When David Henty visited Creed Gallery in Ascot, our Senior Art Advisor and Curator Zaid asked him about his relationship with L.S. Lowry. Henty's answer was characteristically direct: he has painted more Lowrys than Lowry himself. It's a claim that sounds like bravado until you understand the career behind it. Charles Corin has said the same thing independently — but hearing it from Henty, in front of his own work, it lands differently. This is a man who taught himself to paint during a five-year prison sentence, sold hundreds of fakes on eBay until The Daily Telegraph caught up with him outside his Brighton home, and then turned the resulting notoriety into a legitimate career that now commands up to £50,000 per commission, with collectors including England footballers, senior politicians, and captains of industry. When Peter James — crime writer, creator of the Roy Grace series — gave a Henty Lowry to a dinner party guest who turned out to be Tim Wonacott, then director of Sotheby's and a presenter on Antiques Roadshow, Wonacott examined it closely and declared he was not seeing anything to suggest it wasn't genuine. That painting, and that conversation, gave James the premise for Picture You Dead, his eighteenth Roy Grace novel. The Times described spending time with Henty at home as an experience in which "you start dreaming you're Caravaggio." The London Design Festival, which featured him in their artist series, went further — billing him simply as "the world's No. 1 art forger."
From Prison to Peter James
The story of David Henty begins, appropriately enough, with a conviction. Arrested in 1996 by Brighton's then-chief superintendent Graham Bartlett for forging British passports — caught after misspelling "Majesty" as "Magesty" on a document — Henty served five years in prison, during which time a fascination with the working methods of the artists he studied turned into something more serious. He emerged with a technical capability that, applied first to eBay and later to private clients, would make him the most documented and publicly celebrated art copyist working in Britain today.
The reckoning came in 2014, when The Telegraph investigated Henty and confronted him outside his Brighton bungalow as he pulled into his drive — in a car bearing the number plate V9 OGH. He thought about his situation for approximately twenty seconds, then invited the journalist inside and made a full confession, showing the studio where he had produced hundreds of copies over the preceding years. The story ran. Henty was outed as Britain's most prolific art forger.
What happened next is the part that makes Henty's story different from every other forger's story. The notoriety, rather than destroying him, launched him. An Irish businessman read the Telegraph investigation and sent a letter requesting three paintings for £10,000. A new legitimate business was born. Henty has since said, without apparent irony, that the newspaper did him the best favour of his life.
"Thank Goodness for Lowry"
Henty spoke to Creed Gallery's Senior Art Advisor and Curator Zaid in front of our current collection of Henty works at the gallery in Ascot. Of his relationship with L.S. Lowry — the artist who, more than any other, established his reputation — he was characteristically direct:
"I just like him. He captures the north of England. I like his skies. I like the way he paints."
Then, with the candour that runs through everything Henty says publicly about his work:
"He got me out of trouble. When I was full of trouble, it got me out of trouble a lot of times — it's what paid the mortgage. Thank goodness for Lowry."
That gratitude has been repaid in the most unusual of ways. The Tim Wonacott incident — a Henty Lowry, signed simply "L.S. Lowry," examined up close by one of Sotheby's most experienced eyes and declared impossible to tell from the genuine article — gave bestselling crime writer Peter James the premise for what became Picture You Dead, the eighteenth Roy Grace novel, published in 2022, in which a character directly inspired by Henty forges a Fragonard so convincingly that the world's leading Fragonard expert cannot distinguish it from the original. Henty painted the Fragonard at the heart of the narrative himself. Peter James has called him "the nicest villain I have ever met."
Why a Henty is Worth Having as a Henty
The question collectors most often ask about a Henty is the obvious one: why pay thousands of pounds for a copy? The answer, once you understand how he works, becomes less puzzling.
Every Henty is the product of what he calls an immersive process — months of research into an artist's life, technique, palette, and the specific conditions under which the source painting was made, before the brush touches the canvas. He does not copy in the conventional sense of setting up a reproduction and imitating what he sees; he works, as he puts it, by developing an affinity with the artist, getting beneath the skin of the person, sometimes dreaming of their work, before attempting to replicate the way that person thought about painting. The output is not a reproduction. It is a David Henty — an original work that happens to carry the visual DNA of someone else's genius.
That process has been documented by outlets including The Sunday Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian, BBC Radio 4, Channel 4, Sky Arts, and Vice Media — a press record that, for a self-taught artist working out of a bungalow on the Sussex coast, is without parallel in British art.
Those works now sell for thousands of pounds to a collector base that includes England footballers, senior politicians, and captains of industry. Commissions reach £50,000. The Sunday Telegraph, the BBC, BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Sky News, Sky Arts, and Vice Media have all covered him; he contributed the forgeries for the stage adaptation of Picture You Dead, which toured major UK theatres through 2025; and a film about his life — Picasso Before Breakfast, scripted by Nick Moran of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels — is in development with Hereford Films.
At Creed Gallery
Among the works currently available through Creed Gallery, Henty's range is well represented. Salvator Mundi (after Leonardo da Vinci) recreates the painting that sold at Christie's New York in 2017 for $450.3 million — the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction — in a bespoke gilt-decorated frame. Going to the Match (after L.S. Lowry) takes up the same subject as Lowry's celebrated 1953 painting of the same name, rendered in that flat, chalky, deceptively simple palette that Henty himself identifies as the hardest in his entire repertoire to imitate. Dora Maar in a Yellow Shirt (after Pablo Picasso) reproduces a portrait painted on 31 October 1939, in the middle of Picasso's most intense period with his photographer-muse. Rude Policeman (after Banksy's Rude Copper, 2002) sits at the intersection of Henty's two most recognisable modes: the declared homage and the meditation on what it means, in contemporary art, to have a name.
Each piece is offered, and should be understood, as a David Henty original — not as a work by the artist it depicts.
Frequently asked questions
Is it legal to sell copies of famous artworks? Yes — provided they are sold openly as copies, not as originals. Every Henty is sold explicitly as his work, in homage to the source artist, with his own name on the reverse. This is a long-established and legitimate tradition in Western art, sometimes called "atelier practice" or fine art copying.
What makes a Henty different from a reproduction print? A reproduction print is a photographic or digital copy of an existing image, produced mechanically. A Henty is painted by hand, oil on canvas or panel, using the same materials and techniques as the original artist, having been researched and prepared over months before the brush touches the canvas. No two are identical.
Are his works a good addition to an existing collection? A Henty works well alongside original contemporary work precisely because it raises the questions any good collection should raise: about value, authorship, and what we actually mean when we say something is "genuine." Several significant collectors hold both originals and Henty works for that reason.
Can I commission a specific work from Henty through Creed Gallery? Contact the gallery to discuss commissions — Henty takes a small number of bespoke commissions each year, and we can advise on timeline and pricing.
Where can I find out more about David Henty?
David Henty has his own website at davidhentyartforger.co.uk and a Wikipedia page documenting his career. Creed Gallery's full editorial piece on his life and work is here.
The works of David Henty are available now through Creed Gallery, Ascot, for collectors across Berkshire, Surrey, and London.
