Eleven

As soon as I get home from the MFA, I whip the sheet off Bath, wanting to see it immediately after studying the others. As my eyes fall on the painting, though, my stomach clenches. It takes my mind a moment to catch up with my body, and I realize I’m feeling dread.

I drop to the chair in front of her. What the hell am I dreading? I remember my very first reaction to Bath: This is not a real Degas. But that’s ridiculous. There’s no way this painting is a forgery. Or is there? I think about John Myatt and Han van Meegeren and Ely Sakhai. It’s not as if it hasn’t been done before. And then there’s the missing Françoise sketches.

I stare at Bath, then close my eyes and envision the five Degas I just studied. I lean close and examine the paint. It’s fractured with craquelure, as it should be. Over decades, liquids evaporate and paint shrinks, while humidity and temperature changes cause the wooden stretchers to expand and contract. These phenomena cause tiny webs of cracks to form. And this looks to me to be roughly a hundred years worth of cracks, which is about right.

I turn the painting over and study the back of the canvas. It appears to have been made in the late nineteenth century. There are signs of oxidation along the edge of the stretchers that hold the linen taut, and in places, the fibers have become brittle and slightly rotten. Generally, any oil-on-canvas work over two hundred years old has to be transferred to new stretchers because of this type of deterioration. My guess is Bath’s got another seventy-five or so years to go. Again, just about right.

The stretchers themselves are soft in places from decay. The tacks are rusty, as are the small leather squares that have protected the canvas from this rust for all those years. And there’s quite a bit of dust between the stretchers and canvas. I pull out the Meissonier and turn it over. It looks very similar.

Although oil paint dries enough in a couple of weeks to take another layer of glazing, it can be fifty to seventy-five years before all the liquid has evaporated and the surface is completely dry and hard. In Ellen Bonanno’s fanatical Repro classes, she showed us a test to ascertain if a painting is younger than fifty. I grab a piece of cotton wool and soak it in alcohol. I can’t believe I’m doing this.

I approach Bath, still turned to its back side. I find a spot where paint has leaked over and hold the alcohol swab just above the surface: if the paint is new, the alcohol fumes will cause it to soften, to desaponify. I position the swab about a half inch from the canvas, hold my breath. The paint remains unchanged. I press a finger to the spot. Hard as a rock.

I hesitate, then tap the swab directly on the paint. I look at the cotton wool. Completely clean. I do the same with the Meissonier. Same results. I return the painting to the easel and once again take my seat in front of it. It passed all my tests: craquelure, oxidation, soft stretchers, brittle linen fibers, rusted nails, dust, and now the alcohol test. It appears to be the real thing.

But, as I’ve learned from my research, a painting can be stripped down to its sizing, a glue mixture brushed directly onto the bare canvas, which roughens the canvas and keeps the layers of paint from detaching themselves. When the old paint is removed, the fractures created over time remain. And when the forger applies new paint over this fissured sizing, the bumpy skeleton necessary to create the craquelure is retained. Tacks can be rusted by spending a couple of weeks in water. Old wood to make stretchers isn’t difficult to come by. Lavender oil can be substituted for linseed oil, which will allow the paint to harden in about twenty years. Or high-tech ovens based on van Meegeren’s techniques can set it in hours.

There’s no doubt that Bath is a marvelous work, rich and true. The idea that even the most expert of forgers could have produced it is hard to believe. Markel didn’t notice anything wrong with it, and he has a much finer eye than I do. Although, as I know all too well, people see what they expect to see. Including the so-called experts.

I decide it doesn’t hurt to play devil’s advocate. What if, for argument’s sake, some incredibly talented forger did produce the Bath sitting in front of me? Someone like John Myatt or Han van Meegeren? Thousands of forged paintings have been purchased for millions of dollars and hung on museum walls. Many of them still are. Couldn’t something like that have happened here?

Or maybe Bath is a high-quality contemporary forgery. Unlikely, if it’s been hanging in the Gardner Museum for over a hundred years. On the other hand, what if the original was stolen at some earlier time and this one hung in its place? But someone would have noticed the change—curators, historians, guards, patrons.

