Provenance_ How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art - Laney Salisbury [127]
Jonathan Searle retired from the force and moved as far away from London as he could without entirely vanishing. Now he spends much of his time restoring works of art. He loves the smell of paint and varnish and cedar, and can’t think of a worse topic to talk about than John Drewe.
After the con was exposed, an intense process of reverse screening took place on both sides of the Atlantic. Librarians went through their stacks, archivists scoured databases, curators lined up their collections to examine and cross-reference provenances. Drewe had left his mark on the system, a visible hairline crack. Skeptics said the damaged archives would never regain their original pristine state, and that the records had been forever altered.
The Tate pulled its socks up and opened a brand-new research room with state-of-the-art technology and tighter restrictions. Staffers were trained to examine everything that went in and out. Librarians kept watch over the researchers as surveillance cameras scanned the room. The Hanover Gallery archives now included a prominent warning from the police department directed at future researchers: “This documentation may have been compromised.”
John Myatt too was famous when he arrived at Brixton Prison after the trial. In the reception area, which smelled of carbolic soap and soiled clothes, he was strip-searched, measured, weighed, and photographed. Prisoners in flip-flops, vests, and baggy trousers loitered at the top of the stairs with their towels slung over their shoulders. In the hexagonal administration block at the heart of the jail, the clock had stopped.
Myatt had been warned about the filth and monotony of prison life. The director-general of the prison service himself had referred to Brixton as a “hellhole.” Inmates sometimes spent twenty-two hours a day in their cells, and three quarters of the eight-hundred-strong population had reading and writing skills below those of the average eleven-year-old.
Myatt’s blockmates nicknamed him “Picasso,” and soon he was doing portraits of them in exchange for phone cards. He painted a picture of a notorious rapist who had been “chemically castrated,” and another of one of the prison wings, which he had to sketch on the sly to avoid the security cameras. Another showed the inside of an inmate’s cell with a lewd portrait on the wall.
In his own cell, behind the coils of razor wire and the blackened brickwork of the drab Victorian building, Myatt’s belief in the power of prayer flourished. He felt a constant and comforting link to his church and his community. He knew that back in Sugnall his reputation remained intact, and that the townsfolk held church vigils for him and prayed for his well-being and swift return. As a homecoming surprise, they had begun to refurbish his kitchen. Early mornings in his cell, before he opened his eyes, he imagined himself back on the farm.
In June 1999, after serving just four months of his one-year sentence—a stint his fellow prisoners called “a shit and a shave”—Myatt was sprung for good behavior. As he left he swore that he would never paint again, and that if he ever made any money, he’d give it to his church.
The day after he got out he received a cheerful and unexpected call from Searle, who wanted to know about his future plans. Myatt told him that he was putting his paints away for good.
“Big mistake,” said the detective. “You have a God-given talent. You know, you could still make a living off it.” He asked whether Myatt would be willing to paint a portrait of his family. Myatt said he’d think about it.
Myatt was nearly broke. Most of the £100,000 he’d earned from Drewe had already been spent on the kids, who were in boarding school, and he’d given a good deal to the church and the Salvation Army. The £18,000 he had when he was caught had been handed over to the police. Over the