The Hoax of Tom Keating. A True Story of a Forger Artist

Tom Keating is a character completely out of our time, although he lived in the neighboring 20th century. A man of the Renaissance type, a self-taught genius, sincere and honest ("crooks" can also be Robin Hoods), childishly direct in relation to life and art, faithful to his principles and ideals.

An outstanding master of forgery and restoration, but, above all, a talented artist, he said: "I have never made a secret of my ability to create forgeries. What surprises me is only one thing — that the press could not expose me for so long."

Keating was exposed by art journalist Geraldine Norman from The Times, now heading the English "Society of Friends of the Hermitage", author of several books about the museum and the Piotrovsky dynasty. In the second part of the book, she tells about her incredible journalistic-detective investigation and the search for its hero. As a result of Norman's articles and the uproar in the art community, Tom Keating revealed himself and called his tireless pursuer. An extremely colorful, gray-haired, and bushy-bearded Keating, more resembling Luciano Pavarotti than an English cockney, told his story to Geraldine and her husband, writer Frank Norman.

In the first part of the book, Frank recounts it from Tom's perspective. He talks about the urgent restoration of frames at the Soviet embassy for the visit of Bulganin and Khrushchev to London, about the "tours" of haunted Scottish castles for the restoration of painting collections, about a brief meeting with the queen and how they stood together on scaffolding at Marlborough House, with Keating demonstrating how to clear one painting to reveal another, and many more completely true stories?