10
FULL SPEED AHEAD
John Drewe is the most amazing man,” said
Sarah Fox-Pitt. “Did you know his father invented the atom
bomb?”
Jennifer Booth thought it best to stifle her
laughter. Fox-Pitt had been moved up to the Acquisitions Department
after more than a decade as head of the Tate archives, and she was
Booth’s senior, but she was much too impressed by Drewe, in Booth’s
opinion. Booth had recently become the new head of the archives,
and the more she learned about the professor, the warier she became
of him. She knew he had donated a pair of Bissières to the Tate,
and that the conservators had almost immediately become suspicious
of them. Before they could ask him for a certificate of
authenticity from the artist’s estate, he had withdrawn them. In
their stead, he had donated £20,000 to the archives, and Fox-Pitt
had just told her that he’d promised half a million more.
After Fox-Pitt left her office, Booth looked up
Drewe’s application to visit the archives and discovered that he
had been in a few times since his donation but had never filled out
a formal application. The prerequisite apparently had been
waived.
Curious, she thought.
Several days later, Drewe came in again, checked
his coat and bag at security, and walked into the research room
with his legal pad and a pencil. Booth was on duty at the
invigilator’s desk, where all visitors were screened, and she asked
him to fill out an application and provide a summary of the
research he was planning to do. It was standard procedure, she
said. The Tate’s research room could only accommodate six people at
a time, and it was generally restricted to scholars and
postgraduate students who were vetted carefully.
On the application form Drewe said he was chairman
of Norseland Industries and research director for a laboratory that
developed marine systems. He was investigating the “collaboration
between Hanover Gallery, London, and the ICA, particularly 1951-7”
and might occasionally bring in two other researchers to help
him.
Booth decided not to ask him for references. It
seemed inappropriate at this juncture, now that his check had been
banked. She assumed that the notoriously vigilant Fox-Pitt had
checked him out thoroughly before giving him her enthusiastic
endorsement, and she didn’t want to jeopardize any future
donation.
Drewe was very polite when he asked Booth if she
wouldn’t mind bringing out one of the Hanover’s photograph albums,
a pictorial record of the works that had passed through the gallery
during its twenty-five years of operation. One of its most
important artists was Giacometti.
Drewe sat at the dining room table in his
house cutting and pasting. He had taken a photograph of Myatt’s
Footless Woman and titled it Standing Nude, 1954. He kept
his titles as generic as possible, as many of the modern masters
had done in the forties and fifties. From his stash of documents,
he chose an old gallery receipt recording the sale of a genuine
Giacometti nude, then fashioned a new one on 1950s-era paper,
indicating that the work had been sold to its current owner, a
private collector named Peter Harris, in 1957. To reinforce the
illusion, he forged additional pieces of provenance and added the
names of other collectors and acquaintances, both imaginary and
real, to the gallery ledger pages. As the coup de grâce, he took
original 1950s gallery exhibition catalogs—sparsely illustrated
black-and-white booklets, for the most part—scanned them into a
computer, and inserted photographs of the Footless Woman and other
Myatt forgeries.
He was tidy and methodical, lining up ledgers,
catalogs, scribbled notes he’d found on the backs of
documents—whatever best suited his purposes—to turn out brand-new
provenances. He cut, pasted, and photocopied until he had produced
impeccable new documents. When he couldn’t find an appropriate
letter or receipt, he forged one using one of his old typewriters,
then pasted in a signature he’d culled from his ICA letters from
dealers and collectors. He was quickly becoming a master
collagist.
On his next visit to the Tate research room, he
took a seat in the back. It was a narrow space, not an ideal setup
from a security standpoint, because the invigilator’s view was
often blocked by the researcher sitting in front. Now and then
Drewe looked up from his work to scan the room, which was often
left unattended for a few minutes while the invigilator went into
the stacks to pull out a book or a document. At an opportune
moment, Drewe flipped through his notepad and pulled out a sheet of
heavy black paper, the kind used in old-fashioned photograph
albums. He inserted the page, with its two binder holes, into one
of the Hanover albums, which now contained a photograph of
Giacometti’s Standing Nude, 1954, an awkward figure with its
feet hidden by a table in the foreground.
Drewe returned the album to the front desk, thanked
the invigilator, and left.
For five or six hours a day, Myatt immersed himself
completely in his work. Over the months since the reception, the
Sugnall farmhouse had become a factory.
Finally Myatt could paint in broad daylight. The
old panic that had returned after the Tate reception and driven him
to consign Spring Woodland to the flames was a thing of the
past again. Because Drewe was manufacturing solid provenances for
his paintings, he could relax. He no longer worried about producing
the “perfect” forgery, because he realized that when the
documentation was good enough, dealers were willing to overlook
aesthetic flaws. If the provenance could be verified at the Tate,
the V&A, or the British Council archives, all the better.
He was now forging works primarily in the style of
Braque, Chagall, Nicholson, and Dubuffet, and each morning he would
sit up in bed and say to himself, “Today is a Chagall day” or
“Today is Braque day.” Each artist’s style presented its own
technical challenge, but Myatt was painting with a clarity he’d
rarely enjoyed since his music career collapsed, wrapping up
Chagalls in five days and Nicholsons in a matter of hours.
With his share of the profits, and for the first
time in a decade, he could finally afford the small luxuries of
life. Instead of the few hundred pounds a painting he got from
Drewe when they started out, he was now earning a substantial
commission. Drewe was selling the paintings as fast as Myatt could
produce them, and there were new shoes for the kids, trips to the
cinema, and the occasional nanny.
