CHAPTER TWELVE

The Gems of Brazil

In 1863, the American artist Martin Johnson Heade traveled to Brazil to study the flowers and hummingbirds that flourish there. He journeyed into the mountains and was able to observe many species of rare hummingbirds in their natural habitat.

Heade went to work and produced a series of small paintings portraying the iridescent birds in beautiful tropical settings. Some of the paintings show the tiny birds fluttering around exotic flowers; others show them guarding their nests and precious eggs. He titled the collection of approximately twenty paintings The Gems of Brazil. An exhibition consisting of twelve of the paintings was held in 1864 in Rio de Janeiro. It received enthusiastic praise from Emperor Dom Pedro II, and Heade was awarded the Order of the Rose.

Heade returned to America with his collection of paintings in 1865. He did not intend to sell the paintings, but instead planned to reproduce them as colored lithographs in a book titled The Gems of Brazil. As it turned out, he had to travel to London to find a publisher willing to take on the project. But the process of chromolithography failed to capture the beauty of the birds to the satisfaction of the artist, and the project never was completed. Nevertheless, Heade profited from his efforts and received many commissions for copies of his Gems when the collection was displayed in London. The original collection was eventually purchased by Sir Morton Peto, a prominent art collector who lived in Bristol (and was no relation to the American painter John F. Peto).

When I first began painting pictures in the style of Heade, I had read a book Jimmy had given me, The Life and Work of Martin Johnson Heade, by Theodore E. Stebbins Jr., the world’s expert on the artist and the curator of American paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. As I read the story of Heade’s making copies of his Gems in England, I took particular note of the statement “Several of The Gems of Brazil have been discovered in England.”

It was bad enough to have lost my best friend, but we had spent so much money in the battle to save his life that I was almost broke as well. The situation was desperate, and I had to come up with a plan. The idea of “finding” a Martin Johnson Heade in England had crossed my mind more than once. Through the years, I had put together a file on the subject, as was my habit with any artist or situation that caught my interest. Whenever an example of a Gem was published in a magazine or turned up in an auction catalog, I would cut it out and add it to the file. Now, when I most needed it, the material was there.

Before I could consider anything so ambitious, though, I had to do something for immediate cash. I went to work painting “Buttersworths,” “Charles Bird Kings,” “Antonio Jacobsens,” “Petos,” “Walkers,” and others, all on reconstituted period supports. Even though a decade had passed since the close call with the FBI, I knew I was still taking a big chance, but I had to do something.

I made calls to my old friend the picker and to some of the same dealers who had bought American pictures from me years ago. I let them know that I could offer packages of paintings, high-class American fakes, at bargain prices. Though so much time had passed since I had painted my last American pictures, my skills had greatly improved, and the new generation of paintings was better than ever. One old customer bought ten to twenty paintings at a time, for a thousand bucks apiece. Gradually, I built up some cash reserves, but, to my chagrin, it wasn’t long before I noticed some of these paintings turning up at auction houses for ten times what I had sold them for.

In the meantime, I was methodically working on a collection of The Gems of Brazil on the side. They were perfect in every respect, and I had complete confidence that I could walk into any auction house, show them to any expert, and no one would suspect a thing.

In the spring of 1992, I packed a bag, threw in a “Gem,” and took off for London. The next day, I was back at the Vicarage and back to my usual routine of shopping and hanging around Notting Hill Gate until my jet lag wore off. When I was ready for action, I slipped the “Heade,” a lovely little picture of two ruby-throated hummingbirds checking each other out on a branch, into a shopping bag (Burberry) and headed to the Notting Hill tube station. I planned to pose as an American tourist and present the painting at the valuation counter of an auction house. The story I had concocted was that I’d found the painting at a car boot sale near Bristol, and that I thought I’d seen something similar once in an art magazine back home.

I took the Central Line and got out on Bond Street, just steps away from Phillips Auction House, so I thought I’d give them a try. I went to the valuation counter and produced the painting. An expert was called from the picture department. A moment later, a bored-looking young man appeared and introduced himself. “I have a painting I found at a boot sale and would like an opinion,” I said. He daintily picked it up, twirled it around once or twice, and stated definitively, “It’s just some kind of study, perhaps worth fifty quid.” Then, as a final insult, he added: “You’d be better off trying to find an antique dealer to sell it to.”

Although I very much wanted to, there was no way I could enlighten him as to the painting’s importance, because I was supposed to be as dumb as he was, so I thanked him and left.

Back out on Bond Street, I was seized with the feeling that this whole idea was absurd and that there probably wasn’t a person in England, art expert or otherwise, who had ever heard of The Gems of Brazil. Well, let me go to Christie’s, I thought: they usually know what they’re doing. At Christie’s valuation counter, I pulled out the painting. An astute woman behind the counter picked it up and looked it over carefully. She interrupted a department expert who was engaged with another customer. They whispered to each other and then informed me that they suspected it to be American. She asked me to have a seat while they called down their resident expert on American paintings. Five minutes later, an important-looking man arrived at the counter, picked up the painting, and declared: “This is a Martin Johnson Heade.” The women then directed the expert’s attention to me.

“Well, this is a very interesting painting,” he said. “Tell me how you came by this.”

“Actually, I found it in a boot sale near Bristol,” I answered, and went on to explain. “I thought I once saw something like it in a magazine back home in the States.” It all added up for him, and he proceeded to give me a brief history of Martin Johnson Heade and how The Gems of Brazil had wound up in the collection of Sir Morton Peto. “Well, it’s quite valuable,” he said. “But we’d have to take it in for research before we could give you an accurate estimate. For now, however, I would place a provisional estimate of ten thousand sterling.” Pretending to be flabbergasted when in fact I was elated that the picture was recognized, I put out my hand for a shake, and he instructed the lady behind the counter to draw up a contract.

