The Portrait of Molly Dean

by Katherine Kovacic

  So far, ‘my’ painting ticks every box on the list of how not to catalogue an artwork for auction.

  John tosses the catalogue aside. ‘So why do you think it’s Molly Dean?’

  I shrug.

  John nods.

  I make my living – hopefully – by knowing more than everyone else about art and artists. John knows I’m playing a hunch, but the current validation of my gut feeling and professional eye is sitting on his easel in a Thallon frame.

  ‘What’s the plan? That bastard Rob will be taking bids from the chandelier if he knows you’re interested.’

  ‘Are you suggesting he’d deliberately fake bids just to raise the price on me?’ I open my eyes wide.

  ‘Mate, half the room will do that if they think you’re on to something.’

  ‘Usual plan,’ I say. ‘Fly below the radar, stand at the back where I can’t be easily seen, low ball bids on a couple of other lots, then wait till the last possible second on this one.’

  John tilts his Coke can in my direction. ‘When you have her, bring her here.’

  ***

  With the paintings stowed safely in the back seat, I point the Citroën toward Glen Huntly and home. I turn on the radio, twiddling the knob until I find a Bach keyboard concerto, and for a few minutes I’m lost in the exquisite symmetry of the music. The piece finishes and is replaced by something more orchestral, but I stop listening. Instead, I get busy mentally mapping out my research. The only thing is, I can’t decide whether to start with Jane (a potential slam dunk given I already have the painting) or instead do a bit more work on Molly (the sentimental favourite).

  ‘Molly Dean, where have you been hiding?’ I realise I’m talking to myself again and slap the steering wheel, making my palm sting.

  I’m weaving through the side streets now, past rows of yuppified Californian bungalows with the odd double-fronted-cream-brick veneer sticking out like a broken tooth in a perfect smile. Cruising the last hundred metres down my street, I know which painting has my attention. Finding out more about Molly Dean now will influence how high I’m prepared to bid for her portrait at auction. The better the story, the more profit I’ll potentially make when I sell the painting on. I swing the car into the drive. Grabbing the paintings, I check the letterbox (bill, junk, charity, bill) and head up the rose-flanked path to my little house, thoughts of Molly Dean chasing through my head. I decide not to ask Lane’s for any information about the painting: that would only tip my hand. Later on, when she’s mine, I can try to find out who put Molly up for sale, but the lack of information in the catalogue tells me she’s been tucked away for a very, very long time.

  I prop the paintings against a terracotta pot and fiddle with my key in the lock. Hogarth is waiting and as I push the front door open, he immediately plants his paws on my shoulders and pokes his nose into my eye socket. As Irish wolfhound greetings go it’s fairly restrained.

  ‘Dude!’

  He thumps back to the floor. His tail swings through such a massive arc that it’s hitting both walls of the hallway, a steady andante tempo. I scruffle my hands through his charcoal fur. ‘Had a quiet day so far, dude?’

  He yawns in response then heads for the kitchen and the prospect of a late lunch. Living with a dog that is two metres tall on his hind legs is the only security system I need, and the company is a huge bonus. I retrieve the paintings from the front verandah, stash the Buckmaster in the spare room and hang the Jane Sutherland on a free hook in the lounge. One of the advantages of my work is the constantly changing display of artworks in my home. I always relegate contemporary stuff to a dark corner, otherwise I tend to find myself ranting about artists today. But I never rant about collectors with no knowledge and questionable taste; after all, they’re some of my biggest clients.

  I join Hogarth in the kitchen where he is loitering by the fridge, and after a brief inspection of its contents we settle on raw meat and three veg for him and instant noodles for me. Twenty minutes later, lunch is done and I’m in the study with chocolate and a mug of tea. The study is dominated by a French Gothic Revival desk, all dark oak, ornate carved edges and green leather top. The only things occupying space on its surface are the phone and a Mac PowerBook, looking surprisingly at home. I flip the computer open and while it’s waking up, scan my library. Bookshelves line two full walls and run under the window. I have a couple of books that might mention Molly – a biography of Colin Colahan and a volume on the Meldrumites – but I don’t expect they’ll hold any significant information. Still, I pull them from the shelf and set them on the corner of my desk for later before grabbing my folder of notes and clippings on Colahan.