It could be a forgery made after the painting was stolen in the heist. Someone could be doing to Markel what Markel is doing to his unscrupulous collector. But I have to assume that Markel had the smarts and the resources to determine its authenticity before he agreed to broker it.

That leaves a nineteenth-century forgery. But Degas was alive when Isabella Gardner purchased the painting, and she most likely bought it directly from him. According to the little I know of her, she was a woman who would not have been easily fooled. Nor would her dealer, Bernard Berenson, considered in his day to be America’s leading expert on European painters.

So, again, the only possible conclusion is that the painting in front of me is a real Degas, painted by the master in the 1890s, sold to Isabella Stewart Gardner soon after it was finished. Bath met the standards of every analysis I did and countered every point against authenticity I could come up with.

Relieved, I cover it with the sheet and head over to Jake’s.

AT THE BAR, I order a shot of tequila. Despite all my tests, arguments, and counterarguments, there’s something itching at the back of my brain, unpleasantly so, and I want to stop scratching at it.

Maureen raises an eyebrow as she pulls out the bottle. “Bad day?”

I shrug. “Same old.”

Mike, Rik, and Small look at me sympathetically.

“I’ve got some news that’ll make you feel even worse,” Danielle says.

All five of us roll our eyes.

But Danielle doesn’t get it. “It’s fucking Crystal Mack again.”

“No,” Small moans.

“The Danforth.” Danielle.

“Christ. She’s going to be insufferable.” Rik.

“How does the Danforth even know about her?” Mike.

“I’m guessing ArtWorld,” I say. “They just had that big contest. Trans. Remember? One of the Danforth curators was a judge. Also the Whitney.”

“I wouldn’t mind so much if she were any good.” Small.

“How long before she’s down here?” Danielle looks at her watch. “An hour? Maybe half that. Wouldn’t want to let too much time go by without using us to shine herself up.”

Rik throws his arm around me. “Nothing for you, Bear?”

“The Whitney owns three Cullions,” I say, trying not to sound bitter and probably not succeeding.

Mike turns to Rik. “Let’s hear the rest on that trip to Paris.”

“You didn’t tell me you were going to Paris,” I cry, with mock annoyance, more than happy to piggyback on Mike’s thoughtful change of subject. “What’s up with that?”

“Just found out, but it’s for work, not pleasure. I started to tell Mike and Small. We’re doing an exhibit on Belle’s acquisitions from her travels to Europe. My boss took Italy. Sheryl’s going to London, and I got stuck with Paris.” He grins.

Danielle holds her thumb and forefinger a quarter of an inch apart. “Can you hear my teeny, tiny violin weeping?”

“Didn’t you tell me Isabella Gardner was a Venice freak?” I ask.

“Paris was her second favorite.”

“That stuff about her walking lions down Tremont Street?” Small asks. “And about wearing a GO RED SOX hat to the symphony. Are those true?”

Rik crosses his arms over his chest. “It’s really annoying that that’s the extent of what most people know about Belle. She was the first great American art collector, man or woman, and she’s remembered because of a couple of lion cubs and a headband.”

We all laugh at his pomposity. He gives us the finger, along with a wink.

“So, how’d she get to be the first great American collector?” I jump in before the conversation can turn. “Man or woman.”

Rik scowls at me. “She studied and had a great eye. And, of course, she had Bernard Berenson.”

“Not to mention tons of money,” Danielle says.

“And what about all those forgeries that were all over the place back then?” I ask. “Before they had all these high-tech ways of figuring it out?”

“I heard Michelangelo used to borrow paintings from his friends,” Small pipes in, “copy them, then return the copies and keep the originals for himself.”

“Well, that would have worked out great for his friends,” Mike says. “They’d own a Michelangelo.”

“They may not have had all the technology we have now,” Rik says, irritated that we’re not taking his Belle seriously enough. “But they still had plenty of smart and talented experts. Art historians, critics, dealers, authenticators. They got it right most of the time.”

“Must’ve been what happened at MoMA. All those smart and talented Isaac Cullion experts,” Danielle says.