The Hereford Times

Accessible collection by a master of art

10:34am Thursday 2nd August 2007

HEREFORD Castle Galleries is featuring The Masters Collection by John Myatt, an artist who was responsible for one of the the biggest art cons of the 20th century. Now working on the right side of the law, Myatt's The Masters Collection is entirely legitimate.

Myatt's story reads like the pages of a best-selling novel, with so many intriguing twists and turns that his life is now the inspiration for a future Hollywood blockbuster.

He will also be the star of a new TV series The Forger's Master Class, to be filmed this month and broadcast in November on Sky Arts, in which he coaches three talented amateurs in the style of the great masters, from Monet to Pissarro.

Although his life as a fraudster began with a business offering 19th and 20th century fakes for £200, it was not long before his work began to be sold as genuine masterpieces, with more than 200 of his copies sold through leading auction houses in London and New York. Convicted for conspiracy to defraud, he was sentenced to 12 months in Brixton Prison, where he was nicknamed Picasso.

Now, he wants to make beautiful art accessible to people, which he is doing with The Masters Collection of limited editions of six paintings.

"You don't have to be a millionaire to have a Monet," he says. "If you love Monet you can have one the only difference is, it's been painted by John Myatt."