Turning around again, she encountered a typically expansive Bierstadt landscape, this one of a spring cataract in the Rockies. Like all of his work, it exemplified the idealized naturalism of the Hudson River School, itself indebted to Turner and Constable, translated to the rolling plains and stark mountain valleys of the Great West—lovely, yes, but a bit preachy, too, with all that sublimity crowding out the simply, humbly beautiful.
She preferred the Farny beside it, a study situated somewhere in time between the more famous pieces, Breaking Camp and Nomads, depicting a Sioux family’s difficult existence on the winter tall grass plains. The inheritance from Bierstadt, the Düsseldorf school, and the British landscape painters remained, but with a new sense of outdoor light and life borrowed from the Barbizon group and French plein-air naturalism. If Corot had painted the West, she thought, it would look like this.
Which brought her, at last, to her three favorite paintings.
The first, a tonalist study for the more famous Blowing Rock, with the same wraith-like female figure in the foreground, the same ominous moonlit sky streaked with cloud—created by layering thin coats of oil paint and light-absorbent varnish to elicit the soft-edged color and glowing light—represented the only Elliott Daingerfield in her collection. The painter, relatively obscure, owed the better part of his fame to another artist, the one for whom he’d been both close friend and biographer: Ralph Blakelock.
Self-taught genius, schizophrenic pauper, the “American Van Gogh”—poor, mad Blakelock. He was the most unique of the painters in her entire collection, and thus the hardest to imitate well. And yet, ironically, he was also possibly the greatest single source of forgeries in American art—the result of his becoming wildly popular when defenseless in a Hudson Valley asylum—fakes outnumbering originals by some calculations.
None of those forgeries, however, managed to capture his magic. These two demonstrated the difficulty well.
The first bore a resemblance to the more famous Apache Indians Breaking Camp at Daybreak, except the lighting suggested dusk, not dawn. Beyond that, it possessed the same devotion to rendering twilight through arching trees, and a spare depiction of the foreground figures with jagged strips and odd drops of delicately shaped paint, conjuring their colorful blankets and headdresses through abstraction, not detail.
The second resembled The Captive, with its complete devotion to the wilderness night’s utter darkness except for the figures illumined by firelight—the small circle of warriors near the campfire, the isolated, slouching prisoner bound to her tree.
Both displayed their scenes from a distinct remove, as though witnessed from a hiding place beyond the clearing, or by an invisible observer outside time.
Both also possessed the same silvery shimmer on an impasto background, with varying areas of thick and thin paint, the knife and brush patterns clearly visible.
His lack of schooling had created a wildly improvisational openness to technique. But that innovative spirit also led him to using unwise materials: the copal resin in his varnish, which turned dark and cracked—so that only a generation later his paintings seemed even duskier in tone—and bitumen, which never dried completely, and often caused the surface to crackle into an alligator pattern.
But as Daingerfield, his devotee, pointed out long ago, these shortcomings were grossly overstated, and time had proven him right. Overall, the paintings were stable.
If only most so-called experts and connoisseurs had half the appreciation for technique and materials as the man responsible for these two masterpieces. The same man who painted every other work here on these walls: Henry “Tuck” Mercer.
CHAPTER 16
Meredith had learned of Tuck’s arrest and prosecution through news reports and had followed the case with attentive devotion. The boy she watched get trampled and gored and left for dead had grown to a mysterious manhood.
In his plea agreement, he was obliged to confess to his methodology.
He had always been an expert sketch artist, making side money at rodeos at his easel, dollar a portrait. Meredith had been a star subject, both at the rodeo and more intimate settings, not just in pencil and charcoal but watercolor and oil and in various stages of naturalism.
Once his injuries slammed the door on any further rodeo work, he launched his formal education at a Los Angeles restoration studio with one of the most highly regarded conservators in the business, from whom he learned the subtle art and exacting chemistry of repairing and cleaning older works of genius.
Specifically, he came to recognize every type of canvas weave and stretcher type in use during the nineteenth century, every variety of wood panel—especially academy board, an American favorite—and every kind of crack pattern.
He learned to recognize not just the unique subject matter and obvious techniques of individual artists, he also developed the ability to identify their distinctive patinas, brushstrokes, edgework, use of varnish, thickness of impasto.
He discovered that, under ultraviolet light, a genuine antique varnish unerringly revealed a distinctive green fluorescence. Though this “green slime” effect could not be faked, it could be simulated by using solvent to remove the old varnish from a genuine antique painting, then wringing the solvent and varnish into a jar, transferring it to a sprayer, and coating the fake with the concoction.
He observed that “rotten stone,” a superfine powder made of volcanic rock, worked miracles in conjuring age when dusted across a freshly painted canvas.
He noticed as well the frequent appearance, especially in paintings long ago tucked away in attics or basements or barns, of tiny, clustered black dots near the frames and corners, which he learned were fly droppings. The insects were drawn to the sugar in the varnish. He also found out he could simulate the flyspecks by using pinpricks of epoxy mixed with amber-colored pigment.
