An art forger who fooled an Antiques Roadshow expert into paying £20,000 for a fake painting was jailed for two years yesterday.

Robert Thwaites, 54, duped connoisseur Rupert Maas, using tips from The Art Forger’s Handbook. These included the use of genuine Victorian newspaper as backing paper.

He claimed the picture was a family heirloom and used the money to clear debts and pay his son’s school fees. Thwaites, whose eyesight had deteriorated, was struggling to make a living as a graphic artist, the court heard.

The forgery he said was The Miser by 19th century painter John Aster Fitzgerald was so good it later sold for £60,000.

A few months later a second Thwaites fake, put up as a Fitzgerald called Going to the Masked Ball, was sold at auction for £100,000 by a friend of the forger’s, Gordon Strong, 58.

Mayfair dealer Dr Christopher Beetles beat a bid of £75,000 from Mr Maas at the auction in Taunton, Somerset, in 1999.

Two years later Thwaites and his brother Brian, 50, tried to sell a third fake Fitzgerald, Poppy with Imps and Fairies and Foliage, to Mr Maas.

He rejected it so they took it to Dr Beetles. On examination it was declared a fake and the brothers failed to sell it.

Dr Beetles became suspicious about his £100,000 buy and had it scientifically analysed.

It was found the paint had pigments not developed until long after Fitzgerald’s death.

Strong and the brothers were arrested at Thwaites’s workshop in Bromyard, Hereford, in March 2004. Police found an invoice for a copy of The Art Forger’s Handbook and a stack of Victorian newspapers.

Posted: 09|19|06 at 7:24 am. Filed under: UK News.