Half an hour later, I was sitting at my usual spot at Ponti’s, sipping a cappuccino. I really love Britain, I thought, as I studied the document on the table before me, which included instructions to pay my account at Harrods. Well, so far, so good, I thought, but I was still short of cash, and there was no telling when or if they would put the “Heade” up for sale. There was nothing to do now except to go home and get back to work.

It had been two years since José passed away, and I was still struggling to get by. A friend of mine who lived in New York City called one day and told me that he knew of an antique dealer who wanted to hang some of my British pictures in his shop, “no questions asked.” I loaded the car with paintings and headed north.

Paul H. was a young Englishman whose mother owned one of the biggest antique businesses in Britain. It operated out of a manor house outside London and boasted a helicopter pad for the convenience of its exclusive clientele. Paul had wanted to strike out on his own, so he’d come to New York to start a business. Unfortunately, his art and antique shop in the Village wasn’t doing well, and he was looking for something to juice up the bottom line. In fact, he was a step away from closing down when I pulled up to his shop on Eleventh Street.

Almost as fast as we got the paintings hung, they started selling. It kept his business going and put nearly twenty thousand badly needed bucks in my pocket. With this new outlet in place, I was busy painting pictures and traveling back and forth to New York. Almost a year had passed, and I still hadn’t heard a word from Christie’s concerning the “Heade.” Discouraged, and convinced that for one reason or another the deal had gone bad, I showed some of my American pictures, including several “Heades,” to Paul. He was immediately interested and agreed to buy them and others I could supply for cash. This arrangement worked out well and enabled me to extend my visits to the city. What he did with the paintings, I didn’t ask.

One freezing February night, I was walking along Sixth Avenue in the Village when I stopped dead in my tracks, turned around, and went back to a newsstand I had just passed. I thought I had caught sight of one of my paintings on the front page of a newspaper. Sure enough, there on the front page of the London Times was my “Heade.” The headline read: “Car boot painting set to make 34,000 pounds profit.” Apparently Christie’s had been amused by my story and had given it to the press. The article described how an American tourist had made the lucky find in a West Country boot sale. It stated that the picture was set to be sold in a couple of weeks in their New York salesrooms.

I had never expected the picture to be sent to New York. When I called my answering machine back home, there were several messages from Christie’s informing me that the picture was scheduled for sale in New York, along with desperate pleas for me to send them the two hundred bucks they had paid Theodore Stebbins for his authentication. The next day, I went to Christie’s to see the painting and buy a catalog.

When the elevator doors opened on the second-floor exhibition rooms of their Park Avenue establishment, I was suddenly face-to-face with my old friend the dashing young auctioneer from Phillips in Bath, the very one who promoted my work in the West Country. Having come up in the world, he was now at Christie’s New York, but under the circumstances neither of us was anxious to catch up on old times. Instead, we just smiled and passed each other with a wink.

On the day of the sale, the picture fetched ninety-six thousand dollars, nearly doubling its fifty-thousand-dollar estimate. The story of the “lucky find” followed the picture across the Atlantic and was picked up by the Associated Press. Apart from the sale being shown on the local six o’clock news, the story got in almost every major newspaper in the country. The New York Post titled it “Big Bucks Birdies, The Art of the Steal.” Even my mother read about the sale in a local Florida newspaper and called to tell me to “look around for paintings of little hummingbirds next time you go to England.” Indeed, a month later, I was sitting in the bank at Harrods, battling the flu and collecting my ninety g’s in cash.

Thanks to “Big Bucks Birdies,” the pressure for money was relieved, at least for the time being, and I could concentrate on my next project.

I was in my studio one day reviewing files and trying to decide what to paint next when inspiration walked right in through the door. My old buddy Mr. X, the picker, came by carrying one of the most beautiful nineteenth-century American frames I’d ever seen. It was a deep-fluted cove frame with a palm decoration in each corner, a common pattern up to the Civil War, but the quality of the carving, the beauty of the patina, and the weight of the frame set it apart as an outstanding example. An expensive frame made expressly for an important painting, it was about five inches in width and would accommodate a painting only twelve by twenty inches in size.

Ever since my friendship with Old Man Jory, my love for antique picture frames had never waned, often leading me to prefer to hang empty frames about the house rather than my own pictures. Antique frames frequently served as inspiration for me, and as soon as I laid eyes on my friend’s frame, I knew exactly what belonged in it.

Mr. X knew it was an outstanding frame, and wanted to swap it for a painting. I offered him a beautiful little “William Aiken Walker” that was hanging on the wall. He took it, and the frame became mine. My friend was barely out the door before I lunged for the filing cabinet and pulled out a folder marked “Passionflowers.”

The original collection of The Gems of Brazil painted by Heade was a series of small canvases, approximately ten by twelve inches each, depicting pairs of hummingbirds in tropical settings. As time went on, he expanded the series to include exotic flowers along with the birds. These paintings were larger than the original Gems, some as large as eighteen by twenty-four inches. Heade used three or four different orchids, which he repeated in painting after painting, but he only used the passionflower in a few known paintings.

The passionflower series is regarded by many collectors as Heade’s most beautiful, rare, and mysterious work. To find a passionflower Heade would be the dream of any collector. In these beautiful paintings, the deep red of the passionflower contrasts dramatically against the lush green background, and once again the colorful little hummingbirds are carefully placed about on branches and vines.

I knew that Heade had painted a number of these pictures in a vertical format, and my guess was that that format was close to the size of the frame before me. I opened the file and spread out prints of every example of these pictures I had found over the past decade. A quick check of the sizes confirmed my belief. More than one was executed on a twelve-by-twenty canvas. This initial observation also revealed another important point. Just as Heade used the same orchid in painting after painting, so it was with the passionflower. Obviously painted with the use of a stencil, the same red passionflower down to the smallest detail appeared in painting after painting. This repetition was also true of the birds. In fact, my choice of a bird was made easier by a print of a surviving sketch Heade had made of a passionflower study. Heade had placed a little crimson topaz, a bird he used over and over again, on a vine with the passionflower.

