And please, please, please, do not pay any attention to “Town Topics” unless it is to laugh at their overblown prose. I am not sorry that men desire my company nor that I enjoy the company of the most talented of them. And I have seen none of their wives “scolding and stomping their feet” when the men pay me attention. Far from it, Maud Elliott and Julia Ward Howe are just as pleased to attend my soirees and dinners as are their “giddy and wayward husbands”!
And the piece about my secret rendezvous with Frank Crawford, well, he is almost young enough to be my son! But I shall not be the one to spoil such a good story with the truth. Do not distress yourself over the words of this silly rag, especially not on my behalf. I say if people like to believe such things, please don’t deny them their pleasure.
You ask if I have had any further adventures with Mr. Edgar Degas, and indeed I have. I told you in my last letter that he had invited me to his studio. Well, my dear, I went to that wonderfully bohemian Montmartre, to 21 rue Pigalle (where he both works and lives) to be exact, and it was indeed an experience.
Edgar is such a complex and interesting man. Everything about him is a contradiction. His pictures are selling well and his name is everywhere, yet his apartment is so small that he must use his studio for his dressing room! His face is rather homely, but his posture and his clothes are so fine that one hardly takes notice. His eyes are dark and hooded, but in them one can see the wondrous and tortured soul of a true artist. And when he throws back his head and laughs (the gentleman is quite the card), he is most attractive.
He is the most meticulous of painters, and yet his studio is a jumble of confusion. Aside from his clothes strewn hither and yon and the usual artists’ paraphernalia, the floor is loaded with the most unusual things: printing presses, bathtubs, cellos, wax figurines, and even a broken-down piano. He claims he is unable to discard any object as he never knows what might be useful to him. Another contradiction is that although he remains a bachelor at fifty years of age, he is quite a flirt! I was charmed.
Edgar is in the last stages of preparation for an exhibition this Fall with the Misters Bracquemond, Forain, Monet, Gauguin, Pissarro, and Rouart, artists for whom I have little appreciation. And I am sorry to say, my dear Amelia, that their influence is apparent. The drawing in Edgar’s latest work is impeccable, his asymmetrical composition beyond perfection. And such bold and unusual viewpoints of female nudes engaged in their toilette. From above even! But I cannot say the same for his actual painting. For, to my great disappointment, he is working in pastels and appears to be leaning toward that horrid Impressionist style that makes me want to put on a pair of glasses.
Although I had taken him to task for turning his back on oil at Henry’s table just a fortnight ago, I could not refrain from again expressing my feelings. I asked if he couldn’t see what masterpieces the paintings would be if he had painted them in the style of the Old Masters, in his own style of only a decade ago.
He told me he had far too much work to do to wait weeks between each glazing layer, that this was the business of a young man with an inheritance, not an old one without. When I protested, his eyes twinkled and he asked which did I think was an untruth: that he was an old man or that he had no money? Although I was vexed that he would make a joke over such an issue, it was difficult to remain serious when he refused to be. And so we laughed.
He then hustled me out of the studio to the Café Guerbois, where there was so much gay conversation that we were unable to finish our discussion. I, however, shall continue to pursue my efforts to discourage him in this folly in the future.
Your Uncle Jack and I leave Paris tomorrow for Venice. And although I am, as always, thrilled to be headed to my most beloved city, I yearn for home, for the cool breezes of Green Hill, and for your company. My warm remembrance to your dear brothers.
I am your loving,
Aunt Belle
Fifteen
I’m not sure how long I’ve been squatting here, but my quadriceps are crying for mercy. Bath lies on the floor, cut-up photos sprawled on the canvas. Gingerly, I stand, stretch, then lift the painting, ignoring the triangles and squares of brushstrokes that float to the floor. Once it’s back on the easel, I drop into the chair in front of it.
Now that I’ve admitted the truth to myself, I see evidence of forgery everywhere. The brushstrokes aren’t as refined as Degas’ always are, and there’s a tentativeness to them. Depth doesn’t flow from the focal point of the painting out to the edges and then beyond; it feels narrow, constricted.
