I'd only been out of prison for a short while and times were hard, not least because I didn't have any regular work. I'd said goodbye to my business in London; there didn't seem a lot of point in hanging on to it while I served my sentence and it wasn't as if people were going to come rushing to buy from an antique and art dealer who'd been convicted of selling faked paintings. Luckily, a friend took the business off my hands for a price that was fair in the circumstances, by which I mean that he didn't try to rip me off as much as other people might have done.
Equally luckily, all this happened before they changed the law to allow the police to seize the ill-gotten proceeds of crime, so I had a bit of money hidden away. But, all in all, there wasn't a vast amount and it wasn't going to last, so when the phone rang and an interesting proposition was put to me, I really couldn't afford to ignore it. And, as it turned out, I'm remarkably glad I didn't.
But before I tell you about that, maybe I ought to explain how I came to be in this situation. The fact is that I'd trained as a painter but I'd ended up hating the art world – dishonest artists, greedy dealers, foolish buyers, ignorant critics, the whole bloody lot of them. As far as I was concerned, they were all parasites. I certainly had no interest in modern art – putting a coil of barbed wire in a gallery or a few gaudy-coloured shapes daubed on a canvas does not make a work of art – but there was little money in traditional painting.
I'd made a decent-enough living from my antiques business and from cleaning and restoring old paintings, something at which I became very skilled, but it wasn't really what I wanted to do. I wanted to paint, like my boyhood heroes – Turner, Constable, Degas, Matisse, Modigliani, Palmer and more. I learned about the techniques and materials that artists had used down the ages and I experimented with them to produce similar effects in my own work.
The crunch came when I was in a gallery one day and overheard one particularly obnoxious buyer who was clearly out to impress his lady friend with his artistic knowledge, despite the fact that he was completely ignorant of anything but money. I got home, set up my easel, and, within a few days, I had produced a passable imitation of a well-known artist's work. It wouldn't have passed scrutiny by an expert but it showed the possibilities. The obnoxious buyer would certainly have fallen for it.
Over the next few weeks I tried again, but this time more patiently, putting a lot more care into the work, getting everything absolutely right. My aim was not to copy an existing painting but to produce one that looked as though a long-dead famous artist might have painted it.
I was careful never to suggest that the painting was by the famous artist himself; if anyone asked, I would simply wonder if it might have been done by one of his pupils or a copyist. The important thing was not to be greedy. Claim that you've found a lost Old Master and you'll have every expert in the world crawling over it with a fine toothcomb. That would be asking for trouble.
I was banking, of course, on the fact that someone would think it was far too good to be by a mere pupil; they would pay a couple of thousand to get it, in the hope that might just turn out to be the real thing, worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions. And, if the worst came to the worst, they'd got a decent picture to hang over the mantelpiece. There are so many people out there who cannot resist what they've convinced themselves is a bargain, especially if they think they're putting one over on the seller. And, as the seller, you know you've got a sucker as soon as you see the greed in their eyes. They just can't hide it.
I'm sure you don't expect me to reveal the ways in which I sold my paintings but, because they had to be inventive, I had to vary them and that was the problem. One day, against my better judgement, I put a painting in an auction – I needed the money a bit too urgently. I played down its origins, of course, but the auctioneer was convinced that it was just too good, too perfect. He was sure he was either sitting on something worth millions or a very clever fake and, rather than risk his reputation, he decided to get to the bottom of it. And the bottom of it wasn't pretty.
Two gentlemen arrived at my shop and asked if I wouldn't mind accompanying them to the police station to help with some inquiries they were making.
The judge was merciless. I had threatened to undermine the entire basis of the art market and he sent me down for five years. The irony is that my fakes are now worth a fair amount in their own right and, if someone had kept one, they'd have made a good return on their investment. And more recently there have even been a few cases of people faking my fakes! I suppose that's a compliment of sorts.
Back then, though – when I came out of prison – I needed to earn a living as best I could, so I was definitely intrigued when the phone rang one day and a terribly posh male voice asked me if I might be interested in a proposition. I played it casually at first, though, fearful that I was being set up. The newspapers love to do that sort of thing; I could see the headlines – "Convicted faker back at old tricks".
The caller identified himself as Sir Robert Haselton-Price, the seventh baronet and head of the family that owned Sittaford Hall, a stately home in Devon that was somewhat past its best. The family had once been wealthy and powerful but, over the years, their circumstances had become more reduced, which is not to say that they were poor by any means. I'm sure you've all heard the old joke about the posh family that had fallen on hard times: the daddy was poor, the mummy was poor, the children were poor, and even the butler was poor. The Haselton-Prices were like that.
Like most big country houses, Sittaford's walls were adorned with portraits of long-dead family ancestors but there were none of the current generation. Sir Robert was blunt. 'I don't want one of those dreadful modern things even I could afford it. I want something traditional and I'm told you're the man to talk to. A dab hand at cleaning up old pictures, too, and from what I hear you could do with the work. Interested?'
I knew exactly what he meant. He'd guessed how badly I needed the work and he wouldn't have to pay me very much. However, beggars can't be choosers, as they say, and the upshot was that I drove down to Devon a day or two later to spend a few days finding out exactly what the job would entail.
I arrived at Sittaford Hall late in the afternoon. Sir Robert had suggested that I stay at the Hall and the maid who answered the door showed me up to my room. She said that when I'd had a chance to freshen up after my journey, I should make my way down to the Library, where I would find Sir Robert.
When I entered the room Sir Robert greeted me warmly and thanked me for coming. We sat in a couple of armchairs and talked over his requirements. First and foremost was the grand family group – himself, his wife and their two daughters – plus some individual portraits. Then, in a conspiratorial whisper, he revealed that he had a mistress living in the nearby town and he rather fancied having a painting of her. It would have to be hidden in his private study at the Hall but it would, and he hoped I would agree to quite a revealing pose.
'Of course, of course', I answered, hoping very much that the lady in question would pose for me in person and that I wouldn't just be given a photograph or, worse still, be asked to put her face on a fictitious body.
