When contemplating the grand masters of fine art, the mind can’t help but skip to Florence, Amsterdam, Paris and Rome... But Bolton? Not so much.
Shaun Greenhalgh grew up in a council house in this nondescript northern English town. A budding artist with vast talent and scant morals, as a boy he made ‘Victorian’ pot lids, which were all the rage at the time, and sold them to his mates as the real deal. By the time he left high school, he was earning more in a week that most of his friends’ dads.
He went on to successfully imitate everything from sketches by Thomas Moran (who actually was born in Bolton) to a bust of US president Thomas Jefferson, which was later bought for a princely sum by another American president, Bill Clinton.
When contemplating the grand masters of fine art, the mind can’t help but skip to Florence, Amsterdam, Paris and Rome... But Bolton? Not so much.
Shaun Greenhalgh grew up in a council house in this nondescript northern English town. A budding artist with vast talent and scant morals, as a boy he made ‘Victorian’ pot lids, which were all the rage at the time, and sold them to his mates as the real deal. By the time he left high school, he was earning more in a week that most of his friends’ dads.
He went on to successfully imitate everything from sketches by Thomas Moran (who actually was born in Bolton) to a bust of US president Thomas Jefferson, which was later bought for a princely sum by another American president, Bill Clinton.
Greenhalgh was finally sprung when someone smelled a rat over a supposedly ancient Egyptian figurine. The artefact, which he’d knocked together in three weeks, had been sold to Bolton Museum for £440,000. For his crimes, Greenhalgh was sent to jail for four years in 2007 and since he had nothing better to do, he penned a memoir from his cell on how he got away with duping the art world for so long.
In his book, he claims a 15th century painting called La Bella Principessa, officially recognised as a work by Leonardo da Vinci and worth £100 million, is one of his. It was, he said, based on a bossy checkout girl he once worked with. Do we believe him? The jury’s out on that one. But one thing’s certain; after reading this book, many will look at the hubris of the art world rather differently!
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