And Françoise, how could I have been so blind? Too stiff, with an aura of self-consciousness, as if she’s aware of being watched, rather than caught in an unobserved moment. Even the signature is off. There’s too much space between the “a” and “s”.
I’m astonished I was able to fool myself for as long as I did. That I, a self-proclaimed Degas expert, could be so taken in. I felt the truth the first moment I set eyes on the painting, yet I convinced myself otherwise. And I’m not alone. If my assumption that this is the painting that hung at the Gardner is true—and what else could it be?—then the art historians, the critics, and the public were equally gullible. This is why there are so many successful forgers, plagiarizers, con men.
Although the Repro instructors were tasked with teaching us how to make an effective copy, almost all shared a fascination with actual forgery. One quoted Theodore Rousseau, an expert from the Met, as saying, “We can only talk about the bad forgeries, the ones that have been detected. The good ones are still hanging on museum walls.” The instructor backed this up with a New York Times estimate that 40 percent of all the artworks presented for sale in any given year are forgeries. I assumed this was completely overblown. I don’t now.
Poor Bath. She’s a fake, but I’m a fool.
I have to tell Markel. I grab my cell and hit his number. Then I cancel the call. Maybe he already knows. Maybe that’s why his explanation sounded too convenient: He wasn’t telling me the truth. I toss the phone from one hand to the other. Could he be testing me, giving me a fake to see if I can tell the difference? But that would be a lot of effort for little purpose. Or maybe he’s the one who’s being tested. Or set up. In that case, I owe him the truth.
I hit his number again, and when he answers, I say, “We need to talk ovens.” The cautious route seems best.
He chuckles. “You make it sound so exciting.”
“Are you free to get together sometime soon? I’d like to get moving on this.”
“How about in half an hour?” he says. “Say six? The Oak Room?”
I hesitate. Even though I made the call, I need more time to think this through.
“Or I could do it early next week,” he offers. “I’m off to New York tomorrow.”
“No, no, tonight’s cool,” I tell him. “I’ll see you there at six.”
The Oak Room is in the Fairmont Copley Plaza, a grand hotel that resembles a Renaissance palace. It should be tacky with its soaring marble columns, painted ceilings, and overdone gold filigree, but somehow it isn’t. Although I’ve been in the hotel’s lobby, I’ve never been to the Oak Room—it’s a little rich for my pocket-book—but I’ve heard they serve the best lemondrop martinis in the city.
There’s not much hanging in my closet that’s appropriate for the Oak Room, but I do have a longish blue skirt I bought for an anniversary dinner with Isaac. I put it on. It’s a bit big, but it’ll do. I throw on a little white T-shirt to dress it down and sex it up.
I leave my studio and head north on Dartmouth Street. It’s only six or seven blocks to Copley Square, but whenever I make this trip, I’m always struck by how these blocks span the urban socioeconomic spectrum. I walk by a row of warehouses with graffitiladen loading docks abutting housing projects. Then past the old Cathedral church with its lopsided swing set sitting amid the amber sparkle of broken beer bottles.
What if I tell Markel about Bath and he cancels everything, including my show? What if he wants the money back? I fi
nger my new cell phone and think about that red couch I saw marked down 70 percent in the furniture store across from my studio. I think about Xavier’s silver paint and the five thousand dollars I’ve already spent. But it’s not the money. I’d do this for free if it meant my paintings would hang in Markel G. And that the Gardner would get its masterpiece back. Although, now it’s not so clear that this painting is a masterpiece.
The church blends into a chunk of rundown tenements, their high stoops filled with teenagers drinking and eyeing other teenagers drinking on other stoops. There are clusters of mothers too young to be mothers keeping watch—or not—over their children. The lovers groping at each other. The elderly in their short-legged beach chairs nodding off in the heat.
