A SCOTTISH artist has appeared in court in an attempt to prove that he did not create a 40-year-old painting which apparently bears his name.
In a bizarre case which has rocked the art world, Peter Doig has given evidence in a courtroom battle over whether he painted a landscape which bears the name "Pete Doig".
Peter Doig, who was born in Edinburgh but left Scotland aged three, is one of the most recognizable names in the art world and regularly sells canvases for millions.
Read more: Scots artist Peter Doig at centre of £3.8m court case to prove painting is not his work
But the painting's owners Robert Fletcher and art dealer Peter Bartlow filed a suit in 2013 after he refused to authenticate the painting when the pair tried to sell it.
Fletcher and Bartlow are seeking $5m in damages and a declaration from the court that the work is authentic.
Doig testified in Chicago on Monday in the first day of the trial about his artistic process in response to questions from his lawyers, the New York Times reported from the court room.
Fletcher claims he first met Doig at Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada, in the mid-1970s. He says the then teenage Doig was later incarcerated at the Thunder Bay Correctional Centre, where Fletcher worked as a corrections officer.
Fletcher, who says he was Doig’s parole officer, says he watched Doig paint the desert landscape, which shows cacti and a muddy brown river, in jail before he bought the work for $100. “He was almost bragging and said how good he was getting at [painting],” Fletcher testified at the US district court for northern Illinois on Monday.
He added: “The painting stood out. I fell in love with it.”
Doig was born in Edinburgh in 1959, and moved with his family to Trinidad in 1962 and then Canada in 1966. He studied art in London from 1979 to 1983, and again in 1989-90.
His breakout on to the art scene came when he was awarded the John Moores Prize in 1993 and then shortlisted for the Turner Prize the following year.
He denies he ever attended Lakehead University, according to the New York Times, and says he has never been near Thunder Bay Correctional Centre and has never been incarcerated.
He says the plaintiffs have no record of his supposed incarceration. He was 16 or 17 years old in 1976, the year the painting is dated, and says he was living with his parents then in Toronto.
The case is expected to last around a week.
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