DAMIEN HIRST was accused of copying another artist’s work yesterday, two years after he made a payment to a designer over claims that he plagiarised a £14.99 plastic toy.

Robert Dixon, 57, a computer graphics artist and former research associate at the Royal College of Art, said that a circular pattern Hirst produced for a children’s colouring book in The Guardian last month was “virtually identical” to one of his own drawings done 20 years ago. He said: “You can see immediately it’s a copy. He put one image in The Guardian colouring book which is exactly the same as mine.”

Mr Dixon’s drawing was based on a mathematical model inspired by the study of a daisy, which he first published in New Scientist in 1981. He went on to explore variations on the theme in his book Mathographics, which teaches children to draw on computers. It has sold 30,000 copies since it was published in 1987 and remains in print.

A spokeswoman for Hirst said that she had never heard of Mr Dixon. The artist was said to be out of the country and unavailable for comment.

Mark Stephens, a specialist in art law, suggested that Mr Dixon could well have a case against Hirst, despite differences between the two drawings. “Most people believe that in order to infringe copyright the thing has to be identical,” he said. “That’s not the case. The rules were relaxed by the House of Lords in 2000.

“Effectively what the House of Lords said is that ‘if you couldn’t have got to the Hirst without first creating the Dixon — or using the artistic skill and judgment or computer program formula of the Dixon — then there will be an infringement irrespective of the number of similarities’. What they’re looking at is, ‘has the essence of the Dixon been taken and plagiarised by Hirst?’ ” Hirst faced legal action two years ago after an accusation that his £1 million sculpture, Hymn, a 20ft bronze of a torso which he sold to Charles Saatchi, was reproduced from a plastic toy.

The artist, who won the Turner Prize in 1995 with his trademark pickled animals, agreed to make donations to two children’s charities and a “goodwill payment” to the original designer, Norman Emms.

In April it emerged that his famous shark in formaldehyde may actually be from the “school” of a fish artist and electrician. Eddie Saunders was exhibiting a shark in his East London shop window two years before Hirst’s work was first shown in the Saatchi Gallery, in northwest London.

The Stuckists, an international group of painters who campaign for traditional artistry, challenged Hirst by displaying Mr Saunders’s shark just as Mr Saatchi was giving pride of place to Hirst’s shark.

Four years earlier, the chef Marco Pierre White accused Hirst of plagiarising one of his paintings. The row erupted after their partnership in a restaurant, Quo Vadis, turned sour. White removed Hirst’s work and replaced it with a picture called Rising Sun, which he claimed Hirst had copied with a canvas called Butterflies On Mars. The row eventually petered out.

Mr Dixon said: “By putting his signature on such a computer drawing, Hirst is falsifying authorship of the artwork and the idea. The Guardian, by refusing to clarify the true source when it is brought to their attention, becomes party to it.”

He is pursuing the issue with the Press Complaints Commission after the news- paper failed to print a correction: “The paper chose to shrug it off, saying that if there was a question of copyright infringement I should take it up with Hirst,” he said.

A Guardian spokesman said: “It seems to us that Mr Dixon’s gripe is really with Damien Hirst, and we have suggested he take it up with the artist directly. We published in good faith and, as the PCC has made clear, were justified in doing so.”

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