An American con artist has been charged with allegedly defrauding a London gallery owner over an early Gustave Courbet painting.
Thomas Doyle, 68, was arrested on November 14 by members of the FBI’s Art Crime Team and charged with one count of wire fraud, which carries a maximum prison term of 20 years.
According to court documents filed in a New York district court, London gallery owner Patrick Matthiesen bought the 1844 oil painting, Mother and Child on a Hammock, at a French auction house in 2015 and was seeking a buyer. In 2023, he cosigned the work to
Nicholas Hall Gallery in New York presented the work at that year’s Tefaf Maastricht fair with an asking price of $650,000. It did not sell, but remained on display at Nicholas Hall Gallery while they continued to seek a buyer—at which point Matthiesen was contacted by Doyle. Over the next several years, Doyle and Matthiesen communicated electronically regarding Doyle’s purported art dealings; the con artist claimed to manage the “art side” of a family trust with assets worth billions of dollars, investigators stated.
Last year, Doyle told Matthiesen that he had found a buyer willing to pay $550,000 for Mother and Child on a Hammock and offered to broker the sale without taking a commission. He then delivered the painting to his partner, artist, art dealer, and business partner Shalva Sarukhanishvili, who sold it to Jill Newhouse Gallery in New York for $115,000. Within days, that gallery resold the work to ARTnews Top 200 Collector Jon Landau for $125,000 in September 2024. The painting was accompanied in both sales by a false provenance stating, among other details, that Doyle had legitimately purchased it in 2019.
Matthiesen Gallery received no proceeds from the sales, and in a March 4 email, Doyle admitted that he had “betrayed” and “lied” to Matthiesen. He advised Matthiesen to contact Sarukhanishvili to recover either the painting or his money from the transaction. Sarukhanishvili did not respond to Matthiesen’s attempts to discuss the deal.
In late September, Matthiesen filed a lawsuit filed in New York against Doyle, Sarukhanishvili, Jill Newhouse Gallery, and Landau. The London dealer claimed that no party had the right to consign or sell the painting. The complaint alleged that “Newhouse is an active participant in the art market who knew, or should have known, that Matthiesen… had been offering the painting for $650,000 or more for several years”, and further argued that “Landau knew or should have known that Newhouse lacked the ability to pass good title to the Painting, because Landau previously viewed the painting multiple times at multiple locations other than with Newhouse. Each time he was aware that its retail price was $650,000 or more.”
An attorney for Jill Newhouse Gallery told ARTnews via email at the time that “The claims asserted against Jill Newhouse LLC are meritless and we will vigorously defend against them in court.”
Landau’s legal representation likewise told ARTnews, “With respect to our client Jon Landau, we view the lawsuit as wholly without merit and we will address it accordingly in court.”
Sarukhanishvili did not respond to a request for comment.
Notably, in September 2010, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office charged Doyle for conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud for orchestrating the fraudulent purchase of Portrait of a Girl, by Jean Baptiste-Camille Corot, for $800,000. At the time, it had been valued at up to $1.35 million. Doyle pled guilty to one count of wire fraud.
During the 2010 sentencing hearing, the residing judge noted that Doyle had been convicted 11 times over the previous 34 years.
“You are a career criminal by any definition of the term,” she told Doyle, before sentencing him to six years in prison. “Society needs to be protected from you; you are a predator.”