The next step was to check my inventory of antique paintings. The twelve-by-twenty canvas was a common size in the nineteenth century, and I had more than one example to choose from. I took it as a good omen that everything was falling into place so rapidly. By the following day, I was making paper cutouts of the flowers and birds, just as Heade himself had done. On a sketch pad, I traced out a twelve-by-twenty rectangle, the same size as the canvas. After drawing in a tropical background in the typical Heade style, I arranged the paper cutouts of the flowers and birds in just the right positions, traced them in, and then connected everything together freehand with a tangle of twigs and vines.

Generally, one of my “Heade” paintings could be completed in two sessions: one day for the background, which consists of the sky, foliage, and landscape, and then, after that is dry, the flowers, birds, vines, and other details are added. Before the week was over, I had a perfect example of Heade’s rarest paintings.

It would need a month to dry in the Florida sun before I could begin the aging process. But the temptation to place it in the frame was irresistible.

I locked the doors, turned off the phone, and sat back in a chair, entranced by the painting hanging on my wall. I would never know what type of painting the frame had once held, but I couldn’t help but feel that this masterpiece of carving, made perhaps a hundred and fifty years ago, had been waiting for just this moment and for just this painting.

Now that my picture was finished, I turned my thoughts to strategy. If I were to present the painting as “restored,” it would be highly unlikely and even suspicious if such a painting had not been published in a catalog or book in the past. Therefore, I decided that, even though the risks might increase, my masterpiece would be a “long, lost Heade” that hadn’t seen the light of day since it was painted. The rule among savvy dealers and collectors was that if you found an important picture, you sprang it on the auction market in its original unrestored condition without showing it to anyone.

Indeed, many important paintings fetched more unrestored—with all their dirt, holes, and tears—than if they had been cleaned up and presented in pristine condition. The reasoning behind this peculiarity of the art market is that the presentation of an uncleaned picture attests to its “freshness”—that is, it has come straight out of a dusty old attic. Psychologically, this condition will excite potential buyers to pay a premium price.

When at last I felt that the paint was sufficiently dry and hard, I was ready to begin the aging process—and prepared to use every trick in my book.

The cracking went perfectly, forming a pattern that would fool even the most seasoned expert. And the caramel-colored varnish, stripped off the surface of several nineteenth-century paintings, was transferred onto the “Heade,” giving it an impeccable, albeit heavy, patina.

It is common for antique paintings that might have incurred minor tears or punctures to acquire a number of crude repairs through the years. So for the benefit of any connoisseurs who fancied themselves forensic experts, I added two small patches, cut from antique canvas, to the back of the painting.

Astute experts might examine these repairs carefully and note if the paint used for the touch-up on the front of the painting had been applied on top of the old varnish or under it. If the retouching had indeed been applied on top of the surrounding varnish, and if the repair was of considerable age, it could be added proof that the discolored varnish might well be the original coat applied by the artist.

Next, since the time I first observed accumulations of fly deposits on some of Jimmy Ricau’s paintings, I’d realized that these can act as another convincing piece of forensic evidence establishing the age of a painting for the trained expert. It could take seventy-five years or more for an undisturbed accumulation of these droppings in their peculiar characteristic patterns to become visible on the surface of a painting. Transparent when first deposited by common houseflies attracted to the surface of a painting by the sugar present in the varnish, they eventually turn brown and then black with the passage of time. The tiny nubs ultimately become insoluble and can only be removed with the sharp point of a scalpel.

For some time, I had been perfecting the simulation of these deposits by mixing up some epoxy glue with an amber-colored powered pigment, dipping the end of a pin in the glue, and then touching the surface of the painting with the pinpoint covered with the glue. The result was a small elevated globule virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. It was tedious work, but in this manner I was able to arrange the droppings in their characteristic clusters. Flyspecks go hand in hand with dark, discolored varnish and are usually found on lost and neglected paintings that have been relegated to an attic or barn for storage long ago. On this occasion, when I was ready to apply my fly-specks, I realized that I had just used up the last of my epoxy glue, but I found that thickened linseed oil, which I kept in a bottle nearby, had a viscosity similar to the epoxy and worked just as well. A week later, after the “flyspecks” had dried, a final dusting of rotten stone finished the job.

From the moment it was fitted into its frame, with the use of some nineteenth-century nails, the painting took on a life of its own. It was the perfect fake. I decided to hang it in the house above the fireplace and enjoy it for a while. One evening a friend came over for dinner and was greatly impressed with the painting. He dubbed it “Fat Boy.”

All that was left now was a plan. A “flea-market find” was simply out of the question. The last thing I needed was to have another story in the press and have someone get suspicious. I wanted a discreet but plausible story. There was, however, a “provenance” I had been keeping in reserve for just the right situation. I decided this was the situation, and that now was the time to play the Ricau card.

In June 1994, I wrapped Fat Boy in a blanket, strapped it in the backseat of the car, and drove up to New York. When I got there, I shoved it under the bed in a friend’s apartment in the Village and hung out around the city, deciding on how and when I would make my move.

I was having lunch one afternoon in a café on Madison Avenue, contemplating a photo of the painting. Well, what the hell, I thought, let me give it a try. I paid my bill, walked to Seventy-Second Street, and hung a left. Sotheby’s is housed in a tasteless glass-and-steel building situated on the corner of York Avenue and Seventy-Second Street. There wasn’t much to distinguish it from the New York City Hospital complex next door, except the name Sotheby’s in bronze letters above the doors and, of course, the usual black limousines double-parked outside. I strolled through the glass doors, entered an elevator, and pressed the button for the American Picture Department on the third floor.

