Tom Keating’s copy of Claude Monet’s 1908 Santa Maria della Salute and Grand Canal, which appeared on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow in the 1990s, started bidding at £12,000 and finished with a final bid of £15,000.

An anonymous telephone bidder, thought to be from London, brought the painting at the JP Humbert auction in Towcester.

Jonathan Humbert said: “I’m really thrilled. That was bang on what we thought it would do. Even as an out-and-out fake, it’s made that sort of money.

“We had seven phone lines booked and some dropped out but we’ve had a call
from Tokyo, one gentleman who wanted to take it to Japan and a lot of international interest.

Keating, who died aged 67 in 1984, hit the headlines in 1979 when he admitted nine paintings said to be drawings by Samuel Palmer were, in fact, his copies. He maintained his motives were not for profit, but to expose the fallibility of art experts.
His notoriety led to his own work becoming popular and in 1983 Christie’s auctioneers sold 135 of Keating’s paintings for £72,00

Posted: 01|27|08 at 8:20 am. Filed under: UK News.