Shaun Greenhalgh (born 1961) is a British art forger. Over a seventeen-year period, between 1989 and 2006, he produced a phenomenal range of forgeries. Teaming up with his brother and elderly parents, who fronted the sales side of the operation, he successfully sold his fakes internationally to museums, auction houses, and private buyers, accruing nearly a million pounds.
The family have been described by Scotland Yard as "possibly the most diverse forgery team in the world, ever". However, when they attempted to sell three Assyrian reliefs using the same provenance as they had previously, suspicions were raised. Apprehended, Shaun Greenhalgh was sentenced to prison for four years and eight months in November 2007.
The Victoria and Albert Museum in London held an exhibition of Greenhalgh's "works" from 23 January to 7 February 2010.
The Metropolitan Police’s art and antiques unit built a replica model of the shed where the "works" were created and labelled Greenhalgh "the most diverse art forger known in history". Many of his fakes, including the Amarna Princess, Risley Park Lanx, and works by Barbara Hepworth and Thomas Moran, were displayed.
Greenhalgh's family was involved in "the garden shed gang". They established an elaborate cottage industry at his parents' house in The Crescent, Bromley Cross, South Turto, which is about 3.5 miles (6 km) north of Bolton town centre. His parents, George and Olive, approached clients, while his older brother, George, Jr., managed the money.
Other members of the family were invoked to help establish the legitimacy of the various items. These included Olive's father who owned an art gallery, a great-grandfather who it seemed had had the foresight to buy well at auctions, and an ancestor who had apparently worked for the Mayor of Bolton as a cleaner and was given a Moran painting.
Shaun Greenhalgh left school at 16 with no qualifications. A self-taught artist, undoubtedly influenced by his job as an antiques dealer, he worked up his forgeries from sketches, photographs, art books and catalogues. He attempted a wide range of crafts, from painting in pastels and watercolours, to sketches, and sculpture, both modern and ancient, busts and statues, to bas-relief and metalwork. He invested in a vast range of different materials - silver, stone, marble, rare stone, replica metal, and glass. He also did meticulous research to authenticate his items with histories and provenance (for instance, faking letters from the supposed artists) in order to demonstrate his ownership. Completed items were then stored about the house and garden shed. The latter probably served as a workshop as well.
Perhaps buoyed up by the fact that they had so successfully duped the experts the Greenhalghs tried again, using the same Silverton Park provenance. They produced what were purportedly three Assyrian reliefs of soldier and horses, from the Palace of Sennacherib in 600 BC.
The British Museum examined them in November 2005, concluded that they were genuine, and expressed an interest in buying one of them, which seemed to match a drawing by A. H. Layard in its collection. However, when two of the reliefs were submitted to Bonhams auction house, its antiquities consultant Richard Falkiner spotted "an obvious fake". Bonhams consulted with the British Museum about various suspicious aspects, and the Museum then spotted several unlikely anomalies. The horses' reins were "not consistent" or "atypical" with respect to other Assyrian reliefs; and the cuneiform inscription contained a spelling mistake, an absent diacritical mark, which was considered extremely unlikely in a piece "destined for the eyes of the king". These concerns became full blown suspicion when George seemed too willing to part with the items at a low price. The Museum contacted the Arts and Antiquities Unit of Scotland Yard, and eighteen months later the family was arrested.
