The Perfect Landscape

by Ragna Sigurðardóttir

  Hanna doesn’t respond. She doesn’t understand what he’s driving at, why this would be a waste of time. Hanna responds professionally, in a measured manner. “I’ll look through these,” she says. “I’ll show you if I find something relevant, but we probably don’t both need to pore over them.”

  Steinn finally manages to separate a pair of white cotton gloves from the others in the bag and hands them to Hanna, who slips them on. Steinn is not his usual self, she thinks. He seems nervous, as if he finds this difficult.

  They stand over the well-lit table in the center of the room; Hanna lifts a brown folder out of the box and lays it in front of her. Steinn makes no attempt to look at it with her but still stands close by. Seeing the determined set of his mouth, Hanna suddenly becomes very aware of the warmth from his body. Her reaction to this unexpected physical proximity takes her by surprise. Somewhat agitated, she opens the folder.

  Flicking carefully through the sketchbooks, she examines the drawings, looking for the angle from which this painting was done, the gnarled birch trees in the foreground and the triangular shaped mountain to the right of the canvas. There are lots of drawings in the folder and even more in the box. She shudders at the thought of going through them all on her own and is surprised at Steinn’s sudden lack of cooperation. From her very first day, he has gone out of his way to support her in every way, so much so that it is beginning to grate. She has also noticed how clever he is at subtly exerting his influence in situations with his little silences, facial expressions, and gestures. She has started to look out for these now, and he seldom lets her down; she follows his facial expressions like she was reading her opponent’s body movements on the fencing piste.

  Now she sees his lower lip stubbornly jutting out and his chin stiffening slightly. Evidently she’ll be looking at these sketches on her own. Hanna smiles to herself, almost sure that he’s doing the same with her, that he’s reading her as much as she is him. He must sense the unspoken friendship that has grown between them from that first day. They have a lot in common; they understand each other even though they don’t know one another outside of work. They share a similar sense of humor; their attitude to life is much the same. They are both inclined to keep silent when the situation demands, and a glance is often enough to know what the other is thinking. They are both modest and courteous by nature and not given to acting rashly. They have a shared passion for art, although they express it in different ways. They are not naturally acquisitive, and they both have a strong sense of justice.

  Realizing Steinn is watching her leaf through the folder, Hanna chooses to keep quiet. It’s up to him to start talking.

  “I was reading this article about van Meegeren the other day,” says Steinn out of nowhere. Hanna looks at him questioningly for a moment. She knows who van Meegeren is, and while she flicks through the sketchbooks, they talk about the most infamous art forger of the twentieth century.

  Han van Meegeren was Dutch and was born at the end of the nineteenth century, but he painted in the style of seventeenth-century artists like Rembrandt and Frans Hals. Art critics responded warmly to his work at first, but later they tore it apart as primitive mimicry. Van Meegeren was annoyed and set out to show that they were wrong. He decided to paint a work of art that would stand on a par with the old masters, and he made the methods and techniques of the seventeenth-century artists his own. He got hold of canvases from the period, mixed his own oils as they did then, and used special additives so the colors dried as if they were old. When the painting was finished, he baked it in an oven to dry it and then ran over the picture with a rolling pin to create cracks on the surface just like in the old paintings. He spent a full six years mastering this technique. Van Meegeren forged numerous paintings and made a lot of money selling them. He attributed his most famous forgeries to the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, who was alive in the seventeenth century.

  “He owned fifty-two houses,” Hanna comments, and Steinn snorts softly. Hanna smiles. She likes his antipathy toward accumulating wealth for the sake of it.

  “Then he was arrested for treason,” Hanna continues, leafing through Gudrun’s pictures. “Do you remember how it all ended? One of his paintings, attributed to Vermeer, was sold to a German Nazi, who later sold it to Hermann Goering, who hid it during the war. It was found after the war, a newly discovered work of Vermeer’s! The painting was traced to van Meegeren, who was arrested and charged with selling a national treasure to the enemy, which was treason. Then he painted a similar piece in prison. To prove that he could paint like Vermeer. That the painting wasn’t a national treasure but a fake.”

