Provenance_ How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art - Laney Salisbury [11]
Plugging away at his works “in the style of,” Myatt couldn’t help being aware of these trends. Sometimes his clients, mesmerized by the market boom, asked what their paintings might be worth if they were real. Myatt would humor them and invent an exorbitant sum. Whenever he dropped off a Braque or a Bissière for Drewe, the professor would speculate on what price it might fetch at auction. Over drinks one night, he explained to Myatt that he worked in a world of precise scientific calculations and that the art market’s way of determining value was still a mystery to him. He wanted hard information on the dynamics that drove the business.
How was the authenticity of a painting determined?
Was the decision entirely subjective? If so, who was authorized to say whether a work of art was genuine?
If something was satisfying to the eye, wasn’t that enough?
Who actually determined the price placed on a particular work of art?
“I’m just curious to know what you think, John,” said Drewe.
Again Myatt felt a touch of pride at being treated as an equal by such a distinguished man. He had considered these issues for years, and he answered Drewe’s questions thoughtfully.
Unlike scientists, he said, art collectors did not rely on a peer-review system. Works of art were not evaluated by juries of artists and historians, nor were dealers bound by specific guidelines, let alone hard and fast rules. Myatt respected the art establishment for supporting the careers of artists, but lately he had begun to question the whole enterprise of evaluating art. He thought great art should be kept out of the hands of the wealthy few, who could drive prices up by trading in masterpieces as though they were stock options or locking them away in vaults.5
“The world’s gone mad,” Myatt told the professor. “Art was never meant to be just a question of money.”
By the middle of 1988 Drewe’s and Myatt’s relationship was flourishing. Drewe often invited Myatt and his children over for dinner, and Myatt took a liking to Goudsmid. During one meal, when he mentioned that his daughter had an eye problem, Goudsmid took Amy to her private office upstairs, examined her carefully, and made sure Myatt found the right specialist for her. She was the disciplinarian in the family, the bookkeeper, the educator. It was Goudsmid who made sure Nadav and Atarah did their homework, watched them brush their teeth, and hustled them to bed. Drewe, on the other hand, seemed lackadaisical, and let them do whatever they pleased.
The two families enjoyed their evening get-togethers, and on one occasion Drewe took them all out to the West End to see a pantomime. It was an unusual theater season: Three productions of traditional children’s pantomime starred former television anchormen, while another featured a well-known stuntman who had once jumped his motorbike over dozens of London double-deckers.
After the performance, as they strolled outside the theater, Drewe took Myatt aside, pulled out a cigar, and announced that there had been an interesting development. A friend of his at Christie’s had been over for dinner, examined the two Dutch portraits on the wall, and pronounced them “very competent” eighteenth-century copies of seventeenth-century Bakkers. Then Drewe said something that truly astonished Myatt. The two works, the Christie’s friend had said, could easily fetch £15,000 to £20,000 at auction.
Myatt laughed at the irony. With just a little more scrutiny, Drewe’s friend would have known that the paintings were very competent twentieth-century copies.
Only when Myatt thought back on his relationship with Drewe years afterward did he realize that the professor had been testing him that night to see if he was ready for the next step.
A few weeks later Myatt was at Drewe’s for supper and noticed