Eighteen

Strong light floods the studio, which is a good sign for the first day of painting. I’ve played with the position of the two easels to make sure the light hits each at exactly the same angle. I’ve ground the underpaint—flake white, raw umber, and turpentine mixed with a touch of sienna to warm it up—to my exacting and secret recipe. A red sable brush, ridiculously expensive, but the only kind of soft brush Degas ever used, stands at the ready. I immerse the brush in the small bowl of underpaint, close my eyes, and visualize the final painting, which in this case is almost effortless since the original, so to speak, is right in front of me. I begin.

Underpainting is fast and straightforward. The perfect first step for a long project. It’s a monochrome wash painted between the initial drawing and the first application of polychrome color, a thin coat covering the entire canvas that sets the tonal aspect of the painting. To make it even easier, the umber and turpentine in the mixture cause it to dry quickly so there’s no need to bake it.

As I work, my thoughts turn, as they do so often lately, to the origin of the forged Bath. If it was painted in the late nineteenth century, which I’m almost positive it was, then Belle Gardner and Edgar Degas become potential actors in the scheme. There are many possibilities. Degas sold her a forgery. Belle had it copied after she bought it. In transit between Degas and Belle, someone else forged it without their knowledge. Belle and Degas executed the forgery together.

The in-transit option is the only one that seems remotely plausible. I was assuming that Belle purchased the painting directly from Degas, but she could just as easily have bought it from a previous owner. And who knows how many people handled it when it was shipped from Paris to Boston. There were lots of opportunities.

When I finish the underpainting, which needs a few hours to dry, I’m restless, nerved up, closed in despite the fifteen-foot ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows. I go out for a walk, which usually works, but my head swirls with images of Belle and Degas, their possible relationship, motives, and victimizations. I wave to the optician around the corner, the boutique owner down the street, and chat with the man selling flowers on the sidewalk, but I don’t feel comfortable outside the studio.

I need to be up there, smelling the paints, talking to the canvas, cracking my knuckles, priming myself. When I go back, I can’t do any of those things, I can only pace. I force myself to sit down, but my hands won’t stay still, so I go over to the computer and Google Edgar Degas and Isabella Stewart Gardner.

I get over fifty thousand hits, most of which are about the 1990 heist or Degas’ paintings and prints in the Gardner Museum’s collection. I try an advanced search, deleting all entries with the words museum, robbery, and theft. This finds over seventy-five thousand. I double-check and see that I’ve forgotten the second quotation mark after Isabella Stewart Gardner and therefore have results for every page on the Web that includes Degas and anyone named Isabella, Stewart, or Gardner.

I put in the quotation mark, and a single entry returns. It’s in Russian and appears to be some kind of biographical listing. I delete it from the search and try again. “Your search did not match any documents. Make sure all words are spelled correctly.”

I know Degas lived from 1834 to 1917, mostly in Paris, where he was an active participant in the art scene of the day. Wikipedia tells me Belle lived from 1840 to 1924 and that between 1867 and 1906 she made at least ten trips to Europe, mostly to Paris and Venice. As these trips were primarily in pursuit of the 2,500 artworks that now fill her museum, it seems highly likely she and Degas crossed paths.

I have a couple dozen books on Degas and examine the indexes of all that have indexes. No mention of Belle. I go to Amazon and check out books about each of them, but the synopses and reviews are too vague, and I’m not about to spend hundreds of dollars on the books.

I go back to Google and read a little more about Belle and see that Rik’s right, she was quite a character. I’m taken by her courage and mischievousness, purposely provoking Puritanical Boston with revealing Parisian dresses and literary and musical soirees at her home, often attended only by men. The lions and Red Sox headgear are also noted. Evidently, she was loved by the young artists she collected and disdained by the old guard, adored by the men and reviled by the women. Scandalous rumors of affairs with Frank Crawford, a much younger novelist, and the older John Singer Sargent were in constant circulation. No mention of Edgar Degas.

“I THOUGHT YOUR book was going to focus on Degas’ European connections,” Rik says the next day.

We’re in his cramped office on the fourth floor of the museum. His feet are up on the desk, and I’m perched on its edge. The first three floors of the Gardner hold exhibition space, and the fourth is used for administrative offices. In Belle’s day, this was where she lived. It doesn’t look much like a home now.