  Steinn mutters something that Hanna misses.

  “What I always found so strange with this,” continues Hanna as she carries on leafing through, “is that his paintings aren’t a bit like Vermeer’s. I mean, I don’t find the painting of the disciples at Emmaus remotely Vermeer-like.”

  “He was an oddball,” says Steinn after a short silence. “A total junkie. In every respect. And during the war, Vermeer’s paintings weren’t accessible, so it wasn’t possible to compare them. The art galleries locked up their collections down in the cellars, like we do here.”

  Steinn pronounces Vermeer with a soft Icelandic v rather than with an f sound, which would have been more correct given that it’s a Dutch name. Hanna wonders where Steinn studied art conservation. In England maybe; they probably can’t pronounce Dutch names properly there either. Or in America. Putting down the sketchbook she has just finished leafing through, she picks up another.

  “Two more to go,” she says. “And then those loose drawings in the box. I still haven’t found the exact motif yet.” She isn’t as optimistic as when she started. Steinn takes out the remaining folder and quickly thumbs through it. He’s clearly doing it just to speed the process up, and together they finish looking through the sketches in silence, with no success. When it’s done, Steinn carefully puts everything back in its place.

  Finally, he carefully lays the painting facedown on the plastic-covered table in front of Hanna. The frame is an ordinary wooden frame typical of the period, reinforced with cross slats and wooden corner wedges.

  “I’ve taken off the outer frame—it was beyond repair,” says Steinn, stroking the sides of the painting with gloved fingers. “We’ll get a new frame made.” They look at the brown canvas stretcher, which gives them no clues, neither a signature nor a date.

  “Well, there’s nothing much to see here,” says Steinn. “I just wanted to show it to you. This is a homemade frame. And look, there’s a tiny mistake here.” He points to where two wedges have been driven into one corner, one of which is farther in than the other; the canvas stretches fractionally more on one side as a result. He turns the painting over, and, reaching above the table for the large lamp with a magnifying glass, he casts light on their project.

  Hanna already feels warm, and she would rather have looked at the painting up on the easel, from a suitable distance, preferably next to Gudrun’s other landscapes. She wants to sense the emotion in the work, to notice its construction, the interplay of color and brushstrokes, not examine it horizontally in front of her like a plate of food, with Steinn so close. She avoids looking at him, relieved that his hands are covered by the gloves; she has repeatedly caught herself observing his hands. He has a habit of stroking the surface of something, as if to examine it more closely and discover with his fingers what the naked eye might miss. There is a faint smell from the painting, the smell of oil paints and boiled linseed mixed with mineral oil; it’s a smell Hanna likes. There’s another smell, too, a whiff of something from Steinn that Hanna can’t put her finger on, the smell of some substance, perhaps a cleaning fluid, thinner, turpentine, or lacquer, with a hint of soap or aftershave.

  “It’s in good condition, isn’t it?” she says for want of something to say. Although she knows Gudrun’s work very well, she has no experience of this sort of analysis; that is the conservator’s specialist area.
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  “Yes, I suppose so,” answers Steinn, glancing at her, but she doesn’t immediately meet his eyes. It’s as if he’s looking slightly to one side, but she can’t see for sure and can’t very well gaze into his eyes. She looks back at the painting.

  “This painting must have been listed when Gudrun sold her paintings at auction in Copenhagen to fund her time in Paris,” she says.

  Hanna’s mind is on Steinn’s eyes, she wants to scrutinize them, stare into them, and she wonders what it would be like to sink into his gaze; she has to pull herself together for a second before continuing.

  “It all fits, you see. Two paintings listed for auction, both of which were sold, both with a birch motif, and one of them is fifty-by-seventy centimeters, just like this one. I was looking into it just the other day.”

  “Yes, this could well be,” says Steinn reflectively. He’s waiting for Hanna to look at the picture more carefully. When she just looks at him inquiringly, he gives a tentative cough.