Here goes, I thought, as the doors opened. This was very different from London. The New York operation didn’t have time for the riffraff and no longer had a valuation counter to encourage walk-ins. I stepped into the reception area and approached a young man sitting at a desk who was involved in some paperwork. “Can I get an opinion of this painting?” I asked as I laid the photograph of Fat Boy on his desk.

“Have a seat and I’ll have someone take a look,” he said, and disappeared with the photo through a doorway. Several minutes passed, and he returned with a young lady who, after introducing herself, stated: “If you’ll follow me, Dara Mitchell would like to discuss your painting with you in her office.” With that, I got up and followed her. In her office! I thought. “That’s quite a painting you have,” my guide remarked with a smile as we walked along.

This was the first time I had gotten behind the scenes at an auction house. We passed by a large open area where people were leaning over layout tables, perhaps organizing the sales catalogs. After working our way through a maze of hallways, we arrived at Ms. Mitchell’s office. She was VP of the American Picture Department: tall, blonde, attractive, the very embodiment of a high-class New York executive. Standing behind her desk, she extended a hand, introduced herself, and said, “A painting like this only comes in once a year!” I thanked her, introduced myself, and sat down in the comfortable chair she offered me. At this point, we were joined by Peter Rathbone, president of the department. Introductions were made, and now it was time to get to business.

“Well, how did you come by such a marvelous painting?” Dara asked.

“Actually, it was a gift, given to me years ago by Jimmy Ricau. He was a collector. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?”

Jimmy had been dead nearly two years. His collections had been bequeathed to a number of museums. The rest of his estate, including his magnificent house, had been left, as the story that was circulated went, “to a young man from Pennsylvania.”

“So you knew Jimmy?” Peter asked.

“Oh, yes, we were good friends. Years ago, I used to spend summers up at his house and help him work on it.”

“Up in Nyack, was it?” Peter asked.

“Piermont, in fact,” I responded. “I collect antiques, and Jim taught me everything I know. He gave me the painting as a gift, and I’ve been sitting on it ever since. I live in Florida now. There’s a piece of real estate I’ve had my eye on that just came on the market. I have to raise some cash fairly soon if I want to get it.”

“Well, this could certainly do that,” Dara said, with her eyes on the photograph of Fat Boy.

“Exactly. So that’s why I’m here. I’d like your opinion on what it could fetch and how long it would take to get it sold.”

“Obviously it’s a very important painting, but you realize that we have to examine its condition before we could give you an accurate estimate. But I would say at the very least it’s probably worth three or four hundred thousand, perhaps more.” Then after a pause to gauge how that sat with me, she asked, “Where is the painting now?”

“Oh, it’s just downtown at my friend’s apartment,” I casually replied, and noticed how that perked them up.

“I hope it’s in a secure place!” Dara said, slightly alarmed.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “It’s under the bed. The only problem I would have is the time frame—when could it be sold?”

“The first sale we could put it in would be September,” Dara said, then added: “But we have a more important sale where you might do better, in November.”

Now I felt confident enough to spring the trap. “Well, I’ll have to give it some thought, whether I want to go the auction route or see what I could get from one of the dealers on Madison Avenue for an immediate sale.”

Dara cringed. “Oh, they’ll never pay you what you want. Look, if it’s a matter of immediate cash, we can easily arrange an advance, say a hundred thou?” I pretended to be mildly impressed, when in fact I was in an acute state of ecstasy.

“Well, I’ll have to check with the broker, but that might do the trick,” I said.

“Yes, well, we’re in the business of instant gratification here,” Dara said, and the meeting took on a more humorous tone.

“So you stayed up in the old house with Jimmy?” Peter asked, obviously intrigued.

“Is it true that even the dust in the house was nineteenth-century?” Dara jokingly asked.

I replied in the affirmative, and for the next half hour I entertained them with Jimmy Ricau stories. We covered everything from the black one-eyed cat to the marble-bust cemetery in the basement.

“So, when could you bring the painting in?” Dara asked.

“Well, if you want, I could go now and be back with it in an hour.”

“Please, by all means!” she gushed.

We all shook hands, my escort was summoned, and I was led back out through the maze. With my bona fides established and the promise of a hundred grand in cash, I was deliriously happy as I walked toward the subway. When I got to my friend’s apartment, I pulled Fat Boy out from under the bed, wrapped him in a black plastic garbage bag, slipped the whole thing into a Bloomingdale’s Big Bag, and headed back to the Fourteenth Street subway station.

This time when I got out on the third floor with my package, the young man at the desk was on the phone before the elevator doors closed behind me and my pretty escort was out in a split second with an even bigger smile. Once again we passed the layout tables, only this time the employees’ eyes followed me.

Dara warmly greeted me at the door of her office. She made a call and we were joined by Peter and another young lady I assumed to be an assistant. Dara suggested I use the countertop above some cabinets in her office to rest and unwrap the painting on.

For me, it was the moment of truth. I once read that the second an expert lays eyes on a painting, he knows whether it is genuine or fake. If anything is wrong with the painting, be it compositional, technical, or aesthetic, he’ll catch it on his first impression, and it could doom the sale.

My audience silently took their positions behind me as I placed the wrapped painting on the counter. Carefully feeling the edge of the frame, I made sure the back of the painting would be facing them as I pulled off the covering. Certain that they had glimpsed the period stretcher, canvas, and patches, I turned the picture around. All three zoomed in for a close look as they studied Fat Boy in silent admiration.

“That’s the finest passionflower I’ve ever seen painted by Heade,” Peter said.

Compliments and nods of approval came from the other two. I made for the chair and got comfortable. Dara sat down behind her desk, and Peter relaxed against the counter with his eyes on the “Heade.”

As the tension lifted, Peter made an observation. “Do you know what those little black specks are?” he asked rhetorically, pointing to the tiny clusters on the painting. “They’re fly droppings. For some reason, flies love paintings and leave those tiny specks. Some paintings are covered with thousands of them.”

