Provenance_ How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art - Laney Salisbury [109]
He paid her a visit. “Why did you try to sell that painting?” he asked.
“I’m broke,” she said. “It’s worth three and a half million pounds.”
Searle raised an eyebrow.
She told him that Drewe had assured her it was real and had promised to split the proceeds with her to pay back what he owed her.
“Goudsmid, these are all fakes,” Searle said. “Don’t you trust the police?”
Goudsmid was close to tears. “You haven’t charged John with anything yet. I’m desperate. I feel like killing myself.”
Searle told her to stay away from Drewe, but she was like a moth to a flame. Because of the custody battle she saw Drewe frequently, and Searle feared she might scuttle the case. If she told Drewe about the investigation, he would certainly destroy all evidence of the con.
Several days later Searle received a frantic call from Wendy Fish. “Drewe just rang. He’s coming in tomorrow with a dealer from New York and the director of the Giacometti Association. He wants to see the Giacometti material.”
Searle and Volpe now had a clear shot at catching Drewe, and possibly Bartos, in the act of using fake documents to authenticate a forgery. They rounded up their team and put the Victoria and Albert under close watch.
At 10:30 A.M. on the first Tuesday in April 1996 Bartos took a taxi to the Daquise, an old-fashioned Polish café next to the South Kensington tube station. He and Berkeley had planned to meet here before heading to the V&A. Though Bartos needed a stiff drink, he made do with a cup of coffee.
Palmer had been playing cat and mouse with him for weeks, making and breaking appointments. He was tired and frustrated. She had canceled again this morning, but it was too late for him to get in touch with Berkeley. Fine, then, the two of them would go to the V&A without her and examine the documents with their researcher, and Bartos would finally be able to prove beyond any doubt that the painting was genuine. If Palmer still refused to budge, he would take the Giacometti Association to court. He would argue that Palmer had disparaged a work certified as genuine by art experts, and that her capriciousness had caused the work to depreciate in value and halted its sale.
In the U.S. courts, he might well have had a case. A few years earlier the Metropolitan Museum of Art had rejected the loan of a privately owned Seurat for a 1992 retrospective because one of the curators had expressed doubts about the work’s authenticity. The owners of the painting had sued, claiming that a potential buyer had backed out after the museum lost interest in the work. The owners’ lawyers argued that the Met and its curators were guilty of “product disparagement,” and the case was settled out of court.
By noon Bartos and Berkeley were at the V&A library, where they met their man from Art Research Associates. He introduced himself as John Drewe and explained that he had been called in at the last minute to replace a colleague. He said that for the past quarter century he’d made his living recovering Jewish property stolen during the war, that he knew how archives worked, and that he could track down nearly anything. The V&A librarians had prepared a stack of research material, and it was waiting for them.
Drewe headed straight for the O’Hana exhibition catalog and opened it to the Standing Nude. Bartos was thrilled.
“There it is,” he said. “Wonderful!”
Drewe opened another large black leather-bound volume, this one containing catalogs from the Hanover Gallery, and flipped to another picture of the nude. He also showed Bartos original documents that appeared to confirm the work’s authenticity.
Bartos was beside himself. How could anyone have questioned the painting? He told Drewe about the work’s long journey and the many obstacles that had been placed in its path.
“Mary Lisa Palmer wasted a lot of my time for nothing,