Buzz
Pablo Picasso famously stated, "Good artists copy, but great artists steal." Similarly, Charles Caleb Colton noted, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." If these sayings are taken at face value, the forgers listed here are both skilled and audacious—and perhaps excessively flattering. They also managed to amass significant wealth...at least for a time.
1. Han van Meegeren
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Dutch artist Jan Vermeer experienced only modest success during his lifetime, never attaining significant fame or wealth. Upon his death, he left his family burdened with debt. However, Vermeer's artworks and legacy later became a source of immense profit for others—most notably Dutch forger Han van Meegeren, who earned over $30 million in the 1930s and '40s by deceiving art historians and dealers into believing his recently created painting was a long-lost 300-year-old Vermeer masterpiece.
2. Pei-Shen Qian
Pei-Shen Qian, a 75-year-old Chinese-American artist, was recently charged for his involvement in a $33 million art fraud case in New York, orchestrated with two Spanish art dealers. Now residing safely in China, where he holds citizenship and is protected from extradition, Qian specialized in replicating works by renowned modern artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning.
3. Wolfgang Beltracchi
While it might seem entertaining to deceive the wealthy into spending millions on counterfeit art, such actions are heavily condemned. Wolfgang Beltracchi, a German painter who confessed to creating over 100 forged pieces mimicking more than 50 celebrated artists, discovered that this deceitful practice also carries serious legal consequences, including imprisonment.
4. John Myatt
Scotland Yard labeled it "the largest art fraud of the 20th century": Between 1986 and 1994, English artist John Myatt created over 200 counterfeit paintings, deceiving institutions ranging from Sotheby's to European museums. In 1999, he was apprehended and sentenced to a year in prison but was released after just four months due to good behavior. Today, Myatt legally sells his own artwork under his name.
5. William J. Toye
Not all art forgers focus on replicating European masters. William J. Toye, a painter from New Orleans, initially mimicked artists like Degas, Monet, Gauguin, and Renoir but gained notoriety for his involvement in a scheme selling counterfeit works attributed to African-American folk artist Clementine Hunter. Since Hunter sold many of her paintings door-to-door in Louisiana while relatively unknown, it seemed plausible that Toye could have stumbled upon her works at a garage sale.
Toye's deception was eventually exposed by the FBI, leading to a two-year probation sentence for him and his wife, who was his accomplice. They were also ordered to repay $426,393 to their victims. To this day, Toye remains unrepentant and dismissive of Hunter's legacy, even referring to her paintings as "junk" and suggesting they are only fit for use as dartboards.
6. Elmyr de Hory
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Hungarian painter Elmyr de Hory endured imprisonment for political dissent in his homeland, was sent to Nazi concentration camps for being both Jewish and openly gay (though he was not Jewish), jailed in Mexico City under suspicion of murder, and later incarcerated in Spain for "associating with criminals" and his homosexuality.
Despite admitting to forging hundreds of artworks by renowned artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Alfred Sisley, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, de Hory never stood trial for his artistic fraud. In 1976, he took his own life before Spain could extradite him to France to face charges for his creative deceptions.
7. Robert Driessen
Driessen Art
Dutch forger Robert Driessen remains one of the most successful yet little-known art counterfeiters. European authorities, however, are well aware of him and are eager to apprehend the man accused of selling over 1000 counterfeit Alberto Giacometti sculptures, earning more than $10 million. While his German associates are behind bars, Driessen lives freely, managing a small café in Thailand. "I am trapped in paradise," he remarks.
