Provenance_ How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art - Laney Salisbury [56]
Nahum’s gallery, whose centerpiece was a plush velvet showroom hung with placid landscapes and seascapes, sat off one of the main thoroughfares of central London, in an elegant district of high-end shops and boutiques crammed with tourists carrying turquoise bags filled with chocolates and teas from Fortnum & Mason. There were frequent drop-ins at the gallery, and Nahum kept his ear cocked for the telltale accent of cash-heavy Americans, Germans, and Japanese. His experience had taught him that the rarest treasures could be found in the most unlikely places, so when Clive Belman walked in with a painting under his arm one day in the fall of 1993, Nahum went up to him and politely asked what he could do for him.
With all the patience in the world, he helped Belman unwrap a small wooden panel of the Crucifixion by Graham Sutherland. Christ was depicted as an emaciated figure against a yellow background, and Belman explained that the panel was one of a series of working sketches for the Crucifixion scene in Sutherland’s famous tapestry in Coventry Cathedral. He told Nahum he was selling the work on behalf of his neighbor, John Drewe, a physicist who was conducting research into long-hidden Holocaust archives.
In Nahum’s opinion, the work was unremarkable, but it had a solid provenance. He remembered that not long ago Christie’s had auctioned a similar group of Sutherland Crucifixions with identical provenance: They had all come from St. Philip’s Priory in Begbroke. On the back of Belman’s panel was the priory stamp and the inscription “Father Bernard F. Barlow, Graham Sutherland, Crucifixion of our Lord—study in oil—loaned Jan 1972 to Oxford University Bod Library reference R203.”
Nahum assumed that Christie’s had checked with the monastery and vetted the provenance of the other Crucifixions, but to be on the safe side, he decided to take Belman’s over there for an informal evaluation—which was easy enough to do, since his gallery was right next to Christie’s back door. Sometimes, when he opened up shop in the morning, he found boxes of spent champagne bottles that had been left outside overnight. Nahum believed that such luxuries, which were financed by the auctioneers’ usurious commissions, were outrageous. Still, the auction houses were useful when he needed to unload mediocre works that he considered unworthy of his own clientele.
Christie’s estimated Belman’s Sutherland panel at about £15,000. Nahum thought that was high and offered Belman £5,500. Belman accepted and made out a receipt in the name of John Drewe at Airtech Systems.
A few weeks later Belman was back with two more pieces, both by Ben Nicholson and both from the collection of John Cockett. Nahum remembered that he had seen one of them a year or so earlier in a vault in Golders Green, where he had gone with an artist and runner named Stuart Berkeley. At the time Nahum thought the work was either badly restored or the product of one of Nicholson’s off days, and his opinion hadn’t changed.
The second painting, titled Mexican, was no better than the first, but it was commercial enough, with skewed geometrical shapes and an abundant palette. Nahum thought he could probably find an American buyer for it. The back of the stretcher was signed and dated by the artist, and there were two labels, one from Galerie de Seine in Belgrave Square, London, the other from New York’s Willard Gallery. The documentation seemed solid. The piece was dated 1953 and had been bought from Nicholson by E. J. Power, a businessman and future Tate Gallery trustee. Belman showed Nahum an old receipt for the work, along with a 1950s catalog from the Galerie de Seine that was titled “Paintings by Five Artists From St. Ives” and contained a photograph of the painting. Finally, the provenance included