Ironically, even though he was up to no good, he
felt less like the town pariah and more like a respected member of
the community. His family wasn’t starving, and life was good. With
his extra money, he began to donate to charity again. He even
convinced a hesitant Drewe to set up an art program for students
and fund the revival of mystery plays—medieval dramas based on
stories from the Bible—at the Lichfield Cathedral. It would be
great publicity for Norseland, he told Drewe. The professor agreed
to add his donation to Myatt’s next commission.
With Drewe as his “dealer” and principal
cheerleader, Myatt felt like an artist again, “a man of
importance.” He felt the same intensity, the same joy in painting
he had experienced as a young artist. More important, he was making
a living at it, and that made all the difference.
To match his phony provenances, Drewe was now
showing Myatt what to fake. He sent art books, pieces of canvas of
the appropriate size and age, and endpapers from old volumes. There
was never a note or a return address. Myatt felt a thrill each time
a package arrived from Drewe, as if he were James Bond receiving
instructions from M.
One afternoon in October 1991 he drove down to
Golders Green with his latest work, a Le Corbusier of a voluptuous
nude standing with her hands clasped behind her head.
“That’s a lovely restoration,” said Drewe, who had
taken to using the term to describe Myatt’s forgeries. Today it
seemed particularly apt, because Myatt had painted the Le Corbusier
over what had once been a nice old canvas of a river landscape. His
father had bought the piece at a yard sale in the 1940s, but it had
languished in the attic ever since. The canvas was from Le
Corbusier’s time, so Myatt scraped off the river view and replaced
it with his own composition. It was a common forger’s trick.
Drewe invited Myatt to dine at the Spaniard’s Inn,
the Hampstead pub where they’d met when Myatt delivered the
Footless Woman. There was business to attend to, Drewe said. After
they sat down he handed Myatt an envelope containing several
thousand pounds in cash.
Myatt had never once questioned him about what had
sold or how much money had come in. He trusted Drewe and was
grateful to him. Their relationship had become a full partnership,
with Myatt suggesting which galleries Drewe should approach and
helping him decide which fakes best complemented the provenances he
had so thoughtfully taken off the ICA’s hands. For his part, the
professor encouraged Myatt to keep a record of their transactions.
“Put your business plans in writing and mail them to me,” he said.
It would be years before Myatt fully understood why Drewe was so
keen to leave a paper trail.
Drewe finished his drink and pulled out a Sotheby’s
catalog for the first part of a two-part auction of impressionist
and modern works scheduled for early December 1991. Inside was a
full-color reproduction of Myatt’s hard-fought Giacometti. The
Footless Woman was now titled Standing Nude, 1954, and was
listed next to three other Giacomettis scheduled for auction later
that year. Despite the awkward table hiding the botched feet, the
piece was valued at £180,000 to £250,000.
Myatt noted that the other Giacomettis in the
catalog were not his, and very likely authentic. It all felt a
little unreal: Officially, his work had now been deemed as good as
the master’s, and his talent was finally getting its due.
“People were leaping up and down buying my works,”
he recalled. “I was secretly pleased that my little babies were out
there.”
The nude still nagged him, especially the egregious
amputation of her legs below the knee. He promised himself that his
next Giacometti would be closer to the real thing. That night, back
at home, he dove into his art books and began flipping through the
pages for inspiration.
A few days later Myatt had a very good new
Giacometti. He’d worked hard and stayed focused and come close to
capturing the master’s essence. Nevertheless, he stopped before he
was quite done. It was best to leave a work unfinished and a few
problems unresolved. There was no such thing as a perfect painting.
Perfection gave you away every time.
Myatt left the canvas on the easel and went to bed.
In the morning he made himself a strong cup of coffee and took it
into the living room. He glanced at the new standing nude and felt
a rush of pleasure and relief.
“Not bad,” he thought.
On a scale of one to ten, he had produced only a
handful of sevens and perhaps a single eight. This nude, without a
doubt, was a ten—his finest achievement. Ironically, it would also
be his undoing.
Paul Redfern, a burly freelance writer with
a full woodsman’s beard, sat on his stool at the Lamb, a Bloomsbury
bar, waiting for his friend Peter Harris, who was going to
introduce him to a Professor Drewe, head of a company called
Norseland Industries.
When Drewe and Harris arrived, and they were all
settled with their drinks, the professor told the writer that
Norseland wanted a prospectus on the cultural activities it was
sponsoring, which included theater events, an arts center, and an
exchange program between Gloucestershire College of Arts and
Technology and an art school in Leningrad. Redfern listened as
Drewe told him about Norseland’s £20,000 donation to the Tate
archives and its intention to raise a further £500,000. Drewe
wanted the prospectus sent to the auction houses so that they could
see the full extent of the company’s commitment to the arts.
Norseland was about to place three works on the block to help fund
its programs, and Drewe was hoping that the auction houses would
lower their standard commission.
Would Redfern be interested in representing
Norseland? In exchange for writing the prospectus and setting up
appointments with the auctioneers, he would receive a commission on
whatever sold.
Redfern agreed and went to work. He made contact
with Christie’s and Sotheby’s and invited their representatives to
see the three works at Norseland’s office in the upscale
neighborhood around Bedford Square, where Drewe had rented a small,
well-appointed space with a nice view, hired a secretary, supplied
vases of fresh flