The works are in the style of LS Lowry and even carry a date and signature on the front for the famous Salford artist who died in 1976. Each oil on canvas carries an estimate of £1000-2000 at the auction on February 20.
Greenhalgh, who has previously admitted to creating fakes that fooled auction houses, museums and art galleries over a 17-year period, has consigned the works himself.
Arguably the most spectacular fake made by Greenhalgh was the ‘Amarna Princess’, an apparently ancient Egyptian statue that was sold to Bolton Council for over £400,000 in 2003. More recently Greenhalgh admitted on the BBC’s Fake or Fortune TV show that he had produced and sold his first Lowry forgery at the age of just 15.
The current pictures all date from 2015 and each has been catalogued as ‘Shaun Greenhalgh: After Lawrence Stephen Lowry’.
Harry Howcroft of Bolton Auction Rooms defended the sale and said that all three works also carry the Greenhalgh cypher ‘SG’ on the reverse as well as the date ‘2015’ and the inscription ‘Shaun Greenhalgh after LS Lowry’.
He added that they are not copies of original Lowrys but are different in terms of composition, and that he was confident that they could never be passed off as genuine works by Lowry.
“Lots of works have been made in the style of LS Lowry,” he told ATG. “These are not even copies of original works.”
The current consignment follows the sale last year of a number of other paintings by Greenhalgh ‘after Lowry’ at the same auction house.
These included The Beer Seller that was sold in February 2016 and had been produced by Greenhalgh for the BBC's Fake or Fortune series. The picture was signed, titled and dated to verso by Greenhalgh, according to the catalogue, and was knocked down at £1300 against an estimate of £500-800.