  The first thing I need to do is to confirm I’m right and the subject of the portrait is Molly Dean. In my Colahan file I have a picture of Molly clipped from a 1930 copy of The Argus. It’s an unflattering likeness, the sort of picture you’d expect to see on someone’s driver’s licence these days. At once doughy and stunned, as if she’d just woken up and can’t understand why her picture is being taken. But the pleasant features are clear, and glancing between the catalogue entry and my clipping it’s obvious I have the right girl.

  Next I check through my collection of Colahan’s exhibition catalogues. The early twentieth century was a dynamic time in Australian art and there were plenty of exhibitions. Luckily they were mostly small, so catalogues were rarely more than six pages. I also have a head start here, because I know roughly when Molly and Colin first crossed paths and I know when Colin left Australia, never to return. My window is 1929 to 1935 and I hit pay dirt in 1930. For thirteen days, Colin Colahan was exhibiting at the Athenaeum Gallery and tucked in the catalogue, among Scherzo in Yellow and Red and Suburban Arabesque was number twelve, Molly Dean. Unlike the other works on offer, there is no price listed next to this painting. Instead, an asterisk and the tantalising footnote, ‘enquire at desk’. Clearly, Molly was not for sale to just anyone.

  I check the auction records for Colahan paintings in the latest copy of Art Sales Digest, but come up negative, so it seems the portrait has stayed with the same buyer or their family since about 1930. In the art business we often say paintings are sold for three reasons: death, divorce or debt. I figure that after nearly seventy years, the original buyer must be dead, which means an executor is behind the sale or a descendant needs money. Either way it works for me, because they don’t know what they’re selling. The reserve price will be low or non-existent.

  ‘Thank you.’ I’m not addressing anyone in particular, but from his jumbo dog bed in the corner Hogarth thumps his tail once.

  ***

  It’s nice to know my talent for remembering paintings also extends to faces. Molly Dean was attractive, but ordinarily she would not have been particularly memorable. She was only in my files at all because of her association with Colahan. But for a few months from 21 November 1930, Australian newspapers bristled with shock as they dutifully reported as much sensational detail and horrified speculation about her death as they could possibly manage.

  Pulling the Mac closer, I connect to the State Library of Victoria’s website to figure out which newspapers I’ll need to look at. I’m assuming the details will largely remain unchanged from paper to paper, but publications like the Truth will have a decidedly more melodramatic spin on things. It’s too late to go to the library, so I make a list of things to do tomorrow. Just as I’m finishing up with my notes, a large wolfhound head pushes under my arm and flips my hand from the desk. Hogarth has decreed that work is over and it’s walk time.

  An hour later, we’ve done several off-the-leash laps of the park, Hogarth has exchanged a few doggy greetings and I’ve made a decision. If I manage to buy the painting, I’ll hang on to it long enough to try to uncover more of the story of Molly’s murder. Holding on to a work for a while is not as drastic as it sounds. When a painting is put up in one of the bigger auctions, the wor
ld knows it’s on the market and later, it’s easy to find out if it was passed in or knocked down, and, if it sold, how much the buyer paid. When I buy a painting at auction, it has to fall into one of these categories:

  1. I already have a client in mind who will pay more.

  2. It has been wrongly attributed and I can buy it cheaply, do some research and immediately sell it for a higher price with the correct artistic details.

  3. I’m prepared to keep it until the artist comes back into fashion. Could be years, so the potential pay-off has to be worth it.

  4. The auction is off the main radar – a small auction house or a country sale – and I can sell the painting quickly, fresh to the city market.

