Provenance_ How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art - Laney Salisbury [107]
Palmer sat down and began to recount a decade-long sequence of events: the bizarre letters and phone calls; the correspondence with various dealers; the phenomenal string of fakes she’d come across at the Tate and on the market. She showed the detectives a pile of photographs and letters she believed Drewe had sent her under different aliases. Each letter contained a request for the Giacometti Association’s imprimatur. One of the photographs was of a pencil drawing titled Deux Figures, owned by “Richard Cockcroft.”
Searle recognized the piece. His detectives had recently confiscated it from the home of Danny Berger, the only runner who had thus far been interviewed. Searle reached into one of his troughs and showed Palmer the original drawing.
“It’s a fake,” she said firmly.
She explained that the painting was an imitation of a real one in the Tate’s collection. The forger misunderstood the perspective of the two figures in the authentic work. He had placed the large and small figure beside each other rather than one in the foreground and one in the background, as represented in the original work.
One of the figures was particularly bad, she said, uncharacteristically abstract and indecisive. Giacometti was allergic to symbolism. He painted what he saw. His line drawing may have been delicate and willowy, but he always conveyed a sense of a fully formed human presence: That was his genius. Finally, the signature was too neat, too perfect.
Searle brought out the 1991 Sotheby’s catalog with the picture of the Footless Woman. His team had given it a morbid nickname, “the Legs Job”—a reference to the IRA practice of kneecapping.
“That one’s wrong too,” said Palmer, who had been after the painting for years. Its final destination remained a mystery. For all she knew it could be hanging on a wall in Monte Carlo or gathering dust in an attic in Madrid.35
For the next several hours Palmer filled in Searle and Volpe on her research, particularly her dealings with Armand Bartos and his Standing Nude. She hadn’t heard from him for a while and suspected the nude might eventually come up for auction.
The detectives wondered if it was possible that one person alone had planned and carried out such a complex scam. Dozens of phony catalogs had been produced and, according to Myatt, at least two hundred paintings had gone on the market. In addition, Britain’s most important archives had been corrupted. Was Drewe the front for a syndicate of crooked dealers? Was Bartos his New York connection? Searle and Volpe were aware of at least half a dozen runners who had moved pieces through London, New York, and Paris.
Palmer was very helpful and provided several good leads. The detectives were confident that she would make a fine witness in any courtroom. She had a clear expository style and could explain how she had arrived at each of her conclusions. If she could talk Volpe through the basics of art appreciation and the mazelike subtleties of provenance, she could certainly convince a jury. Unlike other experts, she had never given the nod to a single one of Drewe’s fakes. She was untouchable, and her expertise was unquestionable. Now the police just needed to recover a fake Giacometti that they could prove had been sold by Drewe.
Whenever she was in London, Palmer liked to pop into the auction houses to see what was coming up. After leaving Scotland Yard, she dropped her bags off at the hotel and walked to Sotheby’s, where she bumped into an acquaintance from the Impressionist and Modern Art Department.
“Surprise, surprise,” he said. “Come and see what we’ve got for the next sale.” In his office he showed her the galleys of a catalog for the forthcoming auction and turned to a picture of Bartos’s Standing Nude.
“It’s a fake,” she said. “I’ve been in contact with the owner, and I’ve told him what I think about it.” She warned the startled Sotheby’s rep that the Giacometti Association would