CHAPTER THREE
Art Forgery 101
Tom liked to prowl around bookstores in an endless search for something new and interesting for his library. One evening while I was ruminating about my financial condition, Tom showed me a book he’d just picked up at the Strand bookshop. “Now, this guy knew how to make money!” he said. The book was about Han van Meegeren, a Dutch art forger who operated in the 1930s and ’40s. He specialized in faking Vermeer, the seventeenth-century Dutch master. Van Meegeren had done very well for himself living in a villa on the Riviera, but apparently his success had affected his thinking, for he began selling his pictures to the Nazis when they occupied France during the war. And he didn’t fool around with the riffraff, but sold his work to Hermann Göring, one of Hitler’s closest chums.
Van Meegeren’s downfall came after the war, when Nazi art treasures were seized by the Allies, who found some Vermeers along with transaction receipts listing van Meegeren as the seller. The poor man was brought up on charges as a traitor for selling national treasures to the enemy. In a supreme twist of irony, van Meegeren’s only defense was to declare himself the artist. The court refused to believe him. Only when van Meegeren painted a masterpiece in his prison cell were the authorities convinced.
The van Meegeren book made a big impression on us. In addition to revealing the Dutch artist as a mastermind, the book delved into the technical details of how van Meegeren created his fakes. It explained basic principles such as using the canvas and stretcher or wood panel from a genuine antique painting of minor value as the support or surface for the forger’s masterpiece. It also revealed techniques for producing cracks and hardened paint.
After I read the book, a plan began to take shape due to a combination of factors. First, the basic technical principles explained in the book seemed simple enough and well within my reach. In fact, a lot of it was just common sense plus some imagination. The second element was that every time I visited the Met and studied the work of Brueghel to get ideas for my surrealistic paintings, I noticed a collection of sixteenth-century Flemish portraits nearby. Measuring approximately ten by twelve inches each, they looked simple, and I was sure I could paint them.
The third and determining factor emerged as a result of my visits to Parke-Bernet. There, I was able to physically handle old master paintings, something I could never do in a museum. I studied several examples of Flemish portraits similar to the ones in the Met. I was able to lift them from the wall and view the all-important backside to see exactly on what they had been painted. I noticed that most were painted on the same type of thin wood panels. It occurred to me that I’d seen exactly the same wood panels used as the bottoms of drawers in the seventeenth-century furniture I hunted to sell to dealers in the city.
When the opportunity arose, I procured three suitable panels scavenged from a third-rate piece of early European furniture. I went to the Met, studied the Flemish portraits for hours, and bought books containing reproductions of them. I noticed that many of the paintings shared similar characteristics: deceptively simple portraits of people with thin lips, long straight noses, medieval hairstyles, and ethereal expressions.
With the originals as models, I used a method I had once watched Tom employ. I got a sketch pad and, borrowing a little from each model, was able to complete several plausible portraits of imaginary sixteenth-century sitters. All I had to do next was to cut the panels to proper size, carefully burnish the edges, apply a thin coat of gesso, and finally transfer the sketches to the panels, again using a cut-out-and-trace method I had observed Tom use in his work.
Over the next two weeks, my mother couldn’t get me out of the garage. I was either tuning up the Bentley or working on the portraits. At last, I produced three examples ready to be “baked” in the sun for the next couple of weeks.
After the paint was sufficiently hardened, the next challenge was the cracking. I noticed from my studies at the Met that not all paintings on wood panels display cracks, but when they do, they show a unique crack pattern that resembles a macroscopic grid pattern that is referred to as “craquelure” by experts.
It was mentioned in Tom’s book about van Meegeren that forgers sometimes used needles to engrave cracks into paintings. After raiding my father’s tool chest for an engraver’s needle, I began to engrave cracks fine as a human hair under a large mounted magnifying glass and lamp. It took several days to copy the “grid” pattern onto each panel.
The next step was to darken the cracks. Natural cracks in an antique picture appear black because of a deposit of microscopic debris and discolored varnish that has settled within them over the years. All it took was a wash of powdered pigment with some soap and water, wiped over the surface of each painting, to reveal the entire pattern right before my eyes.
I made an “antique” varnish by simply using a commercial brand of varnish and tinting it with a brown stain. After this was applied and the paintings allowed to dry in the sun for a few days, I rubbed dust thoroughly into the back, front, and edges of each painting.