  “I noticed something when I first saw the painting,” he explains. “Look at the sky here.” He points with a gloved finger at the brushstrokes in the paint that don’t match the soft banks of cloud. “These lines are coarser than in other parts of the picture and they lie directly across the clouds.”

  Hanna sees what he means now that he’s pointed it out.

  “Yes, it’s obvious,” she says. “In all probability there’s another painting underneath. That’s not uncommon, is it? Especially with a painting from this period, when painters were struggling to get a hold of canvas and oils?”

  Steinn doesn’t respond; he just carries on running his finger over the painting and points Hanna to other brushstrokes that cut straight across The Birches. For a moment they stare at the picture in silence.

  “I was thinking, you see, the timing. This was painted, what—before 1940?” asks Steinn.

  “Probably 1937 or ’38,” Hanna replies.

  “But the picture underneath looks more like an abstract painting. This means that if Gudrun painted her picture over another painting, then that painting must have been virtually brand-new.”

  Hanna digests this. She can’t work out why Steinn is being so cautious, as though he believes there’s something significant here. But maybe it’s just his way—to be wary until everything is clear beyond question. He is trying to tell her something without saying it straight-out, and she’s not sure where he’s going with this. Maybe he’s intimating that it’s a forgery, but she thinks that’s unlikely. The painting isn’t in any way amateurish, and it’s in total harmony with Gudrun’s style. It’s a beautiful painting.

  “The Danish abstract painters were beginning to work in that style by then,” she says. “Obviously constructivism is older. Do you mean this is that genre?”

  Steinn shakes his head. “This is more like abstract expressionism. Or, well, it could conceivably be. Perhaps in the spirit of abstract works that were painted in the wake of the CoBrA movement. That shape could be a half-moon.”

  Hanna waits in case he has more to add, but Steinn goes quiet.

  “Or a boat,” she suggests. “Harbors and boats were a popular motif back then.” She peers at the painting but doesn’t see a half-moon.

  “I want to show you this using raking light,” says Steinn patiently, and Hanna senses his underlying tenacity, which she is beginning to recognize. She knows she has to let him take the lead in this; he must be allowed to do this his way, whatever that is.

  Lifting the painting off the table, Steinn carries it into a small storage area off the large workroom with Hanna following behind. He sets the painting on an easel, and, turning on an Anglepoise lamp, he adjusts it so the light falls on the painting from one side. Then he switches off the overhead fluorescent lights so that this is the only illumination in the room. The texture on the surface of the painting becomes clearer; even the tiniest unevenness casts a shadow, and Hanna sees more clearly the brushstrokes behind the subject matter of The Birches. Steinn runs a gloved index finger along one of these brushstrokes, diagonally from the top left-hand corner down toward the right. Undeniably, they resemble a half-moon.

  “But this isn’t all,” says Steinn, and Hanna hears the eagerness in his voice. “Look at the trees here, the trunks I mean.”

  Hanna peers at the birches but doesn’t notice anything in particular, just pale, gnarled birch trunks with confusing shadows on their surface. “What should I be seeing here?”

  Steinn draws his finger down one of the trunks and then again just by the side of it, but Hanna can’t see what he’s pointing out.

  “I’ll show you on the computer. I’ve already enlarged it,” says Steinn. He switches off the lamp so the shadows disappear from the surface of the painting and the copse darkens; the only light in the room is coming in from the half-open door. Steinn tries to flick the switch to bring the fluorescent lights back on but knocks into the door frame. Hanna pretends not to notice.

  “Steinn is such an absentminded professor,” Edda once said when he walked into the doorpost on the upper floor. “He’s in a world of his own.” Hanna hadn’t answered. She didn’t think Steinn was distracted.

  They sit down at the computer in the corner out front; Hanna pulls a stool up to Steinn’s chair. He has removed his gloves and is now looking for the file.

  “Here we’ve got the light coming from the side,” he says after a moment, opening up an image of the painting on the screen. The image is confusing, full of shadows, but when Steinn drags the mouse across, it becomes clear that underneath the painting of the birch copse and mountain, a shape reminiscent of a half-moon can be seen covering a large part of the picture’s surface.

