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Mastering the Art
Forger John Myatt passes on his tips and tricks

Want to know how KY Jelly and cold coffee can help you produce a work of art that looks like it's set you back a few hundred thousand pounds? Then John Myatt is your man...
John Myatt started out as an art school graduate who, having discovered an aptitude for mimicking the styles of other artists, found his friends were requesting his works, and were prepared to pay for them. He followed this up with an advert in Private Eye which read "Genuine fakes. Nineteen and twentieth century paintings from £150", through which he met art dealer and master provenance-faker John Drewe. Drewe originally gave Myatt a few private commissions, but having sold one of the paintings at auction as an original, he let Myatt in on the game and together they sold over 200 paintings, anything from Monets and Renoirs to Hockneys and Chagalls, over 120 of which - it is thought - are still in circulation.
After seven years of successfully fooling the world's most prominent private collectors and art experts, Myatt was eventually caught and charged with deception in 1998. He served time in Brixton prison but his subsequent fame has enabled him to open a legitimate Genuine Fake business where his replica paintings now sell for thousands of pounds and fine art publishers Washington Green have exhibited his work on a national tour.
In this revealing new series, exclusive to Sky Arts, Myatt reveals the tricks of the trade and stylistic insights which enabled him to emulate iconic paintings from world-renowned artists. From a Monet landscape to a Modigliani nude, Myatt provides his aspiring students with both the theory and technique to set up their easels and capture the composition of a street scene by Hopper or the brushstrokes of a still life by Cezanne. And he passes on the tricks of the trade too - rubbing soil onto canvas replicates Braque's finish for example, or that coffee ages a painting by a century or more.