When I cross Washington Street, I officially exit edgy, up-and-coming SOWA and enter an almost-there district where the rents are double mine but only a fraction of what they’ll be a few blocks up. In my neighborhood, there are one or two nice restaurants or stores per block, on Washington it’s probably five or six, and when I come to Tremont, just about everything from steaks to manicures is overpriced. And yet, here there are still bits of sour-smelling garbage tucked into corners and more stoop-sitters defying the state’s open-container law.
As I head north, the townhouses get nicer, with painted shutters and tiny, perfect gardens; the sidewalks get cleaner, and half the cars parked on the street are those small, black BMWs. By the time I hit the blocks closest to Copley Square, there are no stoop-sitters and no litter. Ah, the Back Bay.
“TO OUR BATH.” Markel raises his glass to mine.
He looks directly, guilelessly, at me. He’s tan, fit, and seemingly quite pleased with himself. It strikes me that in all the years he was Isaac’s dealer, I never noticed how attractive he was. In the past, every time I was with him, I was also with Isaac, and now I find myself wondering if he’s involved with anyone. I know he’s been divorced for quite a few years, which is good, but after Isaac, I strongly question my ability to judge a man’s trustworthiness.
I watch him carefully for clues that will signal what I should tell him about the forgery. Except I have no idea what these clues might be. “She is a marvel.” I touch my glass to his and take a sip.
We’re sitting in a couple of overstuffed armchairs, pressed close together and tucked into the raised far corner of the Oak Room. The air is redolent with the subtle smell of fine food. A piano plays softly in the opposite corner, and the acoustics hush everyone’s words. It’s almost as private as my studio, but much more luxuriant.
“So you’re enjoying spending time with her?”
“And looking forward to getting down to painting. I’ve been researching the process, and if we’ve got to pass atomic absorption or mass spectrometry testing, I think the full glaze, bake, and varnish is the only way to go. And now with this new digital wavelet decomposition …” I hold my hands up. “There’s really not much choice.”
Markel rubs his chin. “If we assume there’ll be that kind of scrutiny.”
“Won’t there?”
“Depends on the sophistication of the buyer.”
“Even if there’s only low-level testing, it’ll be pretty easy to determine that the paint isn’t completely dry. Seems to me we’ve got to bake it.”
“Bake?”
“It sounds weird, but it works. You add a special chemical in the medium, then bake the canvas between layers. The combination of the two dries the paint the same way a couple hundred years would.”
He ponders his drink. “Obviously,” he says, thinking out loud, “the buyer isn’t going to be a museum or an ethical collector. And in most of the developing world, where I’m pretty sure our buyer will come from, there isn’t access to the same level of technology or to the top experts we have here … On the other hand, someone willing to purchase it, knowing its origin, could be savvy enough and paranoid enough to want to check it out thoroughly.”
I see my opening. “Is that what you did?”
His face closes up, and he sits back in his chair. “Of course,” he says, looking over my shoulder.
“All the tests?”
“So how much time will the oven save?” he asks.
“Months. Many of them. Is there a deadline?”
“No,” he says. “Not really. Although, obviously, the sooner the better.”
“You’re the boss.” I shrug. Does it really matter how I forge a forgery?
“So, what would you need?”
“The painting’s three-foot-eleven by four-foot-ten. The oven in my kitchen is sixteen by eighteen inches, so that’s not going to work.”
“A kiln?”
“We don’t need that kind of heat. I’m thinking a commercial oven. Like something used in a bakery. Wide enough to get the painting in and out, with digital temperature control and a digital timer.” I pause. “Has there ever been any discussion that this After the Bath was painted by anyone other than Degas?”
He straightens up in his chair. “None that I know of.” His look is hard and penetrating. “What’s this all about?”
“I just want to know if anyone’s going to come into this thinking it might be a fake right off the bat. About how we want to go about this. How much coverage we need.”
“I’ll check into the oven.”
“Great. Thanks,” I say. “But what if it actually was—”
Markel nods at my martini. “Drink up.”
I do as he instructs. It’s clear this discussion is over. “Whoever told me these were the best lemondrops in Boston wasn’t kidding.”
