Provenance_ How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art - Laney Salisbury [54]
David Stern guarded the Pissarro legacy and specialized in sales of the family’s work, but he was always looking for additional business. He told Belman he might be interested in the two works.19
At Belman’s home a few days later, Stern examined the Giacometti and the Nicholson. As Belman filled him in on the syndicate’s attempts to acquire the vitally important Russian archives, Stern took his time studying the works. Belman had imagined a short meeting and a rapid appraisal, but the dealer checked the canvases thoroughly and turned them over to examine their frames. He took them out to the garden and held them up to the light, and then he leaned them up against the wall and photographed them from several angles.
“Clive,” he said, “I’ve been in this business for twenty-five years. It takes twenty years to build up a reputation and two minutes for it to go up in smoke.”
Belman, who was feeling a little anxious by now, was relieved when Stern finally said he was considering Nicholson’s Aegean and wanted to examine the documentation.
Provenance is a fluid construct. A single piece of memorabilia can bring to life an otherwise moribund pile of receipts and invoices. A fully loaded provenance, with details of a work’s trajectory through the marketplace, can add substantially to the price. Further, if there’s any hint that the work was once associated with celebrity or scandal, infamy or criminal endeavor, its value may increase significantly. (Collectors have been known to arrange to have a painting stolen and subsequently recovered.) More often, however, a work’s provenance might consist of a single bill of sale, one catalog, or a passing mention in an old letter.
For Aegean, Drewe had provided Belman with a sensational provenance, including a handwritten letter from Barbara Hepworth, a major British sculptor and Ben Nicholson’s second wife, to Margaret Gardiner, an early member of the ICA and a patron of the arts who had once donated seventeen tons of Nigerian hardwood to Hepworth for use in her work. Drewe told Belman that the letter, which mentioned Aegean in passing, had accompanied the painting for years as part of its provenance.
Drewe had also supplied Belman with photocopies of various receipts, several of them marked with a rectangular stamped impression reading, “For Private Research Only/Tate Gallery Archive.” This indicated that the originals were tucked safely away at the Tate. Other documents showed that the original buyer of Aegean was Jacques O’Hana of the O’Hana Gallery, who had acquired it from the artist for £900 in 1955. The work had later been bought by Peter Harris, a collector who was based in Israel and was a member of Drewe’s syndicate. The receipts had all been signed by either Harris or O’Hana. One further document lending weight to the work’s authenticity was a 1950s exhibition catalog that included a black-and-white photograph of it.
Belman sent Stern a transparency of the painting, along with the provenance. Stern was evidently impressed. He told Belman that he had a potential buyer in New York, an art consultant who worked out of her East Side apartment and had done business with Stern in the past. The consultant had a corporate client who seemed interested.
On a July morning in 1993, Belman landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport to deliver Aegean. With the small painting tucked safely under his arm, he folded himself into a waiting cab and went straight to the consultant’s office. She examined the work and its provenance, seemed pleased with both, and immediately agreed to buy the piece for £35,000. When Belman returned to London a few days later, Drewe paid him his £7,000 commission.
The job could not have gone more smoothly. It was the easiest seven grand Belman had ever made,