I confessed that I was puzzled over those little spots and thanked him for sharing that interesting bit of information. Peter then went on to observe that although the picture was quite dirty, it was in remarkably good condition.

“Well, then,” Dara said, “I’m sure we could have an advance arranged for you in just a couple of days. Shall we write up a contract?”

“I guess so” was my reply, and we all shook hands. With that, Dara handed some notes to the assistant and asked her to prepare a contract.

“Have you considered having it cleaned?” Dara nonchalantly asked.

“Well, actually, no,” I responded. “Jimmy always told me it was best to sell pictures in their original condition and never tamper with them.”

“Yes. That used to be true,” she said, “ten years ago when dealers dominated the market, but that’s all changed.”

“These days you have wealthy private collectors who go head-to-head with dealers, and they want everything in restored condition,” Peter said.

“I can see a catalog cover here if it was cleaned,” Dara added in an attempt to persuade me.

“No, no, I really don’t want to fool with it,” I said. “I’d rather leave well enough alone. Why risk it? What if we ran into problems?”

They both nodded, and that seemed to settle the matter, but then I stuck my foot in my mouth by saying, “Besides, I don’t think it’s all that dirty: after all, you can easily see the picture just fine.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” they sang in unison. “It’s very dirty.” And to demonstrate just how very wrong I was, Peter seized the painting and told us to follow him to the “darkroom.” We marched down a hallway and entered what I took to be a technician’s room with a large worktable in the center. Peter placed the frame facedown on the table and, with a pair of pliers, removed the antique nails, which, I noted, he studied for a second. When he removed the painting, Peter was quick to point out how clean the paint was around the edges, a common occurrence with period paintings. A simple application of masking tape along the edges of the canvas before I sprayed on the “antique” varnish had taken care of that.

Suspended above the table was a large lamp. Peter placed the picture on the table, drew an enormous curtain across a wall to block out the light from a window, and then turned on a switch. For my part, I assumed the role of the studious novice as the ultraviolet light came on and Fat Boy took on a strange greenish glow. For the next fifteen minutes, I was treated to a dissertation on “the effects of ultraviolet light on antique paintings.”

After Peter made an airtight case proving that the painting was smothered in old discolored varnish most likely “applied by Heade himself,” we returned to Dara’s office, where a contract was waiting. Thankfully, this trumped the issue of the cleaning, and the subject wasn’t mentioned again. The papers were signed amid handshakes and smiles. Fat Boy was whisked away, and I took my leave with a promise of an advance in a couple of days.

On the morning of my appointment, Dara called. “Can we push back our appointment until two o’clock this afternoon?” she asked. “The financial officer will be here then, and we’ll discuss the situation concerning the advance.” I agreed I would be there and hung up. I didn’t want to ask any questions on the phone, but I didn’t like the word “situation.”

When I arrived at Dara’s office that afternoon, the word “situation” was clarified for me by a bald-headed man with wire-framed glasses in a Brooks Brothers suit. Peter was also present.

“Dara explained to me your need for an advance on your painting,” the moneyman said, getting right to the point. “We would certainly like to give you the funds against the sale. However, we’ve had a change in our policy. We now require a proof of ownership, a purchase receipt, or a copy of a will, for instance, before we can make an advance. In your case, perhaps you have some correspondence from Mr. Ricau acknowledging the gift to you?”

“You see,” Dara chimed in, “we recently paid out an advance of two hundred thousand dollars to a gentleman who brought us a number of paintings to sell. Then when the paintings went up for sale, we were served with an injunction secured by his relatives forbidding the sale. As it turned out, he really didn’t have the right to sell the paintings.” Dara paused and added, with great gravity, “We never recovered the two hundred grand.”

Peter solemnly nodded in affirmation. The way Dara said this gave the impression that it had brought the auction house to the brink of bankruptcy. I expressed my disgust at the incident, but thought, What a great guy!

I was caught off guard by this development and had to make a fast decision. It had always been against my principles to prop up any of my pictures with phony documentation. I had read books about art forgers of the past who relied on false documentation to dupe amateur collectors. When the paintings eventually came under the scrutiny of experts, they were recognized as fakes. I, on the other hand, preferred to subject my works to the scrutiny of experts first, and then the sale would follow, so my answer was that I didn’t think I had any such document.

“Not even a card or note he might have written to you?” Dara pleaded.

“I don’t think so,” I said and deliberately looked perturbed to see what Dara would do. After all, she had made me a promise.

“Well, if you can’t come up with something,” Dara offered, “we would be willing to waive the thirty-day hold on the funds at the time of the sale. As soon as we get paid, you will be paid.”

Once again, I learned the hard way that when you made a deal with Sotheby’s, you should get it in writing! I reluctantly accepted her offer, but let her know that this could be a real problem for me. Dara reiterated that I would get paid as soon as they received payment.

Now that that was settled, Dara dove right into the next issue, and the subject of the cleaning reared its ugly head again. After seeing my hundred grand evaporate, I needed this like a hole in the head.

“Well, have you thought about the cleaning?” she asked.

“No, I haven’t,” I answered, looking a bit puzzled. “As I said, I really don’t want to take any risks.”

That was no good with Dara. “You really are doing yourself a great disservice. It could mean an extra hundred grand in the price!”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” I said. “Jimmy always told me not to tamper with valuable pictures.”

“We have the very best restorers,” Peter said. “This would be routine for them.”

“Yes. I really must insist,” Dara said. “There isn’t any reason it shouldn’t be cleaned, unless there is some problem.”

“Some problem,” I thought. What exactly did she mean by that? I knew I was now in a delicate situation. If I became too adamant in my refusal to have the picture cleaned, “some problem” might blossom into her full-fledged suspicion. My instincts told me to play the novice.

“You have to understand, selling this picture was a big decision for me. I probably won’t ever get another chance to make this kind of money again, and the thought of fooling around with it terrifies me. I really would prefer to leave it alone.”

