From restorer, to forger, to tv host of an art show, Keating wanted to combat the same system that ended up making him famous.

Like many young artists, Tom Keating (1917 – 1984), the son of a family of house painters, began his artistic career with dreams of excelling in the complicated and fickle art industry. But like many who venture into this field and are forgotten, he quickly discovered that having good technique was not enough to stand out. Having entered Goldsmith College in London with great effort, he abandoned his artistic studies after repeated comments from his teachers who were of the opinion that "although his technique was excellent, his 'originality' was insufficient."

To earn a good income, Keating began working in art restorers' workshops, a profession for which there was a lot of work at the time, a result of the damaged works and losses during the First World War. That's how he came to work for a restorer of questionable moral named Fred Roberts. Seeing Keating's outstanding artistic abilities, Roberts maliciously challenged him to “paint a piece in the style of Frank Moss Bennett” to test his abilities. Keating produced a very fine work and proudly signed it, but he later discovered that Roberts changed his signature to Bennet's and sold the work to a London gallery owner as an original.

Disappointed by the treatment he was receiving from the art industry, Keating saw an area of opportunity with his skills. He began producing fake works by famous artists such as Edgar Degas, Samuel Palmer and John Constable, and with the help of his then partner, Jane Kelly, he initially distributed them to random people: neighbors, friends, the gas dispatcher, a bartender, a family of farmers and more. Later, with the help of a couple of his friends, he authorized them to sell their fake works to galleries in exchange for painting materials. In addition to allowing the recipients of the works an unusual income from the sale of these fake works, an oversupply of works by famous artists was created in the art market, while collectors and gallery owners bought the works believing that they were original.

Furthermore, Keating left evidence within the works themselves so that they would be detected as false. He painted on canvases that already had other works on them (which could be found with X-rays), used materials that did not exist in the original artist's time or intentionally made small changes in the details of the works. All these clues, which were invisible to the general public, could be definitive to the keen eye of a restorer or an expert who had the necessary equipment to study them.

Everything was "going well” until 1970, a reporter from the Times, Geraldine Norman, received a call from an art critic warning her that a publication she had made, about the sale of a work by Samuel Palmer, seemed to be a work false. In the following years, Norman would begin to question the origin of several supposed works by Samuel Palmer, and until he had the opportunity to submit one for laboratory study, it was determined that at least 13 works by Samuel Palmer (recently acquired by different people) were false. Norman wrote an article about her discovery, and asked for the support of her readers to help her find the culprit. She eventually received a call from an informer pointing out Keating as the forger.

Norman met with Keating, and although he did not mention anything about his work as a forger, he did comment broadly on his annoyance with a system that favored collectors, critics and gallery owners at the expense of the exploitation of artists, who regularly did not receive the fruits of their work. his work. Seeing his skills and the evidence against him, Norman launched a newspaper publication denouncing Keating as the forger. Keating took advantage of the media attention to hold a press conference in which, in addition to confessing to being the true author of the fake watercolors, he declared that in recent decades he made approximately 2,000 fake works by 100 different artists.

The charges were brought against them, and the trial began with Tom Keating and Jane Kelly as guilty. Kelly immediately pleaded guilty, seeking to receive a moderate sentence in exchange for revealing her involvement in the hoax. But Keating, who pleaded not guilty on the grounds that he never tried to deceive people and only painted the reproductions to reinforce his skills, suffered a serious motorcycle accident shortly after the trial began.

Seeing the seriousness of his health, doctors declared that Keating was not fit to attend his trial and it was believed that his death was certain, so the charges were dropped. But to everyone's surprise, Keating made a full recovery, leaving him free from the consequences of his actions, while Kelly served her sentence in prison. Once recovered, Keating had already gained national fame for his work as a forger, so he was invited by a local channel to have his own television series about artists, art techniques and restoration, where in addition to sharing his knowledge and experiences, he painted works live to share with his audience the creative processes of the artists he had managed to imitate.

The greatest irony of his story came after his death. After dedicating most of his life to forging works in order to annoy gallerists, critics and collectors, today, they are the ones who, amazed by his peculiar history and his unquestionable talent, have created a demand to buy and sell the fake works of the artist. In the end, it could be said that Tom Keating fulfilled the dream of his youth to transcend art history in the most unexpected way.

With information from Forbes, The New York Times and People Pill.