| Admin/Biog History | Thomas Patrick Keating (1917-1984) was an English art restorer and forger. He advised that he created forgeries because he wanted to unsettle the way art critics and dealers controlled a system that was unfair to both collectors and artists. It is estimated that he forged approximately twenty works in the style of Samuel Palmer (1805-1881), and in the 1970s attention was drawn to thirteen of these which depicted scences of Shoreham in Kent.
In 1976, Keating gave an interview to Geraldine Norman, which was published in The Times in 1976, in which he confessed to forging. In 1977, Keating and his partner, Jane Kelly, were accused of conspiracy to defraud and to obtaining payments through deception. Sewell was called on to give evidence as Keating's expert witness at the trial. In his 2012 autobiography, Sewell explained that he did so because he believed Keating's works were given 'authenticity by the specialist art dealers and museum creators who had acquired them...it takes two to make a fake - the faker and the grandee who declares it to be genuine...' (page 89). The trial ended in 1982 and was declared nolle prosequi by the prosecutor because of Keating's ill health. However, his health improved and he became a celebrity after he was asked to present the television show Tom Keating on Painters. He died two years later and his works of art became highly collectable. |