I was very excited with the finished product. The portraits looked exactly like the real ones I’d seen in the Met, especially my third—and best—effort. It was a portrait of a man perhaps fifty years old. A black tunic covered his chest in pleats, and, in a corner at the bottom, a few fingers lay as if resting on a windowsill. His hair was clipped like that of a monk, and his face exhibited the serene expression of a saint.
With the Bentley on the fritz, there was no time to waste. I emptied a yellow manila envelope of some junk mail, slid the panel in, and left for the city.
As I was heading downtown on the Eighth Avenue A train, I was trying to decide which dealer I would approach. Then it came to me. There was a miserly old curmudgeon called Ephron, whose posh gallery on East Fifty-Seventh Street near Lexington Avenue dealt in Renaissance art.
Ephron’s window invariably displayed a rich array of early European furniture, tapestries, and paintings. Once, when I was trying to sell a couple of pieces of early furniture, I thought I’d give him a try and perhaps establish a new client. I entered, told him I was selling some period furniture, and showed him photos. He took them for a second, looked at them, and asked how much. When I told him the price, which was reasonable, he simply handed back the photos and showed me the door. So I figured, What the hell; I’m gonna try that prick again.
By the time I got out of the subway and started walking east along Fifty-Seventh Street, I began to lose my confidence. The reality hit me that I was going to show an experienced expert a painting I had created myself. As I approached the shop, I almost lost my nerve, but still I forced myself to open the door. The old man was there just like the last time. I slipped the painting out from the envelope and told him that I was selling it.
With a miserable scowl on his horribly ugly face, he paused, stared at the painting, and gave me the once-over; but this time, instead of showing me the door, to my surprise he offered me a seat at a seventeenth-century Bolognese table. He sat across from me and didn’t utter a word; instead he held the painting, studying it closely. I sat there, nonchalantly gazing around the room. The walls were covered with Gobelin tapestries. Early Italian paintings in architectural frames were displayed on antique easels. Cabinets were filled with sixteenth-century lusterware, bronzes, and antiquities.
Still Ephron hadn’t said a word. I noticed several marble busts of Roman emperors resting on pedestals. Their hollow eyes seemed eerily fixed on me and my palms were beginning to sweat. Slowly Ephron started thawing and in a friendly manner began asking me all sorts of questions—who I was and how I’d come by the painting. I didn’t even have a story planned, and the only thing I could think of was that I had “inherited a few paintings from my uncle.” By now, I could see he was genuinely interested in the picture, and my confidence returned.
“And what are these other pictures like that you have?” he asked. I described a couple of imaginary Dutch landscapes to him and let the matter drop.
Ephron’s gallery was a labyrinth of hallways and rooms going farther back behind us, and he suggested we go back into one of them. In a room we passed that looked like a repair or restoration studio, I noticed a woman in her seventies, wearing an artist’s apron. When we reached the back rooms where he kept a horde of Renaissance treasures, he seated me in another antique chair in front of an Italian refectory table. This time he told me to wait and left with the picture, closing the door behind him.
I heard him through the door, talking with the woman in the apron. Obviously they were having a discussion about the picture. I became terrified when I heard the voices get lower and heard the sounds of bottles being jostled about. I suspected they might be performing some kind of tests on the painting. I did my best to suppress my fear. They must have kept me waiting twenty minutes. It seemed like eternity. In my naïveté, I thought perhaps they’d uncovered my scheme and were stalling until the cops came.
At last Ephron returned and sat down. “Well,” he said, “it’s a nice little picture, but nothing very important. I don’t know if we’d be interested. How much were you thinking of getting?” In a flash, my fears disappeared.
“Twelve hundred dollars,” I said confidently.
“Out of the question!” he protested.
I shrugged my shoulders and began to get up, suggesting that I was sick of waiting around and getting ready to leave. He made me wait and went out into the hall once again for further consultations. While he was gone, I noticed that on the wall were a couple of Flemish portraits similar to the one I was selling and of the same period. One was clearly a wreck, most of the paint was gone, and more wood panel showing than painting. However, it was in an antique Gothic frame. In spite of the stress I was under, I thought that if I could get that piece included in the deal, not only would I have the panel for my next painting, but an antique frame to boot!
