48 Facts About Tom Keating

Thomas Patrick Keating was an English artist, art restorer and art forger.

Tom Keating claimed his aim was not material gain, but rather a crusade against art dealers he believed were only interested in fine art as a commodity, for which an impressive provenance, often dubious or wholly invented, always trumped the masterful artistry and intrinsic beauty of any particular drawing or painting.

Tom Keating began flooding the London art market in the early 1950s with hundreds of consistently convincing fakes, often by giving them to friends and acquaintances, with tacit expectation that many would soon end up in a posh Bond Street auction house, or gallery.

Tom Keating escalated his crusade in the late 1960s and early 1970s by directing his business partner and lover, Jane Kelly, to sell several fakes of then little known romanticist, Samuel Palmer.

Tom Keating returned for a third day in court, during which he collapsed in the witness box, and was taken back to hospital.

Tom Keating was released without charge two weeks later due to failing health.

Tom Keating was born into a working-class family in an overcrowded flat in Forest Hill, South London.

Tom Keating discovered his love and early talent for picture-making at Eltham College primary school in Kent.

Tom Keating returned to odd jobs and house painting, developing his own talent for detailing woodwork, graining, marbling, and sign writing.

Tom Keating was called up to the Royal Navy in the spring of 1940, finishing his training in time to face combat at Dunkirk, before setting off for Singapore aboard the SS Strathmore.

Tom Keating spent the next three years in the South China Sea on a variety of vessels, spending time in hospital for a range of illnesses, including shock, and injuries he attributed to the abuse of fellow crewmen and officers dubious of a sailor who spent all his free time on his own, reading and drawing, instead of carousing with the rest of them.

Tom Keating soon married his wife Ellen, with whom he had two children, Douglas, and Linda.

Tom Keating always claimed he learned his most important skills as an artist through independent study and experimentation on his own.

Tom Keating divined their secrets by spending countless hours scrutinising and sketching examples of their work in Britain's greatest museums, especially the National Gallery, The Royal Academy and the Tate.

Tom Keating supplemented this by working nights and weekends, but was seldom able to simultaneously manage all the expenses of essential art supplies and feeding his family.

Tom Keating then discovered he lacked the prerequisite A-levels to qualify for a teaching certificate.

Tom Keating was disappointed with the calibre of technical training on offer, and had little interest in the modern art movements in vogue at the time.

Never immune to self-contradiction, Tom Keating told a journalist in May 1977 he had to unlearn everything he was taught at Goldsmith's.

Tom Keating never got rich off the fakes he produced, rather he often gave them away as gifts, bartered them for food, booze, and rent, or sold them for a pittance to friends and acquaintances, even the local gas man.

Tom Keating's main objective was a vendetta against corrupt, predatory art dealers whom he believed victimised both artists and the buying public.

Tom Keating later learned they were sold at a London Gallery for more than $3,000.

Tom Keating retaliated by disseminating quantities of fakes of sufficient quality to fool the experts, hoping to destabilize the system.

Tom Keating considered himself a socialist and used his political views to rationalize his actions.

Tom Keating deliberately left clues to equip fellow art restorers, conservators and merchants to discover his deception.

Tom Keating bristled at being called a forger, claiming he never truly copied any pictures, rather he did new pictures that looked like they were done by others.

Tom Keating revised and popularized its use as rhyming slang for fake.

Tom Keating took advantage of a safety net major London auction houses employ in the form of their conditions of sale, which limit responsibility for the accuracy of attributions.

Tom Keating claimed to have done a half dozen Manet oils, a half dozen Pissarro oils, some Richard Wilson drawings, a few Toulouse Lautrec drawings and one or two pictures in the manner of Tintoretto, Rubens, Durer, Stubbs, Goya, John Linnell and Paul Klee.

Norman was unable to reach Miss Kelly but received several phone calls with tips including one from Miss Kelly's brother, who brought photos from Keating's studio, revealing that Tom Keating was the forger she was looking for.

Tom Keating welcomed her inside, told her all about his life as a restorer and artist, and poured out an extensive rant about his fight against the art establishment as a working-class socialist.

Tom Keating initially refused to discuss anything about Samuel Palmer or Jane Kelly.

Norman's series of nine articles on Tom Keating garnered her the British Press Awards News Reporter of the Year for 1976.

In January 1977, Tom Keating visited top galleries in Canada, and the vast private collections of billionaire newspaper and television magnate, Ken Thompson, to see if they had any of his fake Cornelius Krieghoffs.

Maclean's did a six-page colour spread: "Tom Keating's life is imitating art".

Tom Keating pleaded innocent, claiming that he had never intentionally defrauded anyone, and had left clues that ought to have revealed his deceptions to any expert who examined them.

Tom Keating returned for a third day in court, during which he collapsed in the witness box, and was returned to hospital.

Tom Keating was released without charge two weeks later due to failing health.

In December 1983, hoping to raise sufficient funds to buy himself a new cottage, Tom Keating sent 137 of his pictures to be auctioned at Christie's in London.

Tom Keating never received the proceeds, having died of a heart attack two months later, aged 66.

Tom Keating is buried in the churchyard of St Mary the Virgin at Dedham.

Tom Keating's last painting, The Angel of Dedham, can be found in the church's secured Muniment Library.

Tom Keating was a talented artist and a great character in the art world.

Tom Keating claimed he duped the so-called experts because he wanted to expose the dubious practices of art dealers.

Tom Keating discussed his relationship with Jane Kelly, and their restoration business at Wattisfield Hall, in East Anglia, and later at Vilaflor in Tenerife.

In each half-hour episode, filmed in his private studio in Dedham, a soft-spoken Tom Keating displayed a depth of knowledge and range of technical skills that astonished many viewers.

Mr Tom Keating goes one better by first putting himself into the Old Master's shoes, then insinuating himself into their minds, and finally putting paint to canvas with an uncanny command of the original style.

Tom Keating would begin each episode with a brief life history of the artist, including aesthetic influences and interactions with other famous painters, then quickly demonstrate the compositional development, sketching and painting techniques of one of his favourite mentors, each among the most revered fine artists in history.

Tom Keating suggests the genius was not mad, but merely exceptionally sensitive, and depressed over arguments with Theo, but otherwise reacting normally to pain, despair, and loneliness.