  Otherwise, if a painting goes through a more mainstream sale and turns up again too soon, it’s burned. Everyone assumes there’s something hideously wrong with it and if it sells again, it will only be for a fraction of its true value.

  As far as the portrait of Molly is concerned, it’s currently unattributed and once I positively identify her and the artist, the juicy story of her death will mean a better selling price. The next logical step is to get to the State Library, read the newspaper accounts of the murder, then request the original coroner’s report from the archives of the Public Records Office.

  Until now, all I’ve really known is that Mary ‘Molly’ Dean’s murder shocked Melbourne and had such a traumatic effect on Colahan that he ultimately left the country. Cynic that I am, I’d always felt his move had more to do with selling more paintings than soothing his delicate artistic soul, but who am I to judge? It can’t be easy to pick up the pieces once the papers have forever linked your name with such a horrible crime and splashed your photo over the front page for good measure.

  Back at home, Hogarth settles on the dog bed and I crack open the books dealing with the artist Max Meldrum and his circle to see what, if anything, they had to say about Molly. Skimming through, I decide some scepticism is warranted; the authors’ opinions of Molly Dean could not differ more.

  The first author, a man, portrays Molly as a naive but ambitious girl trying to find her way in the world as a writer. The second book I pick up is written by a woman who was a part of the 1930s Meldrumite set, and hers is an altogether more scurrilous – and bitchier – read. In this account, Molly was not only sleeping with Colin, but anyone who could further her agenda. It was Molly who persuaded Colin to engineer his own divorce, complete with prostitute, private detective, sleazy hotel, flash photographer and a couple of ‘independent’ witnesses. Just for good measure, the author quotes another woman in the group who claimed Molly’s writing consisted of stealing other people’s ideas and passing them off as her own. She wraps up her paragraphs on Molly by bemoaning the young woman’s violent death as a great inconvenience, happening as it did just when the artists were about to open an ambitious group show. But then the author gives herself away, stating how she was personally very attracted to Colin Colahan. I can probably believe about 1 per cent of what she says about Molly. Where the guy writes about Molly’s dark complexion, she calls it sallow skin. He sees a sultry gaze, she speaks of close-set eyes. Jealousy rolls off the pages in waves.

  I make a few notes and mark a couple of passages in the books, then put Molly aside until tomorrow. The Jane Sutherland needs my attention.

  Standing up, I put both hands into the small of my back, stretch out the kinks, then survey my shelves. Since John already ruled out any mention of the Sutherland painting going through auction, I head for the relevant bunch of exhibition catalogues.

  ‘Dude, seriously?’ Hogarth, naturally, has abandoned the dog bed and sprawled his hairy carcass directly in front of the section I need. I nudge a paw with my toe. He groans. Past experience tells me not to bother, so I brace my feet and let my upper body fall forward to the bookshelves, forming a bridge across the recumbent hound. Grabbing the folders I need, I give a hard shove that returns me to the vertical, miraculously without dropping everything.

  ‘Thanks, you’re a great help.’

  I realise how gloomy the room has become. The evening has closed in without me noticing and the desk lamp is losing the battle. I decide to move to the dining table, where the light is better and I can spread out a bit more. It’s a lovely old table, satiny Huon pine, with a golden honeycomb colour now darkened by a century of summers. The fact that I picked it up cheaply makes it even more attractive.

  Opening the first folder, I start to read. Jane Sutherland did not have many solo exhibitions, and it doesn’t take long to flip through the catalogues for those. I jot down a couple of titles I’ll need to follow up, just in case they relate to my painting, then turn to the group exhibition catalogues. These are not big glossy books full of illustrations and details of everything on show. I wish. Even today, very few selling exhibitions include much beyond the title of the work, medium (oil, watercolour or whatever) and possibly the price, if the gallery is not trying to be too cute and discreet. All I have are listings of titles and prices. The problem is further compounded by the fact that even in the 1890s many artists had a pathological aversion to calling a spade a spade. Just about everything is Nocturne in Pink and Gold or Tranquil Corner. Sometimes I’d give almost anything for a Departure of the Orient – Circular Quay or Collins Street, Five p.m. I’m not finding anything useful. Sutherland’s signature on the painting is great, but if I can pin down the original title it will be worth at least a couple of grand more.