Ephron returned and said, “Twelve hundred dollars is impossible. It’s not worth more than five hundred.” I knew he was playing games, so I proposed a compromise. “Look,” I said, “give me that picture up there”—I pointed to the Flemish wreck—“and eight hundred bucks.” He was puzzled that I wanted the picture on the wall, and for a second I thought I’d put my foot in my mouth and raised his suspicions. So I quickly said, “Just so I’d have something to put back on my wall.” He took it down and considered it, shaking his head. I knew we were going to make a deal, and I adamantly stood my ground. Finally, doing his best to look as disgusted as he could, Ephron capitulated.
“Okay, okay. You want cash, right?” he asked. I nodded. “Well, you’ll have to wait a few minutes,” he said, and asked me to follow him back to the front room. He carried both paintings, placed them on the table, and asked me to have a seat. Again he disappeared with the old lady, who I glimpsed giving me suspicious looks. Again they kept me waiting, and again I heard more whispering. I was cringing in my seat and becoming apprehensive. A couple of times, Ephron came out to assure me that the money was on the way.
Then, just when I expected a squad car to arrive, I looked on in wonder as a black Cadillac limo pulled up in front of the gallery. A chauffeur got out and opened the rear door. A voluptuous blonde dressed in black and wearing an expensive string of pearls alighted. She was just like the type I’d seen at Parke-Bernet. Ephron opened the gallery door and greeted her. She too gave me the once-over and asked, “Is this him?” Ephron nodded, whereupon she opened an exquisite little black bag. I watched with delight as her fine slender fingers extracted a wad of bills. Peeling off eight Ben Franklins, she handed them to me without a word, turned, gave Ephron a peck on the cheek, and returned to the waiting limo. I eventually learned that the blonde in black was the old man’s mistress.
Our business concluded, Ephron got out a piece of paper, wrote down the phony name I had given him and a sentence or two, stating that I had received eight hundred dollars cash for a “portrait of a man.” I signed it, and with a sweet smile he handed me the wreck.
Now that we were old friends, Ephron got back to the subject of the other pictures I’d mentioned that my “uncle” had left me. After making me promise I’d bring them by, he took a pair of plated gold cuff links off his shirt and, grabbing my hand, he said, “You’re a handsome young man. I want you to have these … but don’t forget those other pictures.” I was thrilled with the gift he pressed into my palm and gave him every assurance in the world that I’d be back with more paintings. As I left the shop with the greatest feeling of relief, I flung the cuff links in the gutter and went straight to Bloomingdale’s.
Just moments before, I had been flat broke, wondering how to finance a new voltage regulator for the Bentley, not to mention more hot dogs and French fries at Callahan’s. Now, there were eight hundred dollars in crisp new bills in my pocket and a genuine antique painting and frame under my arm!
But my euphoria was short-lived. Just as I was entering Bloomingdale’s, it hit me. I had left the manila envelope at Ephron’s! It had my real name and address on it! Panic-stricken, I swung a U-turn in the store’s revolving door and ran back to the gallery. I burst in, and there was Ephron. He looked at me, surprised. In a split second, I caught sight of the envelope lying under the table near the seat where I had waited.
“I forgot something,” I explained, while scooping up the evidence and heading for the door.
“Don’t forget the other—” were the last words I heard, as I closed the door and raced back to Bloomingdale’s to buy a pair of leather boots on sale.
A few months later a suspicious noise in the engine warned me I was heading for trouble with the Bentley, so when a Brooklyn collector offered me four grand in cash for it, I grabbed the money and made the sign of the cross. With this windfall, I decided to take a trip to London and see Carnaby Street and Piccadilly Circus.
It was February 1970. After getting my passport, I packed my bags, tossed in the other two “Flemish” portraits, and booked a flight on Icelandic Airways. They offered a special “youth fare,” aka “The Pothead Express,” to Luxembourg aboard a ramshackle Lockheed Constellation. The earsplitting sound of the engines and the vibration of the propellers jarred my brains senseless. The food resembled K rations. Passengers in the know were pulling piles of fruit and sandwiches from their knapsacks. A combat-booted girl in a granny dress with strands of beads and amulets dangling from her neck swept up and down the aisle dispensing marijuana brownies. After a stop in Iceland, our flying washing machine continued on to Luxembourg, air time fourteen hours. After we landed and I made it to a hotel, it was impossible to sleep. I couldn’t get the sound of the plane’s propellers out of my head.