“Your friend, Crystal Mack.”
“What?”
He laughs at my confusion. “I mean, Crystal’s got to be the one who told you about the martinis. She loves them.”
“Yeah, right.” Not my favorite topic of conversation.
“You must be very proud of her.”
I shrug. “She’s not really a friend, more of an acquaintance.”
“Oh.” Markel’s eyes crinkle, and I can tell he doesn’t like her either.
“She’s gotten a bit puffed up.”
“And now the Danforth purchase is going to add another fifty pounds?”
“You’ve got that right,” I agree. “We’re hoping she’s so impressed with herself that she’ll shun lowly Harrison Avenue and hang exclusively up here in Back Bay.”
Markel holds up both hands. “Please, anything but that.”
“Hey, it was the Markel G Local Artists at Work show that pulled her out of SOWA. You’ve got only yourself to blame.”
“The Danforth was because of the ArtWorld contest.”
“It’s never just a contest.” I try to keep up my bantering tone.
“You entered.” It’s not a question.
“Yup. Sure did.” I take another sip of my drink.
“You know one of the judges was from the Whitney, don’t you? And that it had to be a unanimous decision?” He sighs. “The Whitney’s always had its thing about Isaac.”
There’s no denying this shit still hurts.
“It’s not your stuff,” Markel says. “Your work is remarkable. Far superior to hers.”
This doesn’t make me feel any better.
“Isaac’s been gone three years now,” Markel says. “Grudges die down in time. Memories fade.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“Few people are as stuffy as the Whitney.”
I raise my glass and force a bright smile. “Let’s hope so.”
“I don’t know exactly what went on with 4D and MoMA,” he says, “although I’ve always had my suspicions. Even at the time.”
I blink. Is he telling me he believes I painted 4D?
“But my opinion isn’t what matters, and now’s not the time to get into it.” Markel takes my free hand and presses it between both of his. “The important thing here is that your show’s going to make everyone forget what happened to Isaac Cullion.”
I’m both comforted by his hands encircling mine
—a kinship, past and present, a level of understanding—and keenly aware of his sexuality. “What if people boycott the show because of my name?”
“I don’t want to sound as ‘puffed up’ as Crystal,” Markel says. “But it’ll be difficult for people to boycott a show at Markel G.”
Sixteen
Last week, I estimated I had ten more hours on the Pissarro for Repro, but somehow I’ve managed to stretch it into three days. And I’m still not finished. I try to focus on the painting in front of me instead of the Meissonier nagging me from the back corner. I need to strip the canvas and get on with creating Bath II. But I keep finding distractions that I must attend to first.
There’s research to complete on Degas’ paints and brushes, how he mixed his pigments and mediums, issues to resolve about the best aging techniques—even though it’s going to be a while before I need most of this information. Then there’s laundry and visiting that red couch one more time before I make a final decision. There’s e-mail to read, bills to pay, and of course, the fake Pissarro to finish.
And there are other things to consider. Like my decision not to tell Markel about Bath’s origins. Despite his arguments to the contrary, it’s clear that my days as a pariah are far from over and that my only chance of getting out from under this art McCarthyism is a successful show at Markel G. It really pisses me off, the spiteful way I was treated, and the thought of a full payback is hard to resist. It occurs to me that if Markel loves my work as much as he claims, wouldn’t he do my show even if I told him what I know? I dab a bit of chrome yellow on the edge of a flower. I’m pretty sure he would, but I’m too much of a coward to take the chance.
I step back, compare my result to the oversized Pissarro print taped to the wall and add one more dab. I reach my brush forward again, then stop before it touches the canvas. I’m at the point where I often start overthinking—and overpainting. A dangerous prospect that, at worst, can destroy a painting or, at least, create weeks of extra work. I lower the brush. I give the fake Pissarro a hard look, then drop the brush into a can of turpentine. A final coat of varnish after the paint is dry and it will be done.
The Art Forger Page 9