Dara seemed to understand that, and Peter nodded. It was clear to me that Peter really didn’t care, one way or another.

“And besides,” I added, in what I thought was a brilliant stroke, “I would hate to deny the new owner the excitement of seeing this picture cleaned for the first time since it was painted.”

This apparently struck a chord with Peter, and he agreed. Dara, exasperated, finally gave up and wanted to discuss the reserve price. On her desk, she had the department’s file on Heade’s passionflower pictures (not as extensive as my own), which gave the prices they had brought and the dates of the sales. A figure was agreed upon, and at last our business was finished. We all shook hands again, and I left.

Crestfallen about the hundred grand, and uneasy with my disagreement with Dara, I went to a nearby café to get a glass of wine and think things over. Suddenly this deal had taken on a whole different configuration. The hundred grand was out the window, but it was replaced with a promise of immediate payment when the buyer settled. The timing of the payment and the timing of the inevitable cleaning were both critical issues. It was imperative that I get paid before the picture was cleaned, as I had planned, but now Dara’s insistence on having the painting cleaned prior to the sale threatened everything.

Normally, auction houses hold the proceeds of a sale for thirty days before releasing them to the seller. For me, this waiting period would be the danger zone. After a buyer settles on the lot he purchased, it becomes his property, and he can do anything he wants with it—have it analyzed, examined, restored, etc. Occasionally, a serious problem is discovered, such as the revelation of extensive restoration that wasn’t disclosed before the sale, or the fact that the property was not correctly attributed to either the period or artist listed, or the discovery that the property is an outright fake. If the purchaser returns the property to the auction house before the house settles with the seller, and the claim is valid, the sale will be rescinded and the money held by the house will be returned to the buyer. If a purchaser discovers a problem with a property after the house has settled with the seller, he can still get a refund, from the auction house, but it’s a lot harder and sometimes impossible.

Because I had created my picture to appear as though it had never been cleaned, it was a foregone conclusion that it would go from the auction house to the restorer. The only thing I could not foresee was the timetable of the events that would follow. If, for instance, the buyer waited two weeks to settle on my picture, which isn’t unusual, that would only leave open a sixteen-day window for the buyer to go to a restorer, discover it to be a fake, and get a refund within the thirty-day period.

In the auction game, some big spenders will settle on the day of the sale, and others will wait a month. It’s all up to the individual and how fast he wants to get his hands on the property. Some might have a picture cleaned immediately, while others might leave it alone indefinitely. I had to plan on a worst-case scenario and assume the picture would be settled on immediately and go straightaway for restoration. Although an antique picture can be cleaned on the spot, as Dara was so anxious to prove, it would have been breaking the rules of professional protocol and indeed subjecting the picture to a certain, albeit limited, amount of risk.

In the hands of a professional restorer, an antique painting—especially a valuable painting—is always removed from the stretcher first. This is accomplished by carefully extracting the old tacks that secure it around the edge. The painting then undergoes the relining process. It is only after the relining that the painting is ready for cleaning.

The reason for this sequence is easy to understand. The restorer must, above all things, cause as little damage as possible to a picture during the course of the restoration process. Antique paintings are cleaned with powerful solvents such as acetone. When acetone is applied to the surface of a painting that has not been relined, the solvent will immediately soak down right through the cracks in the painting and saturate the old dried-out canvas. This might, in some instances, have an undermining effect on the undercoat of gesso. This could destabilize the gesso layer and cause tiny pieces of it to separate from the old canvas. These loosened pieces would in turn be caught and pulled up by the cotton swabs used for the cleaning. These dislodged pieces are referred to as “losses,” and enough of them can result in serious damage.

The relining process greatly minimizes the risk of losses by reinforcing and stabilizing the gesso undercoat by the impregnation of the adhesive used, be it hot wax or heat-activated glue, which is spread all over the back of the original canvas before the new canvas is pressed onto it.

The paint on Fat Boy would not be able to sustain a prolonged cleaning. True antique oil paint becomes extremely hard over time and insoluble to acetone. However, modern paint will quickly dissolve under a swab of the solvent. This would alert the restorer to the fact that something was wrong. Assuming, therefore, that Fat Boy would be dispatched for restoration shortly after the sale, I had come up with an idea that would delay any cleaning—indefinitely.

After Fat Boy had received his coating of “antique” varnish, I filled a hypodermic needle with epoxy glue and injected a bead of resin behind and between the stretcher and the canvas. Hidden by the stretcher and virtually impossible to see, it literally welded the canvas to the stretcher. Nothing short of a jackhammer would ever separate the canvas from the stretcher again.

Although it’s rare, a restorer will occasionally run into a painting that has become fused to the stretcher. This can occur if a painting has been lying around in a damp area over a prolonged period of time. The rabbit-skin glue used in the gesso has been known to leach out in damp conditions and can fuse the canvas to the stretcher, especially if the canvas is being pressed against the stretcher by some external means. Sometimes a separation is achieved by the simple action of slipping a spatula down between the canvas and stretcher and sliding it along, but, occasionally, a separation can be very difficult. And in certain instances, the stretcher has to be literally ground away from behind. A complication like this could delay the relining and subsequent cleaning for months.

The only other defense I had against a premature cleaning was a coat of catalyzed lacquer I had sprayed on Fat Boy before he received the final coat of “antique varnish.” Catalyzed lacquer dries to an extremely hardened state. It is usually used for commercial purposes and is very toxic. The user must wear a gas mask when applying it, and it requires the use of a special gun. In my experiments, I found that a thin coat, impossible to detect visually, can add a measure of resistance to acetone and delay the breakdown of the paint underneath. However, it was nothing one could entirely depend on.

