John Drewe and John Myatt Art Fraud
The works created by John Myatt and sold by John Drewe have been called the biggest contemporary art fraud of the century, needless to say, this one’s a real doozy. These two men are said to have faked over 200 works of art fooling collectors and experts alike for years. How did they do it?
Drewe and Myatt
Before we talk about their illustrious careers I want to chat about the backgrounds of these two men plus how they met and started this line of business.
John Drewe was born John Cockett in Sussex, England in 1948. He soon changed his last name to Drewe when he dropped out of school at age 17, just good decisions all around. His educational and professional life starts off strong when he convinced the British Atomic Energy Authority to hire him by saying he had a PhD in physics. That turned out to be a complete lie and he ended up resigning when his bosses found out. After that, Drewe claims, he joined student protests in Paris in 1968, moved to Germany and studied physics at Kiel University. Then he moved back to the UK and TAUGHT experimental physics at the University of Sussex while receiving a second degree in physics from SNUY Buffalo. As you maybe predicted, none of these schools has his name in their records so I think it’s safe to assume zero percent of this story is true. But that didn’t stop him, he got more teaching jobs over the years by claiming he had a PhD in physics. Gotta take this guy with a HANDFUL of salt.
John Myatt has a slightly less scandalous backstory, he was born in 1945 as the son of a farmer. He developed early on a talent for painting and especially for mimicking other artists’ styles but he only really did this as a party trick to amuse his friends. He also worked as a teacher for a while but ended up leaving his job after his divorce to raise his young kids. After leaving his job he needed money and turned to his painting talent, creating a business called Genuine Fakes where he made original paintings for clients in the style of famous artists. He placed an ad in Private Eye magazine which read “Genuine fakes. Nineteenth and twentieth-century paintings from £150”. This caught the eye of John Drewe and he became a regular client of Myatt’s.
Fraudulent Dealings
After Drewe and Myatt met through Myatt’s ad they became closer as Drewe quickly became a regular client. In the beginning, Myatt wanted to be truthful about his works and wasn’t trying to pass them off as genuine paintings by the artists he was emulating. It seems as though Drewe saw potential in Myatt, though, and was a terrible influence.
A few months into their relationship Drewe contacted Myatt and told him that he had taken the cubist painting he had purchased from Myatt (in the style of Albert Gleizes) to Christies auction house, presumably wanting to see if he could pass it off as the real deal. The staff there believed the painting was real and told Drewe that they would sell it for him for £25,000. Drewe offered Myatt half of the amount in cash, more money than Myatt knew how to do with as a cash strapped single dad. This totally sucked him into the con world. Apparently, Myatt wasn’t suspicious of Drewe at first, he said “The magnitude of what we were doing didn’t really kick in until three or four years later, when I started to think about how I might get out of it all” (Sims, 2019). I don’t know if I believe that, how could you not be suspicious and know exactly what you’re doing?!
Over the course of the next 10 years the pair would go on to forge over 200 works of art by famous modern painters, with Drewe managing the sales, paperwork, backstory, and liaising with potential buyers and Myatt creating the fake paintings. These two literally fooled the best in the biz.
But How Did They Do It?
In this case forging the paintings was the easy part, the part the required finesse, effort, and extreme attention to detail was in forging the records and back story surrounding each painting. Is is this aspect of the conspiracy that caused these paintings to become even more convincing in the eyes of the collectors and galleries who purchased them.
I’ll start with Myatt since explaining his process is less complicated. He always had a gift for imitating the styles of famous artists, as I said, so he had a baseline talent there but he developed techniques for making the paintings look old or weathered in order to make them more convincing. Apparently, he used emulsion paint mixed with lubricant or vaseline to create this mixture that dried really quickly (though not exactly the type of pigments that were being used by the artists he was copying) then on top of that he would use mud or vacuum dust to age the paintings. This would all come back to bite him.
Drewe’s process was insanely complicated and I honestly don’t think people even know half of what he did to make these paintings seem legit. One of the biggest and craziest things that he did was he donated £20,000 to The Tate and as a result, he was allowed access to their archives (a weird perk for a donor). But once he was in, he caused absolute chaos. He changed things, copied things, and added things wherever it benefitted him and the narrative he was trying to create. He did the same thing with the Victoria & Albert Museum after being given access to The Institute of Contemporary Art’s records when he donated two (FAKE) paintings.
Drewe took everything to the extreme as much as he could. He doctored records, created fake slips on an old typewriter and period ink, forged old catalogues, and replaced photos of lesser-known works by famous artists with the works that Myatt was creating. I can’t even express to you how much effort Drewe was putting into making these paintings appear authentic.