“Belle made so many trips to Europe during Degas’ heyday and spent so much time with artists and dealers,” I explain, “that I figured there might be something in their relationship worth writing about.”

Rik drops his feet to the floor and turns his chair to his computer. “She did own a number of his works. Unfortunately, most were stolen during the heist.” Rik looks off beyond my shoulder. “There was a rumor just last week that some of the art was stashed in a house in Maine.”

“And?”

“Came to nothing.” He shrugs. “Just like everything else that has to do with the heist.”

“So Belle and Degas?” I prompt.

He taps a few keys and frowns. “Did you realize that five of the thirteen stolen artworks were Degas’?”

I hadn’t known there were so many. “Wonder if there’s an angle in that for me.”

“Three Mounted Jockeys, black ink on paper. La Sortie du Pelage, pencil and watercolor on paper. Cortege aux Environs de Florence, pencil and wash on paper.” His fingers fly over the keys. “Program for an Artistic Soiree, charcoal on paper. And, of course, After the Bath.”

The last thing I want him to think I’m interested in is After the Bath. “Does it say anything about Berenson or maybe another dealer? I’m really more concerned with those kind of relationships.”

“Berenson was pretty much her man.” Rik rotates in his chair. “You seen Markel lately?”

“Markel?”

Rik smirks. “You know, Markel G, the guy who came to your studio a few weeks ago?”

“What’s Markel got to do with this?”

“Nothing. Sorry. Mind jump. Talking about dealers. I saw him going into your building the other day and meant to ask you if something was up.”

I shrug as nonchalantly as I can. “I doubt he was there to see me.”

“Does he have clients in the building?”

I pretend to be seriously considering this. “Not that I know of. But Roberta Paul and Beth Weinhaus both have studios on the second floor. Maybe he was on a studio visit. Beth’s been doing some fabulous multimedia with old-fashioned corsets.”

Rik wrinkles his nose. “Since when are you into that conceptual crap? Or Markel for that matter?”

“Maybe Roberta, then,” I say.

Rik turns back to the computer. “Just hoping it was you, Claire Bear.”

IT’S A BEAUTIFUL afternoon, or at least beautiful to those who like it on the steamy side, which I do, so I decide to walk home from the Gardner. I turn at the MFA and head down Huntington Avenue. It’s odd how little Rik and I were able to find on any relationship between Degas and Belle. There were hundreds of pages on his works and the robbery and plenty of reviews and critiques of both Degas and Bath but nothing about Belle and Degas ever meeting. When I asked about Belle’s personal letters, Rik told me she burned all her correspondence before she died and demanded that those she wrote to do the same. Unfortunately, almost all complied.

“It makes you wonder what she was hiding,” I said.

“With Belle,” Rik replied, “it could be just about anything.”

This surprising dearth of information deepens my curiosity. And Rik’s. He promised to do more research through the museum and continue his investigation when he gets to Paris. Which is all good. I need to put my energy into finishing Bath II and getting it the hell out of my studio. I’ve got a lot of windows to paint.

With this in mind, I head to Al’s. The underpainting should be almost dry, and I need more paints and brushes for the next phase. Bath II must be made only from materials that were obtainable in the nineteenth century. Fortunately, Degas’ taste in brushes is well known, and he worked in the late 1800s, when paint became available in premixed tubes. Before this, artists ground their own pigments using only natural compounds such as raw umber, terre verte, and arsenic trisulfide. Still, every ingredient must be pure and devoid of any chemical discovered after the 1880s. I’m also fortunate to have Al, who’s painstakingly careful about what she buys and from whom she buys it.

My cell rings. “Hey,” Rik says, “I’ve got something for you. Don’t know how I could have forgotten about her. She’s such a complete pain in the ass. Sandra Stoneham. Belle’s only living relative. And she’s not even a real blood relative.” He sniffs. “Granddaughter of Jack Gardner’s niece. Lives in Brookline.”

“You think she might know something about Belle and Degas?”

“If there’s anything to be known, she’s the one who’ll know it.”

“Would she talk to me?”

“If you suck up to her and ooze all over about Belle, I’m guessing she’ll give you whatever she’s got. Just don’t tell her you have anything to do with the museum. Or, better yet, bad mouth the museum, and she’ll fall at your feet.”