  “Could be a boat,” says Hanna again, but Steinn says nothing. Clearly he has examined this often and has his own ideas. He now magnifies one section of the picture on the screen, the one that best shows one of the birch trunks. Using the mouse, he points to the gnarled tree trunk and then to the lines next to it, straighter, not as clear, and then at an infinitesimal shadow. He searches up the next trunk and again finds straighter lines underneath and to one side. It’s as if the birch had a straight trunk to begin with but has now become gnarled. Hanna can hardly believe her own eyes; this is so strange. Steinn shows her again and again; it’s not easy to recognize, but once Hanna has seen it, then it’s as plain as can be.

  “The tree trunks have been altered,” she ventures at last, unsure as to what conclusion to draw.

  “Icelandic birch trees don’t have straight trunks,” says Steinn. “I believe there are some with straight trunks in Hallormsstadur Wood. And nowadays it’s definitely possible to buy such saplings in this country. But there weren’t any birches with straight trunks in Iceland in the middle of the last century.”

  He looks at Hanna as if waiting for confirmation of his statement. She is bewildered; this has caught her off balance, and she doesn’t know what to say.

  But Steinn has more up his sleeve. Closing the file of images taken with light shining from the side, he opens another one. “This is the ultraviolet version,” he says. Hanna can hardly recognize the painting on the screen. She can make out various colored patches on the surface. Some are darker than others, and some sections stand out. The mountain is clear and sharp, but the trees merge together into a patchy mishmash. The sky, on the other hand, is even lighter. Hanna glances at Steinn as he peers at the screen.

  “The ultraviolet light picks up the fluorescence in the colors and in the linseed varnish,” he explains. “Under UV light, you can see subsequent additions or alterations made with other types of color or varnish.”

  “I can’t make out anything from these blotches,” admits Hanna. “Are you saying Gudrun started on the painting but didn’t finish it until later, using different colors? That’s always possible. Painters must need to renew their colors sometime and maybe don’t always use the same ones.” Hanna deliberately doesn’t mention the possibility that the painting is a forgery, even though this i
s clearly what Steinn is implying. She doesn’t want to be the first to say it; she wants to hear it from him.

  “Conceivably,” he says reluctantly after a pause. “This image isn’t clear. And yet it’s as if someone had altered the painting, changed the tree trunks, the mountain...” He falls silent, and Hanna realizes that he is puzzled.

  “There’s a substance nowadays that is a sort of mock-linseed varnish,” Steinn carries on. “It appears old. Although it’s actually new—it’s oxidized. If a painting was covered in this sort of mock varnish, then it’s a lot more difficult to see if it’s been tampered with. This varnish is specially designed to deceive the UV rays.”

  Hanna waits for further explanation, but Steinn doesn’t say anything more. He closes that file and clicks on a tab with a long list. Shifting his position, he inadvertently knocks against Hanna’s knee. She slides away a fraction, still following what he’s doing on the screen. He leans into the computer and scrolls up and down a long list of files.

  What could be the matter with his eyes? Does he need glasses and doesn’t want to use them? How can he do his job properly if his eyesight is so poor? As Hanna thinks about it more carefully, his behavior does indicate that something is wrong. It’s not only that he bumps into doors; he floodlights his desk and avoids driving. He is viewed as an absentminded eccentric; she has seen it in both Edda’s and Agusta’s eyes. There’s probably something more amiss here than plain shortsightedness. She recalls their walk through the wood. The silver ski pole that rhythmically broke the wood’s silence now reminds her of another sort of stick. Hanna is so deep in thought about Steinn that the seriousness of what he is showing her fades into the background.

  Steinn eventually finds what he is looking for, and now a third image of the painting lights up the screen, or at least Hanna assumes that this image is of the painting. Curved lines reminiscent of a half-moon, a shape that has nothing to do with a copse of trees or with Mount Baula, appear on the surface of the picture.