David Henty: The Real Forger Behind Picture You Dead

David Henty spent five years in prison for forging passports. Today he forges paintings for a living — legally, openly, and with the blessing of one of Britain’s best-selling crime novelists.

Quick answer: David Henty is a real Brighton-based artist and former convicted forger whose life directly inspired the art-forger character in Peter James’s novel Picture You Dead and its 2025 stage adaptation. He now sells declared copies of works by Picasso, Van Gogh, Caravaggio and others, openly signed as his own.

From passport forger to prison art class

Henty’s criminal record isn’t a footnote added for colour — it’s the whole origin story, and it checks out. In 1996 he was arrested for forging passports, specialising in fake watermarks, and was sentenced to five years. It was, by his own account, “the making of him.” Locked up with relatively little to do, he found his way into the prison art room, where — under a couple of teachers watching over him — he discovered he could paint.

That’s not spin from a publicist. It’s confirmed independently across Wikipedia, a 2025 Peter James interview run by regional press, and a longer profile in The Chap magazine, all telling the same version: harmless white-collar crime, an easy stretch inside, and an unplanned discovery of talent.

The eBay years, and the exposure

After release, Henty didn’t stop forging — he just changed medium. He began selling forged paintings online, and in 2014 a Telegraph investigation caught up with him; he admitted to selling forgeries via eBay, which shut down his account. Reports on the exact number of pieces sold vary — Wikipedia puts it at over a hundred, while other write-ups have cited figures in the thousands — but the core fact of the exposure, and eBay’s response, is consistently reported.

What happened next is the twist that makes Henty’s story unusual rather than merely criminal: when the Telegraph ran a follow-up story in 2015 exposing continued sales, Henty thanked them for the publicity. Commissions poured in from people who’d read the story. He went straight, and turned copying into a legitimate business — openly signing his work under his own name so it can’t be passed off as a genuine original.

How he ended up in a Peter James novel

The connection to Picture You Dead isn’t a marketing tie-in invented after the fact — it’s the reason the book exists. Peter James met Henty around 2015–2016 through Graham Bartlett, the former Brighton and Hove police commander who happened to be the officer who’d arrested Henty two decades earlier. James was co-writing a true-crime book with Bartlett at the time.

By James’s own account, the idea for the novel came from a specific moment: Henty had given James a small painting done “in the style of” L. S. Lowry, signed with Lowry’s name as a one-off favour. At a dinner party some weeks later, a guest who happened to be a former Sotheby’s director examined the painting closely and pronounced it genuine. That’s what set James thinking about a plot built around an undetectable forgery — which became the “lost” Fragonard at the centre of Picture You Dead.

Henty then painted an actual replica Fragonard for James’s research, and separately painted the reproduction artworks used as props in the 2025 UK stage tour, which ran from February through early August that year and starred George Rainsford as Roy Grace. One detail confirmed by more than one reviewer of the production: Henty once had a real blue plaque on his front door reading “David Henty — The World’s No. 1 Art Forger.” When James pointed out you’re supposed to be dead to get one, Henty reportedly replied: “I forged it.”

Forger, fake, or copyist — what he actually sells now

The distinction matters more than it might seem. A forgery deceives a buyer into thinking a work is an original. A copyist sells a declared reproduction. Henty’s current business depends entirely on that line: his website markets pieces “in the style of” or “after” artists including Picasso, Modigliani, Caravaggio, Van Gogh, Basquiat and Lowry, at prices reportedly running from a few thousand pounds up into five figures depending on the piece.

What’s confirmed vs. what’s often repeated without a source

FAQs

Is Picture You Dead still touring?
The 2025 UK stage tour ran from February to early August 2025; check current listings for any future revival.

Did David Henty ever get caught selling forgeries as originals to unsuspecting buyers, rather than just online?
Public reporting focuses specifically on the eBay/online sales exposed by the Telegraph; there’s no independently verified case of gallery or auction-house fraud attributed to him beyond his own account that some forgeries entered collections unknowingly.

Where can I see or buy his work?
Henty sells through his own website and has shown work through UK galleries, per his official site and gallery listings — but always as declared copies, not originals.

Sources

• David Henty — Wikipedia
• The Master and the Master Forger — The Chap
• “Who says crime doesn’t pay?” — In-Common, Southampton
• Picture You Dead interview — rmcmedia
• Star casting announced — West End Best Friend
• Grace’s return to the stage — Seen and Heard International
• Peter James’ Picture You Dead review — Fairy Powered Productions

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