Provenance_ How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art - Laney Salisbury [8]
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Over the next several months, Drewe became Myatt’s most valuable client. After Myatt had delivered the Matisse, he went to work on the Klee, and then on two seventeenth-century-style Dutch portraits and a seascape for Drewe’s wife.
Their phone conversations were always a pleasure. Drewe brimmed with good stories and a palpable optimism, and each time Myatt brought him a fresh painting, the professor had an envelope full of cash for him.
A few months after their first meeting, Drewe invited him to the city for dinner. Myatt took the Underground to Golders Green, a wealthy, predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Greater London, where Drewe lived with his common-law wife, Batsheva Goudsmid, and their two children, Nadav and Atarah, who were a few years older than Myatt’s children.
Drewe was waiting outside the station when Myatt arrived. Together they walked to the house at 30 Rotherwick Road, a dark-red Teutonic brick building with heavy timber lintels and bay windows on a street that was one of the tidiest in the neighborhood, a model of quiet taste. The houses were all stately and anonymous, with identical iron gratings along the front and little gardens in the back.
Drewe seemed even more upbeat than usual when he told Myatt that he’d given Goudsmid the two “Dutch portraits” as a birthday present. However, he had a small confession to make: He’d lied and said that he’d bought the pieces at auction. He’d also neglected to mention Myatt’s contribution, telling Goudsmid only that Myatt was his art consultant and adviser on his collection.
“For God’s sake, John, don’t tell her you painted them,” Drewe said.
Myatt hesitated for a moment. He’d told the occasional white lie in the past, but this was a little more elaborate. Still, he felt indebted to Drewe, who had paid him hundreds of pounds and was probably good for hundreds more. It was the least he could do.
Inside, Drewe showed Myatt how he had set the two Dutch portraits—one of a boy in a heavy brown cloak with his hand stuck in his vest, the other of a girl holding an ostrich feather—on a plum-colored velvet background surrounded by a gilt frame. When Goudsmid came downstairs, Drewe introduced her to Myatt, and the two shook hands and admired the paintings.
“Lovely pieces,” Myatt said in the most professorial tone he could muster. “Excellent examples of late-seventeenth-century works. Probably painted around 1680.”
He felt uncomfortable masquerading as an expert, but he had done a good job on the paintings, and they were thoughtful gifts from Drewe to his wife. Why should he spoil things?
Goudsmid, a petite, good-looking woman, was clad in a business suit and wore her hair pulled straight back. An Israeli army veteran, she now worked as a pediatric eye specialist at a London hospital. When she wasn’t at her job, she was taking care of the children or hunting for antique furniture and remodeling: a new bathroom, a sunroom, a gourmet kitchen. She gave Myatt a brief tour of the house, which was filled with ladders and paint buckets and hammers, in a state of “hyperactive refurbishment,” as one of the neighbors described it.
After dinner, Drewe slipped Myatt an envelope, walked him back to the train station, and announced that he was commissioning another piece. Until now, he had been particular about which artist Myatt should copy, but today he wanted to hear Myatt’s recommendations for his growing “collection.”
“Surprise me!” he said, grinning. “After all, you’re my personal art consultant.”
As Myatt waited for the train, he felt that something significant had taken place, something that was about to change his life. He turned and watched Drewe strutting away in his perfect suit with his long arms swinging. Myatt had always done his best work in the solitude of his studio, but someone was at his side now. Drewe was offering a partnership,