The Modigliani Scandal - Ken Follett [8]
He walked to his office, where he hooked his umbrella on the coat-stand. He walked to the window and looked out onto Regent Street while he lit his first cigar of the day. He watched the traffic, making a list in his mind of the things he would have to attend to between now and the first gin and tonic at five o′clock.
He turned around as his junior partner, Stephen Willow, walked in. ″Morning, Willow,″ he said, and sat down at his desk.
Willow said: ″Morning, Lampeth.″ They stuck to the habit of surnames, despite the six or seven years they had been together. Lampeth had brought Willow in to extend the Belgrave′s range: Willow had built up a small gallery of his own by nurturing relationships with half-a-dozen young artists who had turned out to be winners. Lampeth had seen the Belgrave lagging slightly behind the market at the time, and Willow had offered a quick way to catch up with the contemporary scene. The partnership worked well: although there was a good ten or fifteen years between the two men, Willow had the same basic qualities of artistic taste and business sense as Lampeth.
The younger man laid a folder on the table and refused a cigar. ″We must talk about Peter Usher,″ he said.
″Ah, yes. There′s something wrong there, and I don′t know what it is.″
″We took him over when the Sixty-Nine Gallery went broke,″ Willow began. ″He had done well there for a year—one canvas went for a thousand. Most of them were selling for upwards of five hundred. Since he came to us, he′s only sold a couple.″
″How are we pricing?″
″The same range as the Sixty-Nine.ʺ
″They may have been doing naughty things, mind,″ said Lampeth.
″I think they were. A suspicious number of highly priced pictures reappeared shortly after they had been sold.″
Lampeth nodded. It was the art world′s worst-kept secret that dealers sometimes bought their own pictures in order to stimulate demand for a young artist.
Lampeth said: ″And then again, you know, we′re not the right gallery for Usher.″ He saw his partner′s raised eyebrows and added: ″No criticism intended, Willow—at the time he appeared to be a scoop. But he is very avant-garde, and it probably did him a little damage to become associated with such a respectable gallery as ours. However, that′s all in the past. I still think he′s a remarkably good young painter, and we owe him our best efforts.″
Willow changed his mind about the cigar, and took one from the box in Lampeth′s inlaid desk. ″Yes, that was my thinking. I′ve sounded him out about a show: he says he has enough new work to justify it.″
″Good. The New Room, perhaps?″ The gallery was too big for it all to be devoted to the work of a single living artist, so one-man exhibitions were held in smaller galleries or in part of the Regent Street premises.
″Ideal.″
Lampeth mused: ″I still wonder whether we wouldn′t be doing him a favor by letting him go elsewhere.″
″Perhaps, but the outside world wouldn′t see it like that.″
″You′re quite right.″
″Shall I tell him it′s on, then?″
″No, not yet. There may be something bigger in the pipeline. Lord Cardwell gave me dinner last night. He wants to sell his collection.″
″Ye Gods—the poor chap. That′s a tall order for us.″
″Yes, and we shall have to do it carefully. I′m still thinking about it. Leave that slot open for a while.″
Willow looked toward the window out of a comer of his eye—a sign, Lampeth knew, that he was straining his memory. ″Hasn′t Cardwell got two or three Modiglianis?″ he said eventually.
″That′s right.″ It was no surprise to Lampeth that Willow knew it: part of a top art dealer′s job was to know where hundreds of paintings were, who they belonged to, and how much they were worth.
ʺInteresting,ʺ Willow continued. ″I had word from Bonn yesterday, after you had left. A collection of Modigliani′s sketches is on the market.″
″What sort?″
″Pencil sketches, for sculptures. They aren′t on the open market yet, of course. We can have them if we want them.″
″Good. We′ll buy them anyway—I think Modigliani is due for a rise in value. He′s been underrated