The next day, I took a train to Amsterdam, hung around for a few days, and, after a dreadful channel crossing, found myself in a London B&B on Cromwell Road. The next day, I went out to explore London for the first time. I quickly learned to use the underground system and rode the double-decker buses around town. I was anxious to explore the art galleries and check out the fashions in Carnaby Street. When my interests became known to the proprietress of the hotel, she suggested that I visit the salesrooms at Sotheby’s. I had never heard of the place before, since Sotheby’s had not yet taken over the Parke-Bernet Galleries in New York. I took a cab to Number 34-35 New Bond Street and looked up to see “Sotheby’s Auction Rooms, Established 1744” in letters above the entrance of an impressive Gothic Revival building.
Inside, an exhibition of nineteenth-century European paintings was in progress. The walls of the stately rooms were literally crammed with canvases. Some were haphazardly propped against the wall. Dealers and collectors, some speaking Italian and French, pulled pictures from the walls like shoppers buying a bunch of bananas from a street stand. In the midst of all this, I noticed a woman, who looked to be in her eighties, wearing a magnificently ludicrous hat, swinging her cane in the direction of a painting that had apparently offended her taste, and loudly declaring to the edification of the entire room, “Nothing could ever possess me to buy that painting. I simply couldn’t live with it!”
As she ranted on, I joined the crowd and studied the paintings before me. Some appeared to be in perfect condition and were beautifully framed. Others, no less valuable, were in such disrepair, in such bad need of cleaning, that they were barely visible through layers of yellowed varnish. It was thrilling to think that all these pictures that had once graced the walls of mansions and town houses would soon meet their fate on the auction block and continue their journey through the ages.
London held one excitement after another for me. I discovered Christie’s in St. James’s and was once again astounded by the spectacle of so much art. From there I went to King’s Road, where I came across a number of antique markets. Upon entering one, I found some dealers with whom I felt I could do some business. The next day, I returned with one of my paintings and met a dealer who was interested. He requested that I leave the piece with him for a day. When I returned the following afternoon, he made me an offer.
An hour later, and three hundred pounds richer, I was sitting in an expensive restaurant eating the first good meal I’d had in a week and thinking about my second sale. The speed and ease of the transaction gave me confidence. Now I knew that the Ephron sale wasn’t just luck. The very next day, I went to Camden Passage with the other portrait. It was the first one I had painted, so I wanted to sell it fast for whatever I could get. Once again I found an interested dealer who showed it to several colleagues. Before I knew it, I had another two hundred pounds in my pocket and was in ecstasy.
Three months later, after I had searched out every art gallery, museum, and antique market in London, I was back in the States with fond memories of my stay in Britain. However, times were changing and having fun at the Castle was over. Tom was having more and more difficulty dealing with alcoholism. As he began to lose touch with reality, I spent more of my time at Tony and Barbara’s apartment in the city.
Barbara was very interested in my artistic development, and for the next year I was completely under her spell. I was her slave. I hung on her every word, and she had a tremendous effect on my life. She was convinced that it was my destiny to become an artist. Although she was impressed, even amused by my surrealistic paintings, she spent a considerable amount of time and breath urging me to “progress,” to find myself artistically and become part of the current “movement.”
The more trouble I had in my struggle toward self-discovery, the more crises I encountered, the more attention Barbara paid me. The more I confided to her lovely ears, the more she listened. The more she soothed, encouraged, and flattered, the more I loved her. She was, in my mind, the height, the very pinnacle of sophisticated perfection. She was the epitome of all that was cool, intelligent, and knowing. But our days of hanging around the Village and sipping tea at the apartment came to an end when Tony got Barbara pregnant. They fled the environs of Fifteenth Street and headed for the serenity of the country, where they became parents of a beautiful baby girl.
One day, while looking through a newspaper, I noticed a Help Wanted ad asking for “young artists.” In spite of my draft status, I called the number. It turned out to be an art restoration studio. The man who ran it, Erwin Braun, aka Sonny, was one of the best conservators in the business, and all the major collectors and galleries used him.
He invited me to come down to his studio in a loft on Twenty-First Street off Fifth Avenue. After I arrived, Sonny took one look at a small copy of a Brueghel sporting an antique patina that I pulled from my shoulder bag and hired me on the spot.
