Provenance_ How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art - Laney Salisbury [59]
The work’s impressive provenance included handwritten letters and newspaper clippings. Receipts and invoices showed that it had passed through the hands of several well-known Nicholson collectors, including Cyril Reddihough, an early supporter of his work, and William Copley, a Beverly Hills dealer with ties to the surrealists. The documentation also included a photograph of the watercolor in a copy of the catalog for a 1957 exhibition at London’s Gallery One titled “The Road to Abstraction.” Clearly visible on the first page was a red oval stamp bearing the inscription “St. Philip’s Priory OSM Oxford.”
Gimpel arranged for Nicholson expert and former Tate Gallery director Alan Bowness to see the work, and Bowness seemed satisfied that it was genuine. Gimpel phoned Levy and told her he wanted it.
Levy called Belman, who in turn called Drewe.
The professor immediately upped the price to £18,000.
Belman was used to this kind of behavior from Drewe, but Levy was outraged.
“This is no way to conduct business,” she told Belman.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “My hands are tied.”
Levy called Gimpel, who reluctantly met the new price.
Belman closed the deal and breathed a sigh of relief. He thought he was finally free of John Drewe.
About a mile from Belman’s home, Danny Berger’s unlikely little garage on Finchley Road had become a popular viewing room for runners, gallery owners, and curators from London, Paris, and New York. Business was good, but Berger was getting the runaround from Drewe, who was slow in paying commissions. Whenever Berger insisted on his share, the professor would explain that there were problems at home and he was having trouble making ends meet.
One day he surprised Berger at the garage. He said he was embarrassed to ask but he needed a £3,000 loan for the mortgage. Berger thought it was the least he could do, and wrote him a check. Several months later Drewe had not returned the money, and when Berger asked him for it, the professor announced that he was broke. He proposed that instead of paying Berger back in cash, he would give him paintings. Once Berger was fully reimbursed, he could buy directly from the syndicate at a substantial discount.
Around the middle of 1994, Drewe showed up at the garage again and told Berger that he’d broken up with Goudsmid and moved out. She was emotionally unstable, he said, a threat not only to her children but to herself. He had been forced to take everything he owned with him and was now virtually homeless. Berger felt sorry for him and agreed to store some of his belongings. Soon the garage was filled with frames and boxes of documents and several trunks—one of which, Berger couldn’t help noticing, had guns in it.
Drewe asked for another loan, and said that if he couldn’t repay it in a timely manner, Berger could simply take another painting. Berger knew that the value of the works in his garage far exceeded the loans, which now totaled about £30,000. The risk seemed minor, and he was sure he was getting the better end of the deal. After six years selling paintings for Drewe he considered the professor a friend, and wrote Drewe another check without delay.
Despite the fact the Drewe had been using Hugh Stoakes’s name on his false provenances for a long while, Stoakes had not been in contact with his childhood friend in years. Drewe had always been one of the few who appreciated him, but their friendship was interrupted when Stoakes turned seventeen and won a full scholarship to study philosophy and psychology at Oxford, an adventure that lasted a mere four months. He began drinking heavily and ignoring his academic responsibilities. On the night before a crucial biology exam that required dissecting and describing a rabbit’s digestive system, he blew all of his meager allowance at the pub. When he saw the bunny the next