15

FALLING OFF A LOG

It had been a bad year for Clive Belman. The onetime jewelry salesman was out of work and nearly broke, living with his wife and two kids in a house he could barely afford. On this fall afternoon, he tossed aside the want ads and headed down Rotherwick Road to his neighbor John Drewe’s house to pick up his children, who often played with Drewe’s after school. Belman envied Drewe, who was successful—he drove his kids to school in a Bentley—and unburdened by life’s troubles, least of all the next month’s mortgage. Professor Drewe was an accomplished Oxford graduate and nuclear physicist who worked from home. Belman had recently discovered that they shared an acquaintance, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Brian Josephson, whom Belman had known as a child.

When Drewe’s daughter, Atarah, answered the door, Belman could hear Drewe calling him to come upstairs. He walked up to a small, spare room on the second floor and found Drewe crouched on the floor in a business suit, hammer in hand, banging away at a wooden picture frame. There were a dozen or so paintings lined up along the walls, abstract works by painters whose names Belman was unfamiliar with: Jean Dubuffet, Ben Nicholson, Le Corbusier, Alberto Giacometti.

“It’s sort of a hobby of mine,” Drewe said, explaining that the paintings belonged to a syndicate of scientists and businessmen who had been collecting for half a century. He served as the group’s representative and occasionally restored the works and repaired their frames.

“These are quite valuable,” said Drewe, gesturing at two Nicholsons. “That one’s worth about £60,000, and that one”—he pointed to an abstract piece by the window—“that’s about £40,000.”

“I hope they’re insured,” Belman joked.

The collection had been stored away for years in vaults and safe houses all over England, Drewe told Belman, who stood in the doorway listening as Drewe went on to say how much pleasure he got from making the frames and being surrounded by such beauty. If Belman had looked more closely, he might have noticed that the wood Drewe was using for the frames was left over from Goudsmid’s endless home renovations.

On his way home with the children, Belman could barely focus on them. The difference between his situation and Drewe’s was almost too much to bear. The professor lived the easy life, while Belman, at forty-six, could scarcely find the money to fill his car with gas, let alone indulge in hobbies like picture framing. At his age he should be enjoying himself, but his life had begun a dramatic downward trajectory a year earlier, when two thugs in balaclavas burst into his jewelry store, lodged the twin barrels of a sawed-off shotgun in his mouth, and cleaned out his shop.

Belman had been robbed before, but this was far worse, and it unnerved him. His business had been losing money steadily, and he had taken out an £80,000 home equity loan to cover the losses. The jewelry trade was a tough proposition, and a dangerous one, and soon after the robbery he decided to close down. He couldn’t help but think about the value of the works in Drewe’s home: One or two of them were worth enough to clear him of debt and stop the bank from foreclosing. As he approached his house he tried to ignore his worries for the children’s sake. Surely, he thought, something would come along.

 

 

A week later, Drewe was standing at the door. “What do you know about art?” he said.

“This much,” said Belman, pinching thumb and forefinger together. He had a passion for bridge, not for canvas.

Belman invited his neighbor in, and over the course of the next hour Drewe explained that his syndicate needed £1,000,000 in a hurry to buy a cache of long-hidden Russian archives that would forever put to rest revisionist theories that the Holocaust was a myth. To raise the cash, the syndicate would have to sell a significant portion of its collection of twentieth-century paintings.

Would Belman consider “taking them around”?

Belman couldn’t remember the last time he’d stepped into a museum or a gallery, and he wasn’t exactly sure what “taking them around” meant, but it sounded like a good opportunity. Nevertheless, he asked Drewe why the syndicate didn’t simply put the paintings up for auction.

Drewe said that he and his colleagues had to move quickly because someone else had also expressed an interest in the same batch of Holocaust files. There wasn’t time to go to the auction houses, which planned their sales months in advance. Not only that, they charged a steep seller’s commission, as well as a fee for reproducing the works in their catalogs. With several dozen works at stake, these commissions would be astronomical. It would be far more economical and much faster if Belman agreed to act as a middleman for the works, for which he would get a 20 percent cut.

Belman was hesitant; there must be a catch. “How much will it cost me to get in?” he asked.

“Nothing,” said Drewe. “The paintings are the crème de la crème, from Picasso on down. They’re worth millions.”

Belman, an utter novice, felt that he was probably the wrong man for the job, but the offer was a lifeline.

“You’re a good salesman,” Drewe said. “It’ll be like falling off a log.”

The professor had read his mind. It was no secret that Belman was nearly broke. He’d been open about his predicament, and everyone knew about the smash-and-grab robbery at his jewelry store. He’d always had an uncertain career, starting out as an actor at a repertory company in his hometown of Cardiff, then working in voice-overs and on radio adaptations of television shows. These were written the night before they aired, so there was little time for rehearsal. If an actor dropped a line, the others improvised. It was bare-bones theater, and Belman learned to spin on a dime and crank out his shtick on the high wire. Finally, when even these meager acting jobs had dried up, Belman took a job managing an all-night bridge club in London, confident that he understood this world as only the child of a champion bridge player could. Each hand was a new adventure that required card smarts as well as mental fortitude.

With Drewe, Belman’s improvisational and mental skills would be tested again. There was a lot to learn about the art world. Belman would have to educate himself and get to know his inventory thoroughly. But what was selling if not playing a role to perfection? He could do it. He knew from experience that if he was selling something even remotely interesting or worth buying, he could make a profit. As for finding the right buyer, he’d always operated on the “six degrees of separation” principle. If you cast your net wide enough, you’d find someone who would lead you to the perfect buyer.

