Provenance_ How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art - Laney Salisbury [17]
“Remember that Gleizes you painted a few weeks ago?” Drewe asked him suddenly.
Myatt had been captivated by a reproduction he’d seen of a small elliptical pencil drawing, a 1916 sketch titled Portrait of an Army Doctor, by the cubist Albert Gleizes. The sketch had prompted him to make a painting of the doctor in the artist’s style, as what he called “a small homage” to Gleizes. He couldn’t afford real oils, so he’d bought house paint from the hardware store. Once it was dry, he’d applied a thick coat of varnish until it looked very much like the real thing. Drewe had framed it nicely and hung it on his stairway wall. Myatt thought it looked glorious and was quite proud of himself.
Drewe said he had shown the piece to an acquaintance at Christie’s, who believed it was genuine and could fetch at least £25,000 at auction.
“You know, you don’t have to sell these paintings to me exclusively,” said Drewe, “though of course I’m happy to handle them for you. For the Gleizes I can get you £12,500.”
That was more money than Myatt had seen in years. He could buy shoes for the kids, stop worrying about the rent, and have more than enough coal for the stove. It would solve all his problems.
“We don’t have to stop there,” said Drewe. “You can make a decent living at this.” He held out a fat brown envelope full of bills. “It’s yours if you want it.”
It hit Myatt that Drewe had already sold the piece. He could no longer deny what he had suspected, that Drewe was passing off his works as genuine. He had already painted fifteen or twenty pieces for the good professor, and Drewe wanted more.
Myatt took the cash and realized that with that one small gesture he had crossed the line.
“What would you like to paint next?” asked Drewe.
Myatt thought for a moment.
“Giacometti,” he said.
5
MIBUS WANTS HIS MONEY BACK
Frequently there is a tender complicity between faker and victim: I want you to believe that such and such is the case, says the faker; if you want to believe it, too, and in order to cement that belief, you, for your part, will give me a great deal of money, and I, for my part, will laugh behind your back. The deal is done.
—JULIAN BARNES,
Letter from London, June 11, 1990
Adrian Mibus was becoming increasingly unhappy with the de Staël he had bought from Danny Berger. The longer he stared at it, the more he realized something was off—the brushstrokes seemed a little too stiff, and the painter’s casual elegance was absent. It had been nearly a year since he’d bought the piece and put it up in his home. Now, in the summer of 1989, he decided to get a second opinion. He took it down, wrapped it carefully, and brought it across the Channel to Paris to show to the artist’s widow.
As heiress to the estate, Madame de Staël retained what in France is known as the droit moral, an absolute right to judge an artist’s oeuvre and declare whether or not a work is authentic. The droit moral is legally binding in France, where it often serves as the ultimate arbiter in disputed cases of forgery.
As soon as she saw the canvas, the widow de Staël expressed her doubts. What disturbed her even more than the painting itself was the inscription on the back—the scrawled reference to a walk in the park—and the signature, “Nicholas de Staël.”
“That’s quite wrong,” she said.
Her husband, a Russian émigré who had settled in France, always spelled his name “Nicolas.” As for the alleged promenade through the park with “Mrs. Richardson,” Madame de Staël knew nothing about it.
When Mibus returned to London with the painting, he tracked Professor Drewe down through Danny Berger and told him he suspected the de Staël was “wrong.” The artist’s widow was not convinced that the work was her husband’s, and