Provenance Read online

  Drewe bought espressos for them and started up a conversation about Tel Aviv. Berger told him he had an Israeli girlfriend, and they talked briefly about their work. Drewe said he taught nuclear physics and spent most of his time consulting for the Ministry of Defence. He was developing propulsion systems for nuclear submarines and had an office on Gower Street, near MI6 headquarters.

  To an outside observer, the two men would have made a strange pair. Drewe, with his natty suit, starched collar, and trim mustache, looked as if he had just come from a business meeting. Berger, with his stack of newspapers and invoices, untucked shirt, and unkempt hair, looked as if he’d just slept through the matinee and woken up in the back row of the cinema.

  But such details did not trouble Drewe. A good judge of character, he was less concerned with appearance than with a person’s vulnerability. Drewe could size up a person quickly, and although his meeting with Berger seemed random, Berger had one obvious weakness—he was too eager for business. Drewe had paintings coming in at a good clip now, and he needed to put together a small sales team. He was sure he could straighten Berger up. Perhaps a believer in reverse psychology, Drewe may have thought that dealers would be disarmed by someone who seemed as far removed from the refinements of the art world as Berger.

  Drewe rose from the table and suggested that they meet again. He said Goudsmid could use some new friends. She was working much too hard and would love to meet other expat Israelis.

  Soon enough, the two couples were meeting regularly for bridge at Drewe’s home and going out to dinner. The women had both served in the Israeli Defense Force and had plenty to talk about. Drewe always picked up the tab. It was clear to Berger that the professor was doing well for himself. He drove two cars, a blue Bentley and a blue Bristol, and the walls of his home were covered with paintings by Chagall, Le Corbusier, and Braque. Berger knew little about art, but he recognized the signatures.

  After dinner one evening, Drewe made Berger a business proposition. He said he had been entrusted with some five hundred works of art by an old fellow named John Catch, whom he held in high regard. Catch had been his boss and mentor when Drewe was a young scientist at the Atomic Energy Authority, and had become like a father to him. Drewe took off his Rolex and showed Berger the inscription on the back: “From John to John.” The watch was a gift from Catch.

  “He’s ex-Foreign Office, lives in America now,” Drewe said, adding that Catch had made him a beneficiary in his will, and that he was to inherit the five hundred works, worth about £2 million. “He wants me to start selling them and keep the proceeds,” Drewe told Berger. “Will you help me?”

  If Goudsmid had been listening to the conversation, she might have informed Berger then and there that John Catch was a mythical figure as far as she was concerned. Whenever Drewe mentioned his name, Goudsmid bristled. Drewe had told her that Catch held the hereditary title Lord Chelmwood, and that the old man had helped him along over the years. He had given Drewe money, financed his studies, and named him his heir. The inheritance had become a sore point. It was Goudsmid, not Drewe, who had bought the house on Rotherwick Road in early 1986. When the couple moved in, Drewe convinced her to take out a larger mortgage than she had envisioned. Moreover, she had taken it out in both their names. He promised to pay it off as soon as the Catch windfall came in, but the money had never materialized. Goudsmid badgered Drewe about the inheritance, and around the time that she met Myatt, Drewe began to tell Goudsmid that the money would come in the form of earnings from the sale of artworks that Catch owned.

  Blissfully unaware of the financial intricacies of the Drewe/ Goudsmid household, Berger accepted Drewe’s proposition that he become his agent in selling some of the paintings. In return, he would receive a 10 to 20 percent commission, depending on the sale price of the work.

  The first painting Drewe brought to Danny Berger’s garage was a canvas by the British artist Ben Nicholson. Berger put on his best suit and took the tube down to Cork Street, a stretch of London that was home to some two dozen galleries and private dealers. He walked the picture from one shop to the next but found no takers. Dejected, he tucked the canvas under his arm, went home, and called Drewe to give him the bad news and ask for an explanation. Was there something wrong with the painting? Something lacking in his salesmanship?

  No, Drewe said. The piece was solid. Berger needn’t worry. There would be other works to sell very soon.

