Painting
When his wife left him in 1985, Myatt gave up teaching to spend more time with his children, and attempted to make a living by painting original works in the style of well known artists. He placed an advertisement in Private Eye magazine which read "Genuine fakes. Nineteen and twentieth century paintings from £150". He was initially honest about the nature of his paintings, but John Drewe, a regular customer, was able to re-sell some of his paintings as genuine works. When he later told Myatt that Christie's had accepted his "Albert Gleizes" painting as genuine and paid £25,000, Myatt became a willing accomplice to Drewe's fraud, and began to paint more pictures in the style of masters like Roger Bissiere, Marc Chagall, Le Corbusier, Jean Dubuffet, Alberto Giacometti, Matisse, Ben Nicholson, Nicholas de Stael and Graham Sutherland.
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Famous quotes containing the word painting:
“Painting seems to be to the eye what dancing is to the limbs. When that has educated the frame to self-possession, to nimbleness, to grace, the steps of the dancing-master are better forgotten; so painting teaches me the splendor of color and the expression of form, and as I see many pictures and higher genius in the art, I see the boundless opulence of the pencil, the indifferency in which the artist stands free to choose out of the possible forms.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To me, the whole process of being a brushstroke in someone else’s painting is a little difficult.”
—Madonna [Madonna Louise Ciccione] (b. 1959)
“If people only knew as much about painting as I do, they would never buy my pictures.”
—Edwin Landseer (1802–1873)