionally, as a restorer, he would come across frames with Christie's catalogue numbers still on them. To help in establishing false provenances for his forgeries he would call the auction house to ask whose paintings they had contained - and then painted the pictures according to the same artist's style. Christies Auction Room in London circa 1808. ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion, because: spamvertising If you disagree with its speedy deletion, please explain why on its talk page or at Wikipedia:Speedy deletions. ...

Keating also produced a number of watercolors in the style of Samuel Palmer and oil paintings by various European masters including Francois Boucher, Edgar Degas, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Thomas Gainsborough, Amedeo Modigliani, Rembrandt, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Kees van Dongen. Watercolor is a painting technique making use of water-soluble pigments that are either transparent or opaque and are formulated with gum to bond the pigment to the paper. ... Self-portrait of the young Samuel Palmer, circa 1826. ... Mona Lisa, Oil on wood panel painting by Leonardo da Vinci La donna velata, painted in 1516, Oil on wood panel painting by Raphael Oil painting is done on surfaces with pigments that are ground and mixed into a medium of oil — especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. ... Rinaldo and Armida gained Bouchers admission to the Académie royale François Boucher (1703 in Bordeaux - May 30, 1770) was a French painter, a proponent of Rococo taste, known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories representing the arts or pastoral occupations, and several... Edgar Degas (19 July 1834 – 27 September 1917), born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas (IPA ), was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, and drawing. ... The Bathers, 1765 Inspiration, 1769 The Reader, c. ... Self-portrait, painted 1759 Thomas Gainsborough (May 14, 1727 (baptised) – August 2, 1788) was one of the most famous portrait and landscape painters of 18th century Britain. ... Amedeo Modigliani Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (July 12, 1884 – January 24, 1920) was a Jewish-Italian painter and sculptor who pursued his career for the most part in France. ... Pierre-Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841–December 3, 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. ... Kees van Dongen (January 26, 1877 – May 28, 1968), was a Dutch painter born in Delfshaven. ...

Revealing the forger

In 1970, auctioneers noticed that there were thirteen watercolor paintings of Samuel Palmer for sale - all of them depicting the same theme, the town of Shoreham. When an article published in The Times discussed the auctioneer's suspicions about their provenance, Keating confessed that they were his. He also estimated that more than 2,000 of his forgeries were in circulation. He had created them, he declared, as a protest against those art traders who get rich at the artist's expense. He also refused to list the forgeries. Shoreham is a village and civil parish in the valley of the River Darent six miles north of Sevenoaks in Kent: it is in the District of Sevenoaks. ... The Times is a national newspaper published daily in the United Kingdom since 1785, and under its current name since 1788. ...

Aftermath

Keating was finally arrested in 1977 and accused of conspiracy to defraud. That same year, he published his autobiography with Geraldine and Frank Norman. The case was dropped on account of his bad health, but years of chain smoking and the effects of breathing in the fumes of chemicals used in art restoring including ammonia, turpentine and methyl alcohol, together with the stress induced by the court case, had taken their toll. Through 1982 and 1983 Keating rallied, however, and though in fragile health, he presented television programmes on the techniques of old masters for Channel 4 in the UK. These programmes are still available on video. Just a year before he died in Colchester at age 65, Keating claimed in a television interview that, in his opinion, he was not an especially good painter. His proponents would disagree. Chain smoking is the practice of lighting a new cigarette for personal consumption immediately after one that is finished, sometimes using the finished cigarette to light the next one. ... Ammonia is a compound with the formula NH3. ... For the band, click Turpentine (band). ... Methanol, also known as methyl alcohol or wood alcohol, is a chemical compound with chemical formula CH3OH. It is the simplest alcohol, and is a light, volatile, colourless, flammable, poisonous liquid that is used as an antifreeze, solvent, fuel, and as a denaturant for ethyl alcohol. ... 1982 (MCMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1983 (MCMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... It has been suggested that Channel Four Television Corporation be merged into this article or section. ... Colchester is a town and is the main settlement of the Essex borough of Colchester in the East of England. ...

Even when he was alive, many art collectors and celebrities, such as the ex-heavyweight boxer Henry Cooper, had begun to collect Keating's work. After his death his paintings became increasingly valuable collectibles. The same year as his death, Christie's auctioned 204 of his works. The amount raised from the auction was not announced but it is said to have been considerable. Even his known forgeries, described in catalogues as "after" Gainsborough or Cézanne, attain high prices. The Sygun Museum in North Wales has one of the largest collections of Tom Keating originals. Sir Henry Cooper OBE, (born May 3, 1934), is a former British heavyweight boxer. ... Vase of Flowers (1876) Oil on canvas Paul Cézanne (January 19, 1839 – October 22, 1906) was a French painter who represents the bridge from impressionism to cubism. ...

Further reading

• Tom Keating, Geraldine Norman and Frank Normen, The Fake's Progress: The Tom Keating Story, London: Hutchinson and Co., 1977

Tom Keating often traded studies with the famous Hungarian artist Laszlo Ritter who sadly died 3 years ago. Laszlo followed a very similar path to Keating, as old masters were studied and vastly produced being sold through local cornish auction houses. Some Laszlo signed, some he didn't. The difference between the two artists was that Laszlo Ritter was able to compose originals with a style of his own, not just the copies which were the foundation of his brilliance. Tom Keating was without a doubt an inspiration to Ritter for the old masters were always a tip he continually advised him to study, recognizing Ritters natural ability. There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ...