Provenance_ How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art - Laney Salisbury [19]
While the source of Drewe’s inventory must have seemed vague even to Berger, he had not thought to ask more probing questions about provenance. He knew little about the traditions of the art world. For him, a painting was just another commodity. The art market was a realm outside his own, and he considered himself a salesman, not a historian. Although there were always gaps in the history of the works he was handling, Drewe had explained that collectors often preferred to remain anonymous and liked to keep their names out of the auction catalogs, which were notorious hunting grounds for burglars looking for a good haul.
But now Berger was telling Drewe that he needed a comprehensive history for each of the pieces he was trying to move. Could Drewe get him the names of previous owners? Were there sales receipts or exhibition catalogs detailing where the works had been shown?
Drewe promised to check with his art historian.
With Myatt at his side, Drewe stepped into one of the more prestigious galleries that dominate London’s fashionable Cork Street. He had made an appointment to see a Bissière and wanted his art consultant to look over the piece and its provenance. When the dealer showed them the work, Myatt and Drewe agreed that it would fit nicely with the professor’s growing collection of twentieth-century modern masters. When the dealer’s back was turned, Drewe examined the painting for gallery labels or dedications that might provide clues to its history. Myatt and Drewe had been to several galleries earlier and discovered that dealers tended to be discreet about where a painting came from. It was good business, a way of keeping their clients from cutting them out of the deal by going directly to the source.
It hadn’t taken Drewe long to realize that Myatt’s fakes were sorely lacking in provenance. To overcome that handicap, he would have to learn how to create paperwork so impressive that any doubts about Myatt’s work would evaporate. He would need to produce a chain of documents that signaled a painting’s clear trajectory from artist’s studio to museum, from auction house to collector—receipts, invoices, letters, exhibition catalogs. If he could chronicle the involvement of a well-known collector or gallery along the way, all the better. A painting’s cachet was not based solely on the quality of the canvas but also on its lineage. The more prestigious or infamous the previous owner, the better. A piece of art with a juicy history was always worth an extra ten grand.
“Buying a painting that was once owned by a well-known person means, in a way, standing in their shoes, walking in their footsteps, possessing a small part of their myth,” Werner Muensterberger wrote in his book Collecting: An Unruly Passion. “The idea is that the value of the objects they buy will rub off on them. The objective is to convince themselves that they are ‘someone’ or alternatively they cultivate a secret garden which may bring to light a different self.” Muensterberger could just as easily have been writing about Drewe, a classic con man who presented himself as an empty slate upon which his mark could etch out a fantasy or wish.
Drewe walked out of the gallery, trailed by Myatt. He had seen enough. There were dozens of counterfeit histories he could attach to each of Myatt’s works. The possibilities were endless.
For the past several weeks, Mibus’s conversations with Drewe had revolved around two subjects. One was the promised viewing of the Picasso in New York; the other was the de Staël, whose authenticity Drewe was now certain he could prove through newly acquired documents.
At their next meeting, again at White’s, Drewe ordered an expensive bottle of wine and lunch for both of them, then proceeded to spend a good half hour criticizing the French expert Jaeger’s artistic eye. He said that Jaeger was a stubborn man, but that even he would be persuaded