Half artist and half philosopher, Sonny was possessed of a sarcastic and razor-sharp Jewish wit that he used unmercifully on his employees. When it came to restoration, though, Sonny could be described as near genius. As a matter of fact, the definition of what exactly constituted “genius” was a matter of constant and heated debate at Sonny’s studio.
Sonny hired young artists to train as in-painters, i.e., artists whose job it was to touch up and make repairs on antique paintings during the restoration process. Although Sonny was an expert in-painter, he had to use his valuable time to clean the antique pictures, the most critical and potentially dangerous job. Nobody else even dared entertain the idea of cleaning a picture, for if the powerful solvents used to dissolve old discolored varnish weren’t used correctly, they could destroy the painting.
Sonny had three boys seated at easels working on paintings, while he stood cleaning paintings at a table where he could keep an eye on us. This arrangement left us open to Sonny’s wisecracks. His trenchant witticisms increased as the day wore on, due, no doubt, to the toxic effect of the chemicals used to clean the paintings.
Sonny was suspicious of everyone who came into his studio. Many pictures were parked there in rough, unrestored condition, waiting to be spiffed up and put on the auction block.
Should gossip or a derogatory rumor concerning the condition of an important painting leak out from a restorer’s studio, it could ruin the business. As a result, Sonny insisted that his employees just deal with the technical problems and never talk to art dealers about paintings in the studio, who owned them, or what went on there. It was like working at the CIA.
For the time being, I had a real job. I hated it but worked hard and learned fast. It seemed a rift was developing between Sonny and another boy who worked there—a fat, humorless, fart-blowing misanthrope who held the title “junior partner and assistant”—and Sonny began eyeing me as a possible replacement. He even took the unprecedented step of having me stand and watch him clean paintings. I looked on with fascination as Sonny performed the delicate procedure of removing old discolored varnish and previous retouching from the surface of antique paintings. I soaked up every facet of the work and learned how a picture, whether painted on canvas or panel, was systematically restored.
The fact that Sonny could be insufferable was of no consequence to me. Some guys took his crazy remarks to heart and quit. I threw everything right back in his face, and he liked me the more for it. Once one of us innocently remarked that an artist currently receiving publicity was a “genius.” Throwing down his cotton swab, Sonny marched over from the cleaning table and confronted us.
“So you think that asshole is a genius?” he asked with contempt. We just shrugged our shoulders. Sonny then encapsulated for us his official definition of a genius. After establishing that a true genius is in possession of intellectual, artistic, or creative powers beyond the comprehension of others, which was fair enough, he curiously went on to include a number of personality traits as well.
“A genius doesn’t care about money, fame, or any of that bullshit” (Sonny likewise had none). “It’s work that’s important to a genius, nothing else.” (Sonny was a pathological workaholic.) “Geniuses possess absolutely no sense of time or self-conscious awareness!” (Half the time, Sonny didn’t know what day it was, let alone the time, and he dressed like a slob.) As Sonny’s diatribe progressed, his audience was led inexorably toward the inevitable conclusion that the comparison between himself and a genius was incontestable!
After Sonny was finished, a profound silence descended, and sufficient time was allowed to elapse so that the striking resemblances could sink in. “Well,” I asked bluntly, “if you’re a genius, why ain’t you a millionaire?” His wife, who sat at the reception desk nearby, chimed in with her nasal voice: “Yeah, Sonny. Why ain’t you a millionaire?” That shut him up for the rest of the day.
To work for Sonny was important to me because I got to handle and examine many period pictures. I came to recognize every type of canvas and stretcher that was used by every major school of art. I saw every kind of wood panel and every kind of crack pattern in existence. I also saw every type of patch-up repair commonly used fifty or a hundred years ago.
From listening to Sonny, I picked up my first tips on what experts look for to establish the authenticity of a painting. I saw how he used an ultraviolet light that, when shined on the surface of an antique picture, could detect old repainting and touch-ups. Most importantly, it also detected whether the varnish applied to the antique painting was original to the painting. True antique varnish displays a characteristic green fluorescence when viewed under ultraviolet light. This fluorescence can’t be simulated, so experts often look to this as a positive proof of age.
This was also the first time I was exposed to American paintings. I found them boring, but the market was experiencing a boom in nineteenth-century American paintings and prices were going through the roof. The boom was drawing in a group of young, obnoxious, and greedy dealers who hunted around old historic towns in hopes of finding valuable paintings. I watched as they stood enraptured while Sonny did some quick cleaning and speculated what the painting might be worth.