On top of this, a source says, he priced the paintings extremely well. Usually, paintings that cost over £100,000 are looked into very carefully but collectors and auction houses tend to be sloppier in the checks into objects selling between £10,000 and £30,000, which is exactly where Drewe had his items priced.
Experts believe that because of Drewe’s meddling, art history has been changed forever. In addition, the national archive of contemporary art has been permanently tainted and harmed by the work of Drewes and Myatt and that the reputations of several of the UK’s best contemporary artists have been irreparably damaged. It is now almost impossible to know what Drewe tampered with and what is the correct information, everything he ever touched has to be regarded with extreme suspicion, duh.
What Happened To Them?
So after about 10 years of working together, Myatt started to get cold feet about the whole arrangement and he started to feel bad about creating all these forgeries. Convenient once you’ve pocketed tens of thousands of pounds from this little arrangement. He decided to stop painting for Drewe but he always knew that he couldn’t escape from what he’d done.
The pair ended up getting caught in 1995 when Drewe’s wife noticed a bunch of incriminating letters lying around their home and decided to contact The Tate Gallery. From there they started looking into more of the paintings that had been purchased from Drewe over the years and they noticed the strange mixture that Myatt had used to paint them, not at all accurate to the time period these paintings were supposed to be from, along with some forged exhibition stickers on the back of the canvasses that, when inspected closely, made no logistical sense. Then they started to put the pieces together.
Myatt was arrested in September 1995 and he immediately confessed to the forgery of over 200 paintings and offered his help to the police. He had fallen out with Drewe at this time so handed over everything that would be helpful to the authorities. In April 1996 Drewe was arrested. The entire time he was in custody Drewe protested that he was innocent, even though Myatt already confessed to everything and told the police everything he knew.
Then the police made the mistake of releasing Drewe on bail and he completely disappeared. What did they think was going to happen?? Finally, they located him after following his mother. Once he was back in custody he had his whole bizarre story set. He told police that he was an arms dealer (how is that better than a fake art dealer???) and a ‘fall guy’ (someone who the blame can be placed on to deflect from the actual guilty party) for a conspiracy involving British law enforcement and the governments of seven countries. He claimed that there had been around 4,000 art forgeries used to finance arms deals between the UK and Iran, Iraq, and Sierra Leone. Finally, he told them he was a British spy and that Myatt was a neo-nazi in the hopes of getting the case dropped. Luckily the police believed none of this and didn’t even consider dropping the case.
Drewe and Myatt were tried in September 1998. Myatt pleaded guilty, as he had been the entire time he was in custody, and was sentenced to one year in prison for a conspiracy to defraud. He ended up serving only four months of his sentence before being released.
Drewe had a slightly more interesting trial. He ended up firing his lawyer after the lawyer refused to use the story that Drewe had told the cops as his defence, so Drewe ended up representing himself and you can imagine how well that went down. He was found guilty by the jury in less than six hours and was sentenced to six years in jail for conspiracy to defraud, two counts of forgery, one count of theft, and one count of using false instruments with intent. He only served two years of his sentence before his release.
It’s estimated that around 20% of paintings owned by major museums around the world may not be the work of the reported artist, either they are misattributions or forgeries, Myatt and Drewe certainly didn’t help with this problem. Of the roughly 200 forged pieces that Drewe and Myatt made, only 73 have been identified and located. Myatt claims, to this day, that about 120 of them are still out there in the world, some are even in museums and galleries. He has said that he will never disclose which those are or where they are even though he also claims to feel bad for diluting artists’ bodies of work. So you have to decide, were Drewe and Myatt in this for the money or were they in it to see if they could get away with it and hang it over the art world’s head?
P.S. John Myatt has now served his time (a while ago) and since he got out of jail he has been working with the Scotland Yard giving lectures on art forgery and he has continued his ‘Genuine Forgery’ business as well. Ironically enough, he says that now he is dealing with a big problem. Someone is selling fake Myatts. Karma is a bitch.
Works Cited
Sims, Josh. “Art Fakes, Fraud, and Forgery: John Myatt and John Drewe’s Con on the Art World”. Esquire. 2019. https://www.esquiresg.com/features/art-fakes-fraud-and-forgery-john-myatt-and-john-drewes-con-on-the-art-world/
“Fakes Leave Art World in Chaos”. The Guardian. 1999. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/feb/13/2
Coslvich, Gabriella. “Infamous Art Forger John Myatt Reveals his Secret: You Have to Love the Artist”. The Sydney Morning Herald. 2017. https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/infamous-art-forger-john-myatt-reveals-his-secret-you-have-to-love-the-artist-20171016-gz1jmt.html