  A week later, Drewe called to say that he had sold the piece to the dealer Leslie Waddington for £135,000. Waddington was one of the most prestigious dealers in London, an irrepressible man with a large staff and three blue-chip galleries on Cork Street. He was also a Nicholson expert who had once worked closely with the painter. The news of the sale renewed Berger’s confidence in Drewe. He knew enough of the market by now to know the dealer’s reputation. If it was good enough for Waddington, it was good enough for Danny Berger.

  Within days, Drewe was back at the garage with two abstract works by Roger Bissière. This time Berger was determined to make a sale. He called on every business acquaintance and distant relative, every former partner and friend. A private dealer he knew agreed to show photographs of the paintings to Adrian Mibus, an Australian gallerist on Duke Street, and Mibus agreed to come by and see the works.

  At the garage, Drewe let Berger do most of the talking. Mibus did not seem put off by the grubby surroundings. “It’s not all that common to meet in a place like that, but not unusual if the buyer or seller wants to be private,” Mibus later recalled.6

  Mibus looked closely at the two Bissières. Though they were hardly extraordinary, the price was right. Berger and Drewe wanted to make a quick sale and were prepared to accept a price well below market value. If Mibus paid cash, they would take £15,000 for the pair.

  Cash deals were common, and were a good way to lighten the tax burden. Mibus agreed to the terms and almost immediately sold one of the paintings to a French dealer for a good profit. He decided to hold on to the second and show it at an upcoming art fair.

  Several weeks later he returned to Berger’s garage to see another Bissière, as well as a work by Nicolas de Staël. The Bissière, titled Composition 1958, was a colorful oil with a red border and several red, yellow, blue, and white squares. The de Staël was equally vibrant, with the artist’s characteristic use of thick layers of paint laid down with a knife. On its reverse was a brief dedication to a Mrs. Richardson: “To the memory of our walk in the park this afternoon.”

  A nice detail, Mibus thought, wondering who the handsome artist’s companion had been.

  He struck another cash deal with Berger: £32,500 for the de Staël and £7,500 for the Bissière. Then he took the de Staël to Christie’s for a “flyby,” an informal estimate of what the work might bring at auction. One of the Christie’s experts quoted a figure much higher than the sum Mibus had paid and encouraged him to put it on the block. He said he would think about it.

  Mibus’s was a labor-intensive business. For all the glamour and spark it provided, and for all that he could be physically close to paintings he loved, art was a very tough market, one that operated in a narrow universe whose inhabitants could be as petty and vicious one day as they were generous the next. Competition was fierce: Of the several hundred active art dealers in London, New York, and Paris—three of the major art markets—only a handful were successful on a grand scale. Galleries went out of business every year. Mibus had held on through the bad times and remained a respected midlevel dealer.

  Most gallerists earned the lion’s share of their income from commissions, taking a third to two thirds of the selling price of works by the artists they represented. These were high fees indeed, but the risks were high too. The art market was stormy at best, and an artist on whom a dealer had bet heavily might fail to generate the buzz necessary to command top dollar. And the overhead for a gallery was huge. A successful gallery needed a respectable address, as well as a staff that included secretaries, accounta
nts, and stock handlers. A top-notch gallery had to install a new show once every few months to maintain credibility, and to try to make a profit on pieces in inventory. The shows were not cheap: There were costs for promotion, advertising, crating, trucking, insurance, installation. After a splashy opening night, the whole thing could run to as much as fifty thousand dollars. It was not unusual for a dealer to break even or report a loss, even if the show sold out.

  In a good year, a midlevel dealer might move a dozen works by a handful of new artists at $5,000 to $20,000 apiece, but that was hardly enough to keep a business going. The dealer also had to make a few top-drawer sales of $200,000 and up, and sell a few paintings from other dealers or collectors on consignment, which could net 10 percent of the selling price.