Meanwhile, in a bizarre manifestation of his mounting paranoia, Sonny sought to compartmentalize everyone around him and was soon erecting partitions to block views of the studio from both his own employees and dealers coming in. He was convinced his employees were plotting against him to start their own studio. The whole place was eventually divided into little compartments with masking-tape markers on the floor designating where an employee might or might not go. Any violation of these directives would result, as Sonny put it, “in immediate dismissal.” Finally, even his wife was stuck in a crazy-looking box he constructed of drywall, with a small square hole cut in it through which she spoke to customers. Indeed, Freud certainly would have had a field day with Sonny.
Around this time, I thought I should have my own apartment in the city. I found a studio in a grand-looking building designed by Stanford White at 43 Fifth Avenue, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Eleventh Street. The rent was only a hundred and ten dollars a month, because the bath was in the hall. But this drawback was adequately made up for in charm. The studio had tall ceilings and French doors that stretched across an entire wall. They opened onto a small terrace enclosed by a low brick wall. Situated on the eleventh floor, the terrace offered a view of the surrounding area.
Back in Fort Lee, I’d found a real World War II Army Jeep with the original paint job, serial numbers, gas cans, and all. I fell in love with it and reasoned that it would be the ideal thing to get around the city in. To live in Greenwich Village in my very own studio with a Jeep parked outside was a dream come true. I painted the walls, hung a few of my paintings, bought some old Oriental rugs, threw down a mattress—and I was in business. One of the first friends to visit and cruise around the Village with me was Michelle, a red-haired, blue-eyed model whom I met through Tom and whose brother Elliott, a rock-and-roll star, was playing at Max’s.
We liked to visit the galleries in SoHo and have hamburgers at the Broome Street Bar. Other times, we’d go to the Met, look at the paintings, and take long walks on the Upper East Side where she lived with her mother. Once, while holding hands and strolling up Fifth Avenue at sunset, we started to walk past one of the big bookstores near Fifty-Seventh Street when something caught my eye. A few months earlier Tom had shown some of my surrealistic works to a few art directors, one of whom worked at Dell. He had liked what he’d seen and asked me to do a cover painting for a novel by Nat Hentoff entitled In the Country of Ourselves, a story about student revolutionaries. I did the job but had no idea when the book would be released. There in the window was the book. A hundred of them were stacked in a house-of-cards display. We stood there, staring in the window and laughing like schoolkids.
As time went on, though, I just couldn’t stand having a job and being locked up in that loft all day long. The matter was finally settled by Sonny’s junior partner and assistant. He resented me for the way I got along with Sonny. He, on the other hand, was forever catching hell for his endless blunders, and nobody liked him. He was in charge of opening the studio every morning, since he got there before Sonny. One day, he informed me that I was to greet him with “Good morning” when I came in each day. I knew he was just trying to bust my balls, and I purposefully ignored him. The next day, I came in, sat down, and went to work without a word. He came right over and demanded, “Well, what are you supposed to say?” I looked up at the slob and said, “Go fuck yourself!” He threw a tantrum, fired me, and ordered me to leave at once. An hour later, Sonny came in and asked him where I was. When the assistant informed Sonny that he had fired me for not saying “Good morning,” Sonny went out of his mind. He fired him on the spot and begged me to return. I was stubborn and refused. I had some savings and decided to say adieu.
I now had more time to attend the exhibitions of old master paintings at Parke-Bernet. This helped me to expand into Dutch painting. I was attracted by the river and harbor scenes of seventeenth-century Dutch painters such as Jan van Goyen and Salomon van Ruysdael. Their tranquil scenes, painted in cool blues, greens, and grays, portray people going about their work on the rivers. Not only was I convinced that I could paint them, but there was the added advantage that many of the originals didn’t have cracks, thereby saving me the tedious job of engraving them into the panels. The wood panels they were painted on were, again, just like the ones commonly used as the bottoms of drawers from furniture of the period.
