But justice soon caught up with him. In 1995 the fraud came to light when Drewe, the alleged mastermind, left his girlfriend and she turned incriminating documents over to authorities. At their 1999 trial both men drew jail time. But Myatt, who was commended by the judge for cooperating with police, emerged from four months in jail as something of a populist hero. "Clearly there are those who can't tell a Renoir from something cobbled together with modern paint and a new canvas," says Anne Robinson, who featured the "fantastically good faker" in a BBC documentary and owns a half dozen of his works.
Though Myatt planned to hang up his brushes once he was free, he began getting commissions—from, among others, barristers from his criminal case. At Myatt's first postprison show, in September, all but three of his 68 "genuine fakes," as he calls them, were snapped up for prices ranging from $900 to $5,500. "I like his art," says Dr. Mark Yardley, 42, who bought a small "Chagall" for $1,100. "I wish him well." So does Jonathan Searle, the detective who helped put Myatt behind bars. "He's got God-given talent; it would be nice for him to use it," says Searle, who commissioned a family portrait. "And they're an awful lot nicer than repros."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