  Dealers had to keep an eye on rival gallerists as well, and maintain a solid list of contacts and a full social calendar. Gossip was an important element of the art business. Deals were often struck in back rooms, with only the dealer and the buyer knowing exactly how much money had changed hands. Even at auction, and even for experienced paddle raisers, it wasn’t always clear when a work had been sold and at what price, leaving dealers to rely on their best guess to price their own holdings accordingly.

  They also had to worry about antagonizing their clients, who were often among the richest people in the world: industrialists and financiers and attorneys who could easily put a gallery out of business with a single lawsuit. Not only that, but selling to a wealthy collector did not necessarily guarantee payment. Stories abounded of collectors buying a work on credit, enjoying it for a year, then returning it without having paid a penny. Others had been known to buy a picture on credit and then sell it at auction before paying the debt. Police in London and New York knew of collectors who had skipped town with “borrowed” paintings. In a world where transactions were often sealed over a nice meal or by oral agreement, there wasn’t much a stiffed dealer could do but weep.

  Mibus took the de Staël home and hung it in his living room. It was filled with color, an abstract landscape of optimism created by a man who had suffered from insomnia and severe depression, and had eventually flung himself from his eleventh-story studio. It had been a while since Mibus enjoyed the luxury of an acquisition like the de Staël, but circumstances were such that he could now afford to keep it for a while. Instead of consigning it to Christie’s, he would allow himself to savor the painting.

  4

  CROSSING THE LINE

  Over the previous few weeks Myatt had been getting calls from his ex-wife. She said her boyfriend was becoming abusive and had hit her on several occasions. The calls grew increasingly frantic, and late one night, after Myatt was in bed, he picked up the phone to hear her frightened voice begging him to come over. He jumped into his car and raced to her house. When he arrived, he found her bruised and bloodied. She told him that she feared her boyfriend would return and hurt her more seriously.

  Myatt packed her into the car and drove her home to Sugnall. He said she could stay with him as long as she needed to. She would be safe with him.

  She stayed for a week, and Myatt was glad to have her around. She was a real and familiar comfort. Soon, however, she was talking about going back to her lover. Myatt argued against it. He was worried about the children’s safety. He had custody of them, but he’d promised her he wouldn’t stand in the way of their visiting her. Having her there in the farmhouse felt tantalizingly like old times, as if the family were whole again, and yet he realized that he no longer loved her, and that he was feeling more and more confident as a father, even though his life hadn’t been easy since she left. He was torn.

  Myatt turned to Drewe for advice. The professor always seemed happy to listen to him when he had a problem at home.

  “Don’t be a fool!” Drewe said firmly when he heard about the latest round of fireworks. “You’re not responsible for her well-being. You’re divorced. Except for the children’s safety, what matters most now is your work. You have to paint. You must provide for the children.”

  Myatt agreed to put an end to his ex-wife’s extended stay, and placed a call to his former in-laws to tell them that their daughter needed help. Before long, his ex-father-in-law had moved her out of her boyfriend’s house and into a new one near Myatt, and the boyfriend began to come around less and less.

  Within a few weeks the storm had passed, and Myatt felt comfortable enough to let her take the children when she wanted to. He returned to his painting full force. Several weeks later, however, he received an unpleasant surprise visit from Social Services. It was billed as a routine checkup to make sure he was providing a healthy environment for the kids, but the experience left him shaken. It was clear that he was barely making ends meet. The house was a single-father nightmare: frames and canvases, toys and finger paints, food and diapers were everywhere. In addition, the sleeping arrangements were far from ideal. Amy slept in the attic, up a steep, narrow flight of stairs, in a room with a ceiling that sloped so badly Myatt could hardly stand up straight. Sam, a fretful child, had the room next to his, so Myatt rarely got a good night’s sleep.

  The visit from Social Services ended without incident, but Myatt was rattled by the notion that the government could simply march into his house, declare him an unfit father, and take off with the kids. A few days after the visit, when he took the train to Euston station to drop off another piece for Drewe, he was still in a deep funk.

  “Calm down,” said Drewe, who was waiting for him at the bar. “You don’t have to be a perfect housekeeper or live in a palace to prove you’re a good father and a good man. This will pass.”