If Dara was going to waive the thirty-day waiting period, though, the risk of discovery before I got paid would virtually disappear. Nothing could replace the feeling of a hundred grand cash in my pocket, but after I got over my disappointment and had time to think it over, I realized that anything could happen during the thirty-day holding period, and that maybe this new policy concerning advances and the subsequent concession given was a blessing in disguise. I thought, Well, maybe this wasn’t such a bad day after all.

I was hoping that the next time I heard from Dara would be at the time of the sale. But after several days, she called me. “I have some exciting news!” she said. “I took the liberty of cleaning a small area in the corner of your painting, and you simply will not believe the difference!” The only thing I couldn’t believe was what I was hearing. “I’m sure,” she said, “when you see this, you’ll reconsider the cleaning.”

Yeah, right! I thought. It was Friday and she asked if I could come in the following Tuesday. I agreed, trying to be as pleasant as possible, but after we hung up, I was livid.

I concluded that she was completely out of control, and now anything could happen. All weekend long, I was tortured over this latest development. Had this just been a ploy on Dara’s part to test my reaction? Perhaps I should have gotten indignant. Perhaps she would take my complacency as a green light to finish the job off. All weekend long, I imagined scenarios in which Dara, armed with a can of acetone in one hand and a wad of cotton in the other, reduced Fat Boy to a puddle of swirling colors.

Tuesday morning, I was back at Sotheby’s at the appointed time. Once again the smiling assistant escorted me through the maze and straight into Dara’s hot seat. Fat Boy, minus his magnificent frame, was waiting in the middle of Dara’s cleared desktop. She greeted me with a smile of victory on her face. With a wave of her manicured hand, she invited me to have a look. An area the size of a dime in the upper-right corner had clearly been cleaned. The bright-blue sky shone out in contrast to the surrounding area. Right on cue, the door opened and Peter appeared. “So, what do you think?” pushy Dara asked. “Is it a go?”

Stalling for time, I pretended to study the cleaned area, but my mind was racing to come up with a way to handle this.

Dara broke the silence. “I was very careful,” she said. “I used a Q-tip and some acetone.” Then, as an afterthought directed toward Peter, she said: “Interesting, but the flyspecks dissolved as well.”

Peter just shrugged. I pretended not to hear, but my heart skipped a beat. I was taken aback by Dara’s technical knowledge. Flyspecks are indeed insoluble. They have to be removed with a scalpel, one by one. Had I used epoxy glue and powder pigment to make the flyspecks, they would have stood up to the attack of acetone. However, having used up all my glue on the “welding job” and never imagining that they would be tested in this way, I gave in to the temptation to make flyspecks with the thickened linseed oil, out of sheer convenience. Unfortunately, the thickened oil breaks down, just as recently dried oil paint would, with acetone.

Still pretending to appreciate Dara’s handiwork, I was in fact carefully studying the corner and assessing the damage. Indeed, a few of the flyspecks that had once resided in that corner were gone, along with the “antique” varnish, but the blue paint of the sky was still intact. The barrier coat of lacquer had done its job—but just barely. I could see the glossy surface of the lacquer, but right in the center of the cleaned area, I could also see a dry patch, a sure indication that the membrane was breaking down. Another second, and she would have been into the paint.

That, in combination with the anachronism of the dissolving flyspecks, would most likely have started a chain reaction of suspicion in Dara’s mind.

Then, as I was studying the corner that Dara had cleaned, I got an idea. There was simply no way I could allow Dara to have Fat Boy cleaned. Instead, I thought of a ploy in which I could, without arousing suspicion, take control of the situation and perform the “cleaning” myself. It would be a risky gamble, but I had to do something.

“Maybe we could offer the picture with a test spot in the sky,” I said. It was not uncommon to see antique pictures offered in the salesrooms with a spot the size of a half dollar cleaned in a prominent area like the sky in a landscape painting. The purpose was to demonstrate the difference a cleaning would make to the prospective buyers. The practice was more commonly seen in London than New York.

“This way,” I continued, “we can show the buyers the true colors without a full cleaning.” Dara was unimpressed, but Peter agreed that it wasn’t a bad idea. Seizing the moment, I pressed on before Dara could protest. “Do you have the acetone handy?” I asked her. “I’ll try it myself,” I declared, confident that I could control the action of the solvent.

Dara called in her assistant and asked her to bring in the can of acetone. A couple of tense minutes passed. Dara began grousing about the idea of a test spot when the girl finally returned. “I can’t find it,” she informed Dara, and then added, “but we have a can of mineral spirits.”

“No, no, no, keep looking,” Dara said. “I just had it the other day,” and then she directed the girl to a specific cabinet. Another minute passed, and the girl returned. “It is not there, only the mineral spirits,” she reported. Dara, exasperated, directed her to yet another cabinet.

Before the girl left, I stopped everything. “Wait, bring me the mineral spirits. That works just as well,” I said.

Dara dismissed my request, and told the girl to go look again. “Mineral spirits can’t clean a painting,” Dara informed me once the girl had left.

“Oh, yes they can,” I good-naturedly said. “Jim and I used to clean small pictures with it all the time, and it worked.”

Dara wouldn’t hear of it. In fact, Dara was for the most part right. Generally speaking, mineral spirits are too weak a solvent to break down old varnish, but on rare occasions they can.

What Dara didn’t know was that mineral spirits would certainly clean this painting. The antique varnish I had dissolved from the surfaces of period paintings was diluted with acetone. Before it could be sprayed onto the surface of my painting, I’d had to give it some body or viscosity. This was accomplished by blending it with a clear synthetic varnish. The synthetic I chose was thinned with mineral spirits, and mineral spirits would easily dissolve my “antique varnish” after it had been applied and dried.

I tried again to correct Dara on this point, but she wouldn’t concede. I was on a razor’s edge. Again I was shocked by Dara’s understanding of technical matters. The thought flashed through my mind that she already knew the painting was a fake and was just tormenting me. I wondered if I had at last met my match in her, when the door behind me opened. A long, slender arm extended over my shoulder and placed a can on the desk right beside Fat Boy.

