John Myatt Prints

On leaving prison. John Myatt had in fact sworn never to paint again. Of course. When he had tried in the past legitimately to make some extra money from his incredible talent for painting, combined with a knack for mimicry, things had not gone exactly to plan. An ad in the back of Private Eye offering legitimate copies of 19 and 20^th Century masters for a few hundred quid each – an attempt to boost a meagre art teacher’s salary and thus to enable a newly abandoned single Dad to support his two daughters – had elicited a response from fraudster John Drewe. Over the next 10 years, up to 200 of Myatt’s paintings were fraudulently sold by Drewe as the real thing, substantiated by faked provenance documents added to the official archives, latterly with Myatt’s full knowledge and understanding.

A full confession and cooperation with the police upon his arrest in 1995, ensured a relatively short sentence, and the subsequent arrest of the elusive John Drewe. Understandably disillusioned, his oath to abandon painting, for John Myatt, must have been an attempt to draw a line under the whole experience. Happily, the policeman who arrested Myatt, insisted on commissioning a painting from him upon his release from prison, and John Myatt’s series of ‘Legitimate Fakes’ were born.