  Again Drewe encouraged him to focus on his painting and not to let anxiety get in the way of his life with the kids. Family and loved ones came first, he said. Something would turn up. Myatt’s finances would improve. All he needed was patience.

  Drewe was no stranger to family upheavals. When he was a boy, he told Myatt, his father, a scientist, had beaten up Drewe’s mother after learning that she was having an affair with one of his colleagues. The scandal ended in divorce, and his father spent a year in prison for assault. Drewe hadn’t seen him since. To dissociate himself from his family’s unsavory past, he had changed the surname he was born with, Cockett, and become John Drewe, adopting a variation on his mother’s maiden name.

  While Myatt was digesting this news, Drewe went on to say that he had married a Cambridge mathematician, the love of his life, but she had left him and broken his heart. Her work took precedence over their relationship, she’d calmly explained. He was devastated, but he’d gotten over it.

  “Look at me,” he said. “I’ve suffered a great deal, but I’ve put my life in order. It takes time. Things work out in the end.”

  Myatt nodded. Drewe was apparently living happily with Goudsmid now, well off, successful in every respect.

  “You’re spending too much time teaching other people’s children and not enough time teaching your own. Your job is a drain on your talents.” The most important thing in the world, he reiterated, was for Myatt to provide for his children, preferably without having to suffer the daily drudgery of working for a pittance.

  Myatt had always wanted to work from home and manage his schedule around the children’s, so he listened carefully. By now, even though Myatt was nearly three years older than Drewe, the professor was a father figure to him, someone with authority and compassion who could guide him through the difficult moments. What Myatt didn’t know was that Drewe had invented most of his tragic narrative, conjuring it from air to tug at Myatt’s heartstrings and tighten their emotional knot. Drewe’s father wasn’t a scientist but an engineer for the telephone division of the British Post Office,7 and the failed marriage to the Cambridge mathematician was pure fiction. If Myatt had been aware of any of this, he might have walked away, but he was already in Drewe’s pocket.

  “Remember that Gleizes you painted a few weeks ago?” Drewe asked him suddenly.

  Myatt had been captiva
ted by a reproduction he’d seen of a small elliptical pencil drawing, a 1916 sketch titled Portrait of an Army Doctor, by the cubist Albert Gleizes. The sketch had prompted him to make a painting of the doctor in the artist’s style, as what he called “a small homage” to Gleizes. He couldn’t afford real oils, so he’d bought house paint from the hardware store. Once it was dry, he’d applied a thick coat of varnish until it looked very much like the real thing. Drewe had framed it nicely and hung it on his stairway wall. Myatt thought it looked glorious and was quite proud of himself.

  Drewe said he had shown the piece to an acquaintance at Christie’s, who believed it was genuine and could fetch at least £25,000 at auction.

  “You know, you don’t have to sell these paintings to me exclusively,” said Drewe, “though of course I’m happy to handle them for you. For the Gleizes I can get you £12,500.”

  That was more money than Myatt had seen in years. He could buy shoes for the kids, stop worrying about the rent, and have more than enough coal for the stove. It would solve all his problems.

  “We don’t have to stop there,” said Drewe. “You can make a decent living at this.” He held out a fat brown envelope full of bills. “It’s yours if you want it.”

  It hit Myatt that Drewe had already sold the piece. He could no longer deny what he had suspected, that Drewe was passing off his works as genuine. He had already painted fifteen or twenty pieces for the good professor, and Drewe wanted more.

  Myatt took the cash and realized that with that one small gesture he had crossed the line.

  “What would you like to paint next?” asked Drewe.

  Myatt thought for a moment.

  “Giacometti,” he said.

  5

  MIBUS WANTS HIS MONEY BACK

  Frequently there is a tender complicity between faker and victim: I want you to believe that such and such is the case, says the faker; if you want to believe it, too, and in order to cement that belief, you, for your part, will give me a great deal of money, and I, for my part, will laugh behind your back. The deal is done.