Considered the most prolific and versatile art forger of the 20th century,[1] he claimed to have faked more than 2,000 paintings by more than 160 different artists of unprecedented scope—ranging from the Renaissance (Holbein, Titian, Tintoretto) to Modernism, Expressionism and Fauvism (Kandinsky, Klee, Matisse)—with heavy emphasis on English landscape Romanticists and the French Impressionists.

[5][6][7] He began flooding the London art market in the early 1950s with hundreds of consistently convincing fakes, often by giving them to friends and acquaintances, with tacit expectation that many would soon end up in a posh Bond Street auction house, or gallery.

[12][13] As a youth, living hand to mouth on his father's shilling-and-sixpence hourly wage as a house painter, he helped his mother make ends meet by collecting and selling horse manure, running errands for neighbours, and taking parcels to the local pawn shop.

Having run away from home to visit his grandmother seven miles away, he ended up staying for three years, trading persistent poverty and grim prospects for regular home-cooked meals and a headmistress who was also an art teacher, who encouraged him to spend as much time as he liked drawing and painting owls, foxes, badgers, and a sailing ship.

[16][17] At the age of 14, he passed an entrance exam for the nearby, prestigious, St Dunstan's College, but was crestfallen when told the impossible sum required for clothes and books needed just to start.

In the small hours of 20 September 1943, the Lagan became the first Allied warship to be hit by the new T5 acoustic torpedo, which tore off her entire stern, killing more than a quarter of the crew, and leaving the remainder dead in the water southwest of Iceland, about a third of the way into their journey.

Nerves shattered and his back badly injured by Hedgehog shrapnel, Keating was sent home to hospital for psychiatric treatment – a fortnight in an induced coma, then discharged with a disability pension of 17 shillings a week.

[18] His early sources of inspiration were chiefly Venetian School father of the Renaissance, Titian; Baroque Dutch master Rembrandt, pioneering British portrait and landscape painter Thomas Gainsborough, and the Romanticists Goya, Turner and Constable.

[8] He divined their secrets by spending countless hours scrutinising and sketching examples of their work in Britain's greatest museums, especially the National Gallery, The Royal Academy and the Tate.

He was disappointed with the calibre of technical training on offer, and had little interest in the modern art movements in vogue at the time (he was ridiculed for praising the work of Pietro Annigoni, who only a few years later was commissioned to paint a popular portrait of the Queen).

[17] While studying at Goldsmith’s, Keating secured a part-time job as a restorer, at the well-respected Hahn Brothers, in Mayfair,[13] where he began meticulously filling thousands of tiny cracks in old pictures.

The breadth of his expertise in painting techniques quickly expanded, however, when he began taking more challenging jobs on the shady fringes of the London art market, where he learned to skilfully mimic the methods of scores of lesser-known artists, in the course of figuring out how to fix them.

[20] While working in a small shop for a man called Fred Roberts, he was asked to replace a herd of grazing cattle––that had been obliterated by the repair of a large tear in a 19th-century painting by Thomas Sidney Cooper––with laughing children dancing around a maypole, dramatically enhancing the picture's charm.

[20] When he later found evidence of similar subterfuge rampant throughout the trade—dealers raking in cash while his wife and children were stuck in a damp, dilapidated flat, with scant, tattered furniture and often little to eat—he decided he too could play at that game.

[14] A forger was born, with a sense of righteous indignation and a desire for vengeance that plagued him the rest of his life; baffling those who thought his tremendous talent could be put to far better use; landing him in the Old Bailey on charges for fraud; bringing him post-trial wealth and fame; and condemning him––through the stress on his health of violent mood swings and massive consumption of tobacco and alcohol––to an early death.

[22][23] Keating never got rich off the fakes he produced, rather he often gave them away as gifts, bartered them for food, booze, and rent, or sold them for a pittance to friends and acquaintances, even the local gas man.

At one point in the 1950s, so many "newly-discovered" Krieghoffs had come on the market that prices were acutely depressed, over fears many were fake, neatly achieving two of Keating's goals: to reduce the profits of greedy art dealers, and to make beautiful pictures from one of his favourite artists more affordable to the buying public.

To create his many Samuel Palmer fakes he would often mix sepia with glutinous tree gum, apply thick coats of varnish, then heat them to develop craquelure, to make them appear old.

In a 1977 BBC documentary[8] he described a kind of hierarchy of terms for various types of imitation: Copy – an exact duplicate, such as those often displayed in place of an original kept safe in a vault Repaint – the result of heedless, heavy-handed restoration Pastiche – a variation of an existing painting, or a new picture that mimics another artist’s style Fake – a pastiche that has been doctored up to look like an original Forgery – a fake with another artist's signature added and false provenance provided Though not always consistent in his own use of these distinctions, by far his favourite term for what he did was, Sexton Blake.

[21][15][3] A much smaller list of fakes the police, and various art dealers and journalists were actually able to track down in the 1970s, which Keating identified as his own work, included 26 Samuel Palmers, 9 Constables, 8 Krieghoffs, 7 Degas, 7 Kees van Dongens, 5 Edvard Munch paintings, 4 Renoirs, 4 Constantine Guys, 4 Modiglianis, and one or two in the manner of Rembrandt, Francesco Gardi, Gainsborough, Goya, Linnell, Henri Fantin-Latour, Auguste Rodin, Jean Louis Forain, Toulouse Lautrec, Emile Bernard, Raoul Dufy, Wassily Kandinsky, and Frank Moss Bennett.

Having recently relocated from Llangyndeyrn, Wales, Kelly quickly joined a group of young people she found gathered round a charming older man perched at the end of the bar, regaling them with wild stories of war, protest, and Art World treachery.

[52] In January 1977, Keating visited top galleries in Canada, and the vast private collections of billionaire newspaper and television magnate, Ken Thompson, to see if they had any of his fake Cornelius Krieghoffs.

Dozens of letters to the editor appeared in the London press – a few from art dealers venting outrage; most from readers expressing amusement and delight with Keating's exploits and roguish charm.

His defence barrister, Jeremy Hutchinson, QC, mounted a strong case intended to "arouse in the minds of the jury a suspicion that the greedy dealers were well aware that the works might not be genuine, but that the possibility of making a substantial profit overcame their scruples."

He called to the witness box many of the same art experts Mrs. Norman consulted for her exposé, one of whom echoed Hutchinson's colourful suggestion that a bat hovering in the background of one of Keating's Palmer pastiches looked "more like a Boeing 707".

"[2] Years of chain smoking and the effects of breathing the fumes of chemicals used in art restoring, such as ammonia, turpentine and methyl alcohol, together with the stress induced by the court case, had taken their toll.

[67] He never received the proceeds, having died of a heart attack two months later, aged 66.Keating is buried in the churchyard of St Mary the Virgin at Dedham (a scene painted numerous times by Sir Alfred Munnings).

The final sale held in December 1998 by Vost's of Newmarket, of 85 mainly small, unframed watercolours, pastels and drawings, and a few oil paintings, came from the estate of Jane Kelly, who died of brain cancer in 1992.

"[2] Subtitled An exclusive study of a master forger, this BBC1 special broadcast on 3 May 1977, featured an interview of Keating in his studio, demonstrating how he produced fakes of Renoir, Degas and Palmer.

[31] He then retreats to The Marlborough Head, his local pub in Dedham, to collect an old landscape painting the landlord has asked him to clean, quipping: "He's paying me one pint a day for the next 14 years."