A JUDGE has ruled in favour of one of Scotland's top artists the centre of a bizarre £3.8million court case in which he was forced to prove he did not paint a painting.
Peter Doig, an acclaimed artist born in Edinburgh but who grew up in Trinidad and Canada, had been forced to defend an action by a Canadian former prison officer Robert Fletcher, 62, who claimed to have an early artwork created by Doig when he was a teenager.
Mr Fletcher claimed he had bought it from Doig when the artist was imprisoned for possession of the drug LSD at a Canadian detention facility in the 1970s.
Read more: Scots artist Peter Doig at centre of £3.8m court case to prove painting is not his work
Mr Doig always denies the work is by him but was forced prove it at a hearing at the United States District Court for Northern Illinois.
Late last night, a federal judge said the internationally renowned was correct when he insisted that he did not paint a landscape work that had been valued at over $10 million.
The judge reportedly said that evidence clearly showed the action centred on a it is case of mistaken identity and that a different Peter Doige, who spelled his last name with an 'e,' had actually painted it
The feted artist Peter Doig has also said he has never served time in jail and was a teenager living in Toronto with his parents in 1976, when Peter Doige was at Thunder Bay.
Read more: Scots artist Peter Doig at centre of £3.8m court case to prove painting is not his work
Doig’s work is among the most valuable by living European artists, according to the complaint. His painting, "White Canoe," sold for $11.3 million in 2007, while a later work fetched $12 million. Last year one of Doig’s works, "Swamped," sold at Christie’s for nearly $26 million, according to the auctioneer’s website.
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