I had installed a small drafting table in my studio, and I completed four pieces, three of them river scenes with the initials and dates of van Goyen and other artists in his circle. The terrace was ideal for putting the pictures out in the sun to dry and harden. Then I applied a varnish, which I tinted with pigments simulating an antique patina. As a finishing touch, I took something I’d seen Sonny fooling around with one day, a very fine powder he mysteriously referred to as “French earth.” I finally discovered that the substance was rotten stone, a superfine powder made out of volcanic rock. It’s commercially used as a polish when mixed with oil, but when applied as a dry powder it has an outstanding ability to create a hazy, dusty look in anything it’s rubbed onto. So after I applied the final patina on each picture, I rubbed the “dust” on and blew it off. The result was amazing.
The fourth painting was a fine portrait of a Flemish gentleman, done on the Ephron panel I’d been saving. The sitter’s face was delicately creased with the lines of age; a band of gray hair framed the sides of his balding head. Dressed in the usual pleated tunic buttoned up to the neck, he gazed stoically out at the viewer. After I gave it a “dusting” and placed the panel back in the antique frame, I was astonished by how much visual credibility the frame had added to the final effect.
When I’d worked at Sonny’s, I had become acquainted with Walter P. Chrysler Jr., scion of the automobile family. As a hobby, he had a gallery on upper Madison Avenue, and he invited me to drop in sometime. Chrysler was forever dragging in paintings—which he imagined were lost masterpieces—for restoration. He was in the habit of deluding himself with ludicrously optimistic attributions—believing, for example, that the painting he’d just found was in reality an unsigned Rembrandt, Titian, or Vermeer. In short, he was the ideal candidate to buy one of my “Flemish” paintings. This time, I took a photo of the painting with me and dropped in at his gallery with a story that I was disposing of the piece for a party who wanted to remain unnamed. Chrysler took the bait and asked me to bring the painting in. The next day, I returned with the painting and was soon collecting fifteen hundred bucks cash in the back room of his gallery.
From that point on, I understood that a fine frame is to a masterpiece what a Saint Laurent original is to a beautiful girl. Without delay, I put the three “Dutch” paintings into my shoulder bag and headed up to Sixty-Fourth Street and Lexington Avenue. Sometime back, I had noticed a dusty-looking second-floor shop that displayed a single antique picture frame in its window. The sign above the window read, in clear, elegant lettering, E. V. Jory, Picture Frames. When I entered, I might as well have been transported back in time to an eighteenth-century Parisian frame-maker’s shop. The walls, covered with the patina of age, were hung with arrangements of pricelessly beautiful antique frames nested within each other, according to their style, period, and size. An Empire table and a pair of armchairs in the center of the room for customers created an air of intimacy.
The proprietor, wearing an old suit and work apron, possessed perfectly erect posture despite his eighty-some years. He had striking blue eyes, silver hair, and a handsome mustache.
As I wandered around, I was enchanted by the reflection of the shop’s warm light against the antique gilt and gesso on the ancient carved frames. When I produced my paintings and confided to him that they were my own work, he was greatly impressed. He asked me to leave them with him and he would see what he could do. A week later, I returned to find each painting fitted out in a beautiful period frame, complete with chips and missing pieces. When Mr. Jory offered to repair them because they were damaged and I told him I wouldn’t think of it but would prefer the frames just the way they were, he gave me a knowing smile. It warmed his heart that I, like him, viewed such traces of time as part of their beauty.
From that point on, Mr. Jory was my exclusive source of antique European picture frames and a friend who could have come straight out of the eighteenth century. Born and raised in Paris, Mr. Jory came from a family that had been making picture frames since Louis XIV. The Jory family could visit the Louvre and point to frames carved by their ancestors.
Years ago, Mr. Jory had been able to count among his customers the Fricks, the Vanderbilts, and the Carnegies. For many of these clients, Mr. Jory carved the finest reproductions of French and Italian frames that could be found anywhere. When I eventually saw examples of his handiwork, I was left speechless. I knew at once that Mr. Jory could easily fulfill and exceed Sonny’s Profile and Attributes of a Genius. Indeed, the magnificent Florentine frame on Titian’s Venus and the Lute Player that hangs in the Met was entirely carved by Jory.
But all that had happened a long time ago. These days, Mr. Jory mostly sat in his old shop, alone with his memories and his frames. Whenever I had any extra cash, I made a beeline there. Soon I was incurably hooked on antique frames and either bought them for my own paintings or simply to nest them on the walls, just as Mr. Jory did.
Mr. Jory was the consummate artisan and loved discussing all the technical aspects of his trade. Not only did he know the precise procedures of fine frame making as it had been handed down to him, but he also possessed an intimate knowledge of artists and the way they’d done things in the old days. He critiqued my paintings and gave me many invaluable technical and stylistic tips.
