Anthony Gene Tetro (born 1950), known as Tony Tetro, is an art forger known for his perfectionism in copies of artwork produced in the 1970s and 1980s. Tetro never received formal art lessons, but learned from books, by painting and experimentation. Over three decades, Tetro forged works by Rembrandt, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí and Norman Rockwell and others. Tetro's paintings and lithographs, known for their perfectionism, were sold by art dealers and auction houses as legitimate works and hang in museums, galleries around the world. He was caught after Hiro Yamagata found a forgery of his own work for sale in a gallery. In 1991, Gary Helton, an investigator for a California district attorney, described Tetron as "one of the two major [art] forgers in the United States." Early years Tetro was born in Fulton, Oswego County, New York, one of four children to Beatrice and James Tetro, a house painter. As a young girl, Tetro's mother once watched Amelia Earhart land her plane in their family's pasture. His father developed a special process for coating water towers. Tetro was an altar boy. His first trouble from his art came while at parochial school in Fulton, where he drew a picture of one of the nuns as a Vargas girl, but with a "pruney face" and wearing a habit. The nun hit him and took him to the priest. Tetro married his high school girlfriend at age 16; she was pregnant and he became a father at age 17. In 1969, he moved to southern California and gained a job as a furniture salesman. The couple divorced a few years later. Art forgery By 1973, Tetro was studying art by reading books and visiting museums. He never underwent formal art training or a desire to develop his own style, but he liked to paint and he liked copying from the masters. He found the exercise taught him more about the art, enabled him to understand why an artist had done a particular thing, which merely looking at a painting did not reveal. He learned about paper and canvas and experimented to find ways of producing craquelure, a characteristic of old paintings. Still a hobby, he began selling his copies at art fairs. He then began copying photographs and painting portraits. His hobby became a business and he became known within wealthy circles. The art market expanded in the