  Shoving that folder aside, I crack open my file on women artists of the Heidelberg School. Each newspaper cutting has the artist’s name pencilled lightly across the top, so I quickly discard everything not related to Jane Sutherland. The pile I’m left with is depressingly small. Or pleasantly small, if we’re talking about how long this is going to take. Now, rather than titles, I look for descriptions. Anything an art reviewer may have seen at a show or in the artist’s studio that they’ve singled out for praise or derision. The florid journalistic style of the period is to my advantage here, as the writers tend to go into great detail about exactly what they love or loathe about a particular painting.

  I strike gold in a clipping from an August 1890 edition of Table Talk, a Melbourne weekly that ran until about 1939. With its gossipy style and focus on fashion and the comings and goings of the socially adept, I’m just as likely to find a note on the hat worn by Miss Sutherland as anything about her paintings. But there it is on page twelve:

  A very small landscape bearing the suggestive title of ‘The Shortest Cut’. Two children, late for school, have left the road to follow a track across a gorse-grown paddock, but to their dismay find their progress stopped by the stream of water which lies in a hollow of the field. The strongest points of the picture are the gorse bushes bursting into bloom and the moist looking condition of the fresh young grass.

  I go and get the picture just to be sure. The moist grass is a bit of a stretch, but then again I’m not sure where the writer got all that stuff about late for school from either. I am currently the owner of The Shortest Cut by Miss Jane Sutherland.

  #xa0;

  The following morning I leave the car at home and catch a train to Museum Station. It’s been called Melbourne Central for the past two years, but that sounds anodyne so I pretend it’s still Museum. I cross Swanston Street and take the front steps two at a time, entering the State Library’s foyer.

  I’m very fond of the library. I could spend a day dawdling past the art collection, admiring the murals and soaking up the magnificent architecture. But not today. Today I head directly to the newspaper room and the microfiche readers. I’ve pre-armed myself with paracetamol for the microfiche headache I know will develop, but there’s no way to prevent the nausea that comes from watching stuff roll past while I sit still. It’s a wonder I’ve never seen anyone throw up or fall off their chair in here and I’m trying not to be the first.

  I start with The
Argus on the day of Molly’s murder, 21 November 1930. She was found just after midnight, so there was plenty of time for the article to make it into that day’s paper. For more than three hours I trawl through articles, often with my face inches from the screen as I struggle to decipher poorly scanned newsprint. After The Argus I move on to The Age, before I head outside to grab a sandwich and wash the paracetamol down with a disappointingly bad macchiato. Back at my microfiche reader, I load up the first spool of Truth and read my way through everything I can find there before starting on The Herald. With each newspaper I work right through the entire case, from the moment lead investigator Senior Detective Percy Lambell first arrives on the scene to the inquest and then the start of the trial. It’s slow work, and I find myself getting distracted by some of the ads sailing past my eyes, fabulous fashions, a hernia truss, Hudson’s Eumenthol Jujubes (The Great Antiseptic and Prophylactic! Contains no Cocaine or other Poisonous Drugs!). But ads aside, the more I read of Molly Dean’s murder, the more I need to know, and I send the printer into overdrive trying to catch every last bit of information.

  I’m getting to grips with the nuts and bolts of the case, but oddly I keep coming across things that make no sense. Even allowing for the journalistic standards of 1930, there are a number of points that come up repeatedly yet still seem too bizarre to be true. Molly’s murder is like a B-grade slasher film except for one major detail: no one was ever tried for the crime. In fact, the only suspect had his case thrown out of court before it even began. My interest in Molly Dean’s portrait may have started as a way to bump up the value, but this is more of a story than I ever expected.