ARTFUL CODGERS

ARTFUL CODGERS
How a high-school dropout and his elderly parents fooled the world

Robert Fulford, National Post
Published: Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Shaun Greenhalgh, an Englishman whose furtive career has been unfolding in courtrooms, newspapers and museums for the last three months, may well be the most versatile art forger in history. He can do a convincing Gauguin, an 18th-century bronze portrait, a Barbara Hepworth sculpture or a broken chunk of Assyrian wall art. He finds it just as easy to do ancient Egyptian.

A high-school dropout at 16, Shaun taught himself painting, drawing, stone carving and several other techniques. Then, with the enthusiastic support of his family, he became an art criminal.

His story has been mostly ignored in North America because journalists here fail to see it as a saga of British craftsmanship and enterprise performing in a world where these qualities are insufficiently appreciated. In their lower-middle-class home at The Crescent, Bromley Cross, Bolton, Greater Manchester, Shaun's family has for many years operated a traditional cottage industry.

Alan Bennett should write the movie that must be made about them. Shaun, 46 years old, sounds like a failure-to-launch boy, living with his parents, from the stories Bennett has written for BBC radio. Shaun's Mom, Olive, 83, and Dad, George, 84, are both collaborators -- the Artful Codgers, one London newspaper calls them. Testifying in court, Mom claimed her work was purely routine, like making calls for Shaun because he's too shy to talk on the telephone.

In truth, Mom and Dad were the sales staff. (There's a brother, George Jr., whose role, if any, hasn't been determined.) Selling the forgeries, Mom and Dad presented themselves as simple folk who had inherited art that their parents or grandparents picked up cheap, long ago.

In 2002, Dad dropped in to the Bolton Museum to ask whether anyone would like to see a 20-inch-high Egyptian sculpture, which his great-grandfather had purchased in 1892 from the contents auction at the home of the 4th Earl of Egremont. It was translucent alabaster, and in photos it's pretty .

Dad suggested it might represent a daughter of Nefertiti. He guessed it could be worth £500 ($996). He brought along the catalogue of the auction, which his great-grandfather had fortunately kept. In truth, Shaun had found the catalogue. He used the descriptive details in its yellowing pages to make the sculpture.

Experts pronounced it authentic and Bolton Council paid £439,767 to buy it for the Bolton Museum. It wasn't local money, of course; it came from a national fund supported by lotteries. The museum people were quite chuffed. They thought the piece possibly worth twice that much. One museum employee called Dad "a nice old man who had no idea of the significance of what he owned." The sculpture remained on exhibit until one fateful day in February, 2006.

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