Of particular concern to Mr. Jory was that I understood the precise way in which the old masters made real gesso. One day, he ushered me into the back workroom of his shop. The room was illuminated by a single soot-clouded skylight. Dust clung to every surface. The first thing that caught my eye was a fantastic assortment of antique tools. Sets of beautiful chisels, obviously handed down through generations of carvers, were hung on the wall above a long worktable. Huge unfinished frames awaiting gessoing and gilding hung like half-materialized ghosts from the shadows on the walls.
As I looked around in wonderment, Mr. Jory opened a cabinet and presented me with something he wanted me to have—two old glass jam jars, their faded caps proclaiming BAR-LE-DUC preserves. I was a little puzzled. I noted that one jar held a white powder and the other was filled with amber-colored crystals.
I followed Mr. Jory back into the front room. We sat down with the jars on the table before us, and he explained. One jar contained powdered gypsum from the white cliffs of Dover. The other held a substance known as rabbit-skin glue, which hails from France. Mr. Jory then proceeded to explain to me how real gesso was made by artists and gilders alike from time immemorial. The glue is prepared from the rabbit-skin crystals, which are soaked in water until they become soft. Then they are heated and dissolved in the water, making the glue. This glue is then mixed in specific proportions with the gypsum powder and water, making a thick white substance. Then, when spread like paint on canvas or panel, it would render, when dry, an ideal surface on which to apply oil paint or gilding.
I was very attentive, yet unsure whether I was going to undertake all that complicated bother just for the gesso. Although I wanted to be authentic in every way, one really couldn’t see the gesso, and besides, the commercial latex-based formula worked just fine. Nevertheless, I listened and retained all that Mr. Jory taught me. I left with the jars and extra gypsum powder that he insisted I take along.
The first time that I had a practical need for Mr. Jory’s gesso occurred when I ran out of the sort I’d been using from the art-supply store and needed some in a hurry. Recalling Mr. Jory’s instructions, I retrieved the jars, prepared the glue, mixed it with the powder and water to a workable consistency, and spread it like paint on some cardboard surfaces for practice. I then applied it to the panels and set them, along with the cardboard pieces, out on my terrace to dry in the sun.
When I got back to them, I noticed that Mr. Jory’s gesso had dried to a much harder surface than the kind I had been using, and the pieces of cardboard I’d tested the gesso on seemed somehow different. I noticed that, as I handled the pieces of cardboard and bent them slightly, in the handling, cracks began to form in the gesso. I began to play with the pieces of cardboard, manipulating them to produce more cracks. When I repeated the same process with a piece that had been left inside to dry, I was unable to achieve the same effect. The cool pieces would not crack. However, when they were put in the sun, had absorbed its heat, and were gently bent, an area of fine and natural cracks appeared in the gesso.
When I spoke to Mr. Jory about this, I inadvertently gained some priceless information. He said that the effect was caused by the rabbit-skin glue. He went on to explain that the glue has a unique ability to become brittle or increase its tensile strength when exposed to heat, as opposed to most substances, which become softer. Even though he advised me that the cracks occurred because I was using too much glue in my mixture, I chose to keep my formula the same.
From then on, Mr. Jory’s gesso was the only kind I’d use, but I was still a long way from understanding its application and potential to produce genuinely convincing cracks in panels or canvas. As time passed and I used it on my wood panels for Dutch pictures that didn’t require cracks, I used the leftover for experiments on different surfaces, understanding that if I could perfect an easy way of producing cracks, I could expand into other areas of painting. The more I experimented, the more I learned, but the basic facts remained: the gesso became brittle when heated, and it cracked when stressed or bent, as long as the surface remained hot.
I spent a great deal of time studying paintings in museums, staring at them for hours until they gave up their secrets, seeking to understand what made the paintings appear old. Was it wear, damage, style, dust, patina, cracks? Of course, I realized, it was a combination all of these elements. As I made new observations, it became a game for me to see how cleverly I could reproduce each one of these effects.
My parents retired to Florida, and I now realized that I was really on my own in the city. I was feeling a little lost when one sunny day I got some interesting news. Tony couldn’t stand the quiet life in the country. He and Barbara weren’t getting along, and word was that he was back in New York City, looking for a place of his own.