Wednesday

Paintings "Away With Fairies"

Conmen who masterminded an art world sting must wait until September before they are sentenced. Master art forger Robert Thwaites, aged 53, from Staffordshire, and his brother Brian, aged 50, of Winston Avenue, Little Lever, sold fake paintings to an art dealer. Mayfair art gallery owner Christopher Beetles paid nearly £74,000 for a work he thought was "Going to the Masked Ball" by the famous Victorian painter John Anster Fitzgerald, but later discovered it was fake. Gallery owner and TV art historian, Rupert Maas, was also tricked into buying a worthless painting said to be another of Fitzgerald's works. The Thwaites brothers were caught after a suspicious client refused to buy a third work purporting to be "Poppy with Imps and Fairies and Foliage". Irish Art