Belman wasn’t simply interested in the money. He needed a shot of confidence, a sip of success. Drewe’s proposition might just get him back on his feet. And besides, he would be helping to keep the reviled Holocaust revisionists at bay.

He shook hands with Drewe, and they agreed to talk again soon.

 

 

A couple of days later Drewe came by with two paintings, a Giacometti and a Nicholson watercolor composed of blue, red, and yellow squares and rectangles. Belman knew a little about Giacometti but almost nothing about Nicholson. He went to the library and found that the British painter had died a decade earlier, in 1982, and that he was best known for his geometric landscapes and white reliefs. A Nicholson work had recently sold at auction for more than £1,000,000, a record for a British abstract.

Drewe told Belman that his syndicate wanted £200,000 for the Giacometti and £40,000 for Nicholson’s Aegean. He said the Nicholson had languished on consignment at a London gallery, and that its price had been reduced from £70,000. Belman began cold-calling anyone who knew anyone who might be even vaguely interested, and soon he had a bite from David Stern, a respectable dealer in Notting Hill.

The Stern Pissarro Gallery, a second-generation family business, had opened its doors in Tel Aviv in the early 1960s before branching out. David Stern, its current director, was married to Lelia Pissarro, the great-granddaughter of the French impressionist Camille Pissarro. Oil and provenance ran through the family’s veins, and several generations of Pissarros had honed their talents at the easel. Lelia learned to paint on her grandfather’s boat and sold her first painting when she was just four years old, to Wally Findlay, a well-known New York dealer who sometimes, on a whim, bought work from artists’ children.

David Stern guarded the Pissarro legacy and specialized in sales of the family’s work, but he was always looking for additional business. He told Belman he might be interested in the two works.¹⁹

At Belman’s home a few days later, Stern examined the Giacometti and the Nicholson. As Belman filled him in on the syndicate’s attempts to acquire the vitally important Russian archives, Stern took his time studying the works. Belman had imagined a short meeting and a rapid appraisal, but the dealer checked the canvases thoroughly and turned them over to examine their frames. He took them out to the garden and held them up to the light, and then he leaned them up against the wall and photographed them from several angles.

“Clive,” he said, “I’ve been in this business for twenty-five years. It takes twenty years to build up a reputation and two minutes for it to go up in smoke.”

Belman, who was feeling a little anxious by now, was relieved when Stern finally said he was considering Nicholson’s Aegean and wanted to examine the documentation.

Provenance is a fluid construct. A single piece of memorabilia can bring to life an otherwise moribund pile of receipts and invoices. A fully loaded provenance, with details of a work’s trajectory through the marketplace, can add substantially to the price. Further, if there’s any hint that the work was once associated with celebrity or scandal, infamy or criminal endeavor, its value may increase significantly. (Collectors have been known to arrange to have a painting stolen and subsequently recovered.) More often, however, a work’s provenance might consist of a single bill of sale, one catalog, or a passing mention in an old letter.

For Aegean, Drewe had provided Belman with a sensational provenance, including a handwritten letter from Barbara Hepworth, a major British sculptor and Ben Nicholson’s second wife, to Margaret Gardiner, an early member of the ICA and a patron of the arts who had once donated seventeen tons of Nigerian hardwood to Hepworth for use in her work. Drewe told Belman that the letter, which mentioned Aegean in passing, had accompanied the painting for years as part of its provenance.

Drewe had also supplied Belman with photocopies of various receipts, several of them marked with a rectangular stamped impression reading, “For Private Research Only/Tate Gallery Archive.” This indicated that the originals were tucked safely away at the Tate. Other documents showed that the original buyer of Aegean was Jacques O’Hana of the O’Hana Gallery, who had acquired it from the artist for £900 in 1955. The work had later been bought by Peter Harris, a collector who was based in Israel and was a member of Drewe’s syndicate. The receipts had all been signed by either Harris or O’Hana. One further document lending weight to the work’s authenticity was a 1950s exhibition catalog that included a black-and-white photograph of it.

Belman sent Stern a transparency of the painting, along with the provenance. Stern was evidently impressed. He told Belman that he had a potential buyer in New York, an art consultant who worked out of her East Side apartment and had done business with Stern in the past. The consultant had a corporate client who seemed interested.

On a July morning in 1993, Belman landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport to deliver Aegean. With the small painting tucked safely under his arm, he folded himself into a waiting cab and went straight to the consultant’s office. She examined the work and its provenance, seemed pleased with both, and immediately agreed to buy the piece for £35,000. When Belman returned to London a few days later, Drewe paid him his £7,000 commission.

The job could not have gone more smoothly. It was the easiest seven grand Belman had ever made, and he promptly phoned his bank manager and told him to call off the wolves.

The sale of Aegean was the first of a string of successes for Belman, who no longer lay awake at night worrying about how he was going to take care of his family. He was selling to dealers in London and New York, calling friends for new leads, dropping hints at parties, and talking up his inventory to his old mates in the gem game. The word had gone out that he had important connections in the art world.

Occasionally, Drewe would dangle transparencies or laser printouts of the syndicate’s more expensive Chagalls, Monets, and Picassos, but he rarely gave Belman the really good stuff. All in due time, he’d say. Belman could hardly complain. He was happy with what he’d been getting, and whenever his friends came by, he’d march them through the collection.

“That’s a Giacometti,” he’d say proudly. “That’s a Ben Nicholson.”

He refined his pitch, read up on the artists, spent time at the museums, and even sat through the occasional lecture. Once, he took the train down to the Cornish seaside town of St. Ives, which had been a haven for Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, and Henry Moore, and roamed along the cliffs and down by the coves, soaking in the atmosphere. After all, he was in the art business now.