Provenance_ How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art - Laney Salisbury [120]
Much of the inspiration for his new defense came from a recent and infamous case involving arms smuggling by an alleged MI6/CIA front company called Allivane. Without providing a stitch of evidence to connect his case with Allivane’s, Drewe inserted details from that case into his own. Drewe argued that he had met the arms dealer Peter Harris, who introduced him to a chairman of Allivane. Drewe had set up Norseland to market works, particularly those that Allivane wanted to sell, and there had been nothing to suggest to him that they were not genuine. He said that in the course of his work he had met with high-ranking government officials associated with Allivane, including the Conservative Party’s Michael Heseltine and former Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, both of whom he claimed would back up his story in court.
Even the most generous of juries would have found it hard to follow his logic. At one point a juror asked him a question via a written note to Judge Rivlin. Ten minutes into Drewe’s long-winded reply, the same juror begged the judge to withdraw the question.
On several occasions, Judge Rivlin lost his patience. One afternoon, in the course of a long interrogation by Drewe of Detective Searle, he stopped the professor short. “We are in danger of just getting lost in millions of questions. . . . Can I remind you that before lunch you said you were just about to get to the thrust of your suggestions?”
“I was just about to do that,” said Drewe, who proceeded to launch himself on a new tangent. He was pushing the limits. Once, as he was questioning a witness, he stopped, anticipating another rebuke from the judge.
“Your Honor, I am pushing ahead as fast as I can, but there are for the defense some quite important points that I have to . . .”
“Mr. Drewe, I have not said anything to you,” Rivlin interrupted.
“Just continue.”
Whenever Drewe collided head-on with the facts, as he often did, he seemed unperturbed. He would ask a leading question intended to bolster his case and nearly always receive a reply that damaged it. “He’s hoisting himself on his own petard,” one lawyer was heard to whisper to a colleague.
Drewe spent an entire morning asserting that Searle—whom he sometimes mistakenly referred to as Myatt—had investigated only those paintings that had not been linked to Allivane, the company that lay at the heart of his imagined conspiracy. Drewe accused Searle of being an agent for MI5, forcing the detective to scramble in order to prove that the allegations were false.
Bevan objected. “Mr. Drewe is not an expert on Allivane. Can we draw a limit to this?”
There was little need for the prosecution to bear down on the professor, for Drewe was his own worst enemy. He exuded contempt for the Crown’s witnesses and seemed unable to connect with the jury. In a stilted attempt at humor, he even corrected Judge Rivlin on his grammar while complimenting him on his craft.
A string of witnesses testified that Drewe had convinced them to sell paintings for him. Dealers and experts explained how he had persuaded them to authenticate works of art. Sir Alan Bowness, who had given his blessing to several fake Nicholsons, told the jury how Drewe’s runners had approached him with pristine-looking provenances, and how he had eventually helped the police crack the case.
Librarians from the Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum testified about Drewe’s frequent and suspicious visits. Drewe protested, saying he couldn’t possibly have done anything untoward without being detected by the museums’ closed-circuit cameras and tight surveillance.