In bold letters, I saw the words “Mineral Spirits” written across the front of the can. “I’m afraid we’ve looked everywhere, and this is all we can find,” the assistant said. Before Dara could say a word, I asked for some cotton and seized the can.

Careful not to demonstrate too much technical experience, I pretended to be the “amateur restorer” and explained as I opened the can that “I used to watch Jimmy do this all the time with mineral spirits. It just takes a little longer than acetone.” Dara was skeptical.

I soaked a small ball of cotton with the solvent and went to work in a small area of the sky. Round and round I went with the cotton, but nothing was happening.

“I told you!” Dara said. Then, finally, the cotton began turning amber as it dissolved the old varnish and blue sky appeared. The small area was perfectly clean, and the mineral spirits were no match for the barrier coat. At last, Dara lightened up and conceded that I had been right, but she still wasn’t satisfied and I wasn’t off the hook yet.

“Well, if we’re not going to clean the whole picture, we should have three test spots. One in the sky, one in the landscape, and another on part of a flower,” Dara politely demanded.

Hiding my exasperation, I readily agreed, knowing this would finally put the issue to rest. Without any prompting, they each grabbed a ball of cotton, soaked it with mineral spirits, and claimed their own spots to clean, while I sat back in the chair and watched in triumph.

When I got back out on Seventy-Second Street, I felt like I had just escaped the guillotine. I went straight to Gino’s and ordered a glass of wine. Between the vanishing flyspecks and Dara’s experiments with acetone, I had come within a hairsbreadth of being exposed! After my second glass of wine, I was convinced that the girl who couldn’t find the acetone and brought the mineral spirits had to be an angel in disguise.

The rest of the summer passed agonizingly slowly. In order to get my mind off things, I packed a few small paintings and took off for London. For the next two months, I hung out at museums, went out with friends, and drove to the West Country and hunted for frames in the Cotswolds, but nothing could dispel my anxiety. I was tormented with thoughts of what Dara might be doing with Fat Boy. I had to remind myself that it was summer. Sotheby’s was closed, and Dara was probably out in the Hamptons going to dinner parties and sailing on yachts.

Then one night as I was lying in bed, I was struck with the worst thought of all! Jimmy’s old friend Bill “Mr. Nineteenth-Century America” Gerdts was a consultant to Sotheby’s. I had never thought of that. Surely, I reasoned, he would be shown the painting by virtue of his friendship with Jim. He would never accept the idea that Jimmy had had a passionflower Heade in his collection and had not shown it to him. And Gerdts would know better than anyone that the idea of Jimmy’s ever giving away such a painting was preposterous. Worse yet, Gerdts was a good friend of Theodore Stebbins, the world’s expert on Heade, whose authentication would be needed before the sale. I was sure that when I returned home in August, I would find an ominous message from Dara on my answering machine. I hated myself for not thinking of these possible complications beforehand and not demanding the hundred grand up front.

By the end of August, I had placed the small pictures I had brought along in a number of regional auction houses. At least, I thought, I’ll have a few bucks coming in if Fat Boy bombs out. When I finally got home to Florida, I tiptoed up to my answering machine, held my breath, and pushed the button. There was nothing from Dara. That was a good sign, but I could not imagine that someone would not raise a red flag in light of the Gerdts-Stebbins connection.

Next was the pile of mail. My eye caught the familiar sight of a thick Sotheby’s catalog envelope. Ripping it open in a frenzy, I grabbed the catalog and fanned through the pages. On the second try, Fat Boy went by in a flash! I backed up to the page and there he was, sporting a three-hundred-thousand-dollar estimate, fly crap, patches, and all! He’d been authenticated by Stebbins, and the provenance stated: “acquired by the present owner from James H. Ricau.” For the moment, I was greatly relieved. Another important hurdle was cleared. But my anxiety soon returned. There was still the exhibition ahead. The painting and the provenance would be exposed to the scrutiny of everyone. Perhaps, I feared, for one reason or another, Gerdts hadn’t connected with the painting, but he, or for that matter anyone else who knew Jimmy, would certainly see it now. If eyebrows were raised and rumors started to circulate, the picture could be withdrawn from the sale.

The exhibition ran for ten days. Each one seemed like an eternity. Every time the phone rang, I dreaded it might be Dara. I was afraid the anxiety was beginning to affect my mind. Never before had I jumped through so many hoops or had such close calls with a painting. Was fate playing a cruel joke on me? I wondered. After coming this far, would Fat Boy be shot down just when I could practically smell the money?

The night before the sale, I had a very strange dream. In it, I was sitting at a kitchen table with a friend. Before us on the table was a stack of Town and Country magazines and a pile of Mickey Mouse watches. We were laughing hysterically as we flipped through the magazines in search of ads for Patek Philippe wristwatches. With scissors, we were cutting out the faces of the expensive watches from the advertisements. Then we were opening up the Mickey Mouse watches and gluing the paper cutouts over the watch faces.

“It will never work!” my friend pleaded, doubled up with laughter. But I insisted it would, as we feverishly worked on. In the final sequence of the dream, we were busy walking through a beautiful residential street in what appeared to be London, carrying a bag of the watches. We passed the white façades of town houses in Belgravia until we arrived at the one I was searching for. “Here it is,” I said to my friend, and pointed to a plaque above the door that had the number seventy-five prominently embossed upon it.

The next day, by three in the afternoon, I couldn’t stand the suspense anymore. I dialed Sotheby’s automated auction results number and punched in the sale code and lot number. An emotionless electronic voice stated that Lot 22 had sold for $717,500.

A week passed and not a word from Sotheby’s. Then, ten days after the sale, Dara called. Payment had been made, and, true to her word, she directed the settlement department to wire the funds to my account immediately.