He learned how to make gesso from rabbit-skin glue and powdered gypsum from the White Cliffs of Dover, how to “age” its tint with raw sienna watercolor, how to create cracking through prolonged exposure to the sun, how to enhance that cracking through a wash of black watercolor and soap.
He came to see the value of evaluating not just the paintings themselves but their cove or wedge frames—an art in itself, as was finding them in antique shops—as well as tack marks (the rust had to be simulated), reinforcing battens, signs of repair on the backs of the canvases, and other incidentals that could enhance the air of age and authenticity.
With this education in hand, he ventured into imitation.
He began by collecting oddball portraits and landscapes from the period—worthless eyesores or even the work of madmen—for the sake of the canvas and frames, using acetone to get rid of the original paint.
Once it was time to decide who to imitate, he started with the lesser-known artists such as Wieghorst and Buff, selling them to backwater collectors for a few thousand bucks, if that. Gradually, though, he moved on with greater confidence and command of technique to the real money painters.
It was at that stage of the endeavor that he gained the assistance of a dealer he met during his days in restoration, a man named Danyal Sherazi.
It was Sherazi who foresaw the boom in demand created by China’s nouveau riche, the so-called Bling Dynasty. Specifically, he understood their insecurity, their need to affirm their deservedness by learning what it meant to have class.
Although many of the turhao stuck to the basics—learning designer brand names and how to pronounce foie gras—others, especially those who once attended American universities, realized the special caché afforded to anyone with a nuanced grasp of local culture, specifically American art. Better still if you knew it better than the natives, which wasn’t hard, given the general ignorance of the average homegrown bourgeois.
Tuck learned from Sherazi that excellent technique—both in imitating the original artworks and disguising the recent production of the work—was not enough.
It was the story behind the painting, how i
t had gone undiscovered for so long, tucked away in some cellar or attic or barn, that truly fascinated the marks.
And so a partnership formed. Tuck produced the work. Sherazi sold the story, and made sure Tuck’s forgeries were offered in mid-week sales, which the cognoscenti typically avoided, an arrangement Sherazi finagled with his auction house knockouts.
The scheme was finally exposed when one of the turhao befriended a curator at the National Gallery, and learned that though George Catlin did gain fame for his portraits of Comanche chieftains, he did so no later than 1844, and therefore could never have painted as an adult the warrior chief Isatai—a name colorfully translated as Coyote’s Vagina.
The painting’s owner took the news hard, since the rendering was so reverentially dignified, a study in timeless proto-Asiatic nobility—for weren’t the ancient Chinese and the nomadic tribes of North America genetic kin? That was, after all, why he paid $2.2 million for the thing.
The whole masquerade unraveled quickly from there.
Supremely motivated to expose the men who defrauded him, and well enough connected to put some real heft in his crusade, the burned owner of Isatai’s portrait enlisted an army of investigators and experts, including the FBI’s Art Crime Team, all of whom demonstrated a particularly relentless devotion to finding, exposing, and bringing to justice The Man Who Forged the West.
And they did. Meanwhile, Danyal Sherazi vanished—rumors put him variously in Montevideo, Shanghai, or Tehran—leaving his painterly sidekick to take the fall.
Obliged to disclose his techniques, Tuck educated law enforcement, the art world, and potential targets of fraud on how he managed to fool so many for so long, and why he grew more daring, which is to say reckless, near the end.
Then he proceeded to identify, to the best he could recall, every single forgery he painted—known as “bazookas” in the trade—as well as to whom they were sold, though that was Sherazi’s end of things, and Tuck’s recollection on that point often proved imperfect.
Though prosecutors intended for the catalog of paintings to remain confidential, in order to protect the reputations of those who were duped, the list became public almost immediately, the work of dealers who wanted to make sure they weren’t taken in a second time. Once that all became public, other Sherazi victims stepped sheepishly forward.
It was through using that catalog and the disclosures afterward that Meredith identified the paintings she wanted, who to approach, and how much to offer.
Some held on to the fakes, hoping to fool their less sophisticated friends. Others demanded far more than the paintings now were worth—though “original Tuck Mercers” had a caché all their own. Enough, however, were happy to sell.
And now they are mine till I die, she thought, just as the door to the foyer opened, and her husband, Gideon, appeared.
CHAPTER 17
As always, he entered with an unquestioned aura of ownership. And yes, of course, he had a certain right in that regard, but not to the degree he believed.
They both had married in accordance with their station, notable old Arizona families, descendants of pioneer lawyers who dabbled in ranching, prosperous and dignified in the desert manner. Her money owed no deference to his.
He appeared in her life shortly after the accident, the one caused when her eyesight suddenly, utterly failed as she careened down that back road toward nowhere.
Only an hour before, she sat in the stands with thousands of others, cheering Tuck on—sweetheart of the rodeo, his girl—only to watch him get bucked off that steer almost instantly, watch him get dragged around the ring until finally the animal stomped and gored and ripped him apart.
Better to be blind and die.
Except she didn’t die. Her grand romantic tragedy took a different turn.
Her family found a private clinic miles to the south, specializing in afflictions of the rich, the better to separate her once and for all from that rodeo bum near death at St. Joe’s. When she awoke, she heard a stranger’s voice. Gideon’s. And the courtship began.
And like many a cunning suitor before him, he realized the wisest course lay in wooing the parents, not her.
Not that he was an utter scoundrel. His redemptive qualities revealed themselves over time: sturdiness as a provider; confidence among men of all kinds, especially the ranch hands; a surprising generosity of heart as a father.
As a husband, however, he possessed all the nuanced understanding of a pipe fitter trying to repair lace with a welding torch.
***
As he approached from the end of the corridor, she noticed he was carrying something, a large rumpled parcel wrapped in worn velvet, tied with an antique ribbon. His expression seemed strangely boyish, even shy, and that anomaly, given the rangy girth and broad manly face she otherwise found so familiar, made her vaguely afraid.
“I figured you’d be up,” he said, stopping a few feet away. He raised the parcel a little. “I have something here I thought you might find interesting.”
“I was just heading back to bed.”
His eyes narrowed, the suntanned crow’s feet at each corner fanning as the coldness she knew and trusted hardened his gaze. He held the parcel out for her to take. “You’re not the least bit curious?”
Perhaps, she thought. The very least bit.
“I sought them out with you in mind.”
Not for me, she thought. Just with me in mind. “How considerate.”
“Go ahead.” That galling, sly arrogance. “They won’t explode.”
“Okay, fine.” She crossed her arms, shivered the hair away from her face. “Why darling, whatever might they be?”
For the slightest instant, his stare detoured to her throat. “Let’s be adults about this, Meredith.”
“Is there any way for you to get through a single conversation without using that expression?”
Bobbing the velvet packet gently in his hand: “They’re letters.”
“Old ones, from the look of it.”
“Very.”
“From anyone we know?”
“In a manner of speaking.” He glanced at one of the paintings on the wall then held the velvet packet out a little farther, daring her to take them. Demanding her to. “Seriously, I thought you’d find them fascinating.”
“Why would you think that?”
He didn’t answer, just stood there with his arm extended, parcel in hand.
Finally, she relented, took it from him. “What now?”
She expected him to turn away, leave, but he just stood there, an arm’s length distance, his eyes curiously sad now. Or morose. She couldn’t tell which. After all, she was half blind.
“Is it really so hard to imagine,” he said, “that I’m not the horrible mistake you like to pretend I am?”
CHAPTER 18
November 15, 1876
Dearest Mattie,
Once again, I am obliged to ask forgiveness for the delay in my responding to your most recent letter. I have no excuse except an inability to formulate how best to word my reply.
I am inclined to believe that only through some strange necromancy did your recent letter even manage to arrive. I refer to your awareness, prompted by the curious appearance of Pinkerton agents at Uncle John’s home, that you needed to address your correspondence to T.S. Mackey, the name I have seen fit to use here.
I suppose I should explain that subterfuge, which in a roundabout manner will also explain the disturbing visit you described so well in your letter.
In my previous correspondence I have hinted at the distinct way of life out here, beyond the reach of civil order and respectful manners. Perhaps it is time for me to stop hinting and state the matter plain.
I live in a small, threadbare room above a place called Long John’s Saloon. I earn my living running a faro bank and dealing cards for an affable rogue named Charlie Foster, who operates an establishment with the gloriously benign moniker: Bab’s Variety House.
The variety in questi
on concerns not just the array of temptations on offer, but the kinds of men attracted to them: saddle tramps, bullwhackers, fugitives, sharpers and cappers and sheer brute fools.
In such illustrious company, with whiskey readily at hand, I cannot afford to betray the slightest reluctance to accept a challenge to my honor or step up in a scrape.
The problem lies in the fact that many of these men overvalue luck’s estimation of their merit. Thus, when they discover the cards (or their own stupidity) have betrayed them, their anger rises all too quickly to a rollicking boil. They can fathom no other possibility than that they have been cheated, and that I am the scoundrel to blame. Or at least the one in easiest reach.
When I try to educate them, explaining that freaks of chance are not determinable by calculation, they only jack up their spines all the more. Threats get made, all too often followed by the appearance of weapons.
As you can imagine, my condition only amplifies the danger. No one respects, let alone fears, a lunger.
As a consequence, I have been forced to rely on a certain abject savagery, making it clear that death has no dominion over my temperament, and I will not be intimidated by drunken loudmouths or bad losers.
Simply put, whether they hate me or not, men fear me. If that were not true, I would have been murdered long ago for the mere sport of the killing.
Admittedly, what I have managed to gain in terms of survival I have paid for in the coin of isolation. By and large, I lead a solitary life.
All of which is mere prelude to my explanation of what led me to flee Texas, and assume the name, somewhat altered, of my favorite uncle. That, in turn, will hopefully reveal the likely provocation for the visit from the Pinkerton yokels.
The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday Page 8