Provenance_ How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art - Laney Salisbury [41]
Palmer flew to London and took a taxi to New Bond Street, a West End shopping thoroughfare that had been fashionable since the eighteenth century. At Sotheby’s, she stepped into the lobby and went up the well-worn staircase to the viewing room, where she asked to see the Giacometti nude.
What a mess, she thought. It was definitely a fake, not even a nice try.
There were a number of giveaways, not least of which was the table in the foreground. In addition, the nude was uncharacteristically lifeless, with a series of aimless, floating brushstrokes in the background. Giacometti often painted a glimpse of his studio behind the model, with a row of canvases stacked up against the wall. Here the forger had laid in flat, abstract lines and applied a heavy coat of varnish, something Giacometti would never have done.
Palmer expressed her concerns to a Sotheby’s representative, who argued that the previous owner might have added the varnish himself. He insisted that Sotheby’s had done its homework. Perhaps this wasn’t the best Giacometti, he said, but it was a Giacometti nonetheless. Sotheby’s had performed due diligence and had found the provenance impeccable. They had also examined a photograph of the painting in the files of the now defunct Hanover Gallery. The files were stored at the Tate archives, and Palmer was urged to go and take a look at them for herself.
Palmer’s infallible eye had rarely been questioned so she was slightly taken aback, but she had no intention of backing off. Since the auction was only a few days away, she decided to stay in London and do a little footwork. She hailed a cab and asked the driver to take her to the Tate. En route she reviewed in her mind Giacometti’s relationship with the Hanover.
The gallery, which had dealt with Giacometti for years, had never been a huge financial success, but it had been one of Europe’s most influential showcases of contemporary art. His widow, Annette, still had occasional dealings with its founder, Erica Brausen, who had set out in the late 1940s to challenge conventional thinking. Now in her eighties, Brausen had been as fearless in her personal life as she was about the art she supported. She fled Germany for Paris in the 1930s, ran a bar frequented by artists and writers, and used her contacts with the U.S. Navy to help her Jewish and socialist friends escape from Europe during the Spanish Civil War. She herself had fled in a fishing boat and arrived penniless in London at the start of World War II. Then she began organizing small exhibitions.
It was not an easy road: Brausen was a woman in a male-dominated business, a German in a Germanophobic society, and an open lesbian (her lover was Catherine “Toto” Koopman, a former Chanel model and film actress). At the Hanover, which she opened in 1949, she repeatedly went out on a limb for unconventional artists such as Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud. Her gallery later foundered, and went under in 1973, but during its quarter century in existence Brausen had kept meticulous records, logging each sale, purchase, loan, and commission in her ledger books. These were now stored in the Tate archives.
Palmer paid the cabbie, walked into the museum, and introduced herself to the head archivist, Jennifer Booth. She asked to see the Hanover photograph albums, the visual record of all the artwork that had passed through the gallery. This old-fashioned two-ring binder was about the size of a school composition book, and its heavy black pages were brittle and stiff with age.
Palmer flipped through the relevant album until she found the Footless Woman. The details on the label below the photograph coincided with those in the Sotheby’s catalog:
Nude 1954
By Alberto Giacometti G67/11
Oil on canvas: 23-7/8 × 17-7/8 ins
Signed lower right.
Sold June 16th 1957
She did not, even for a moment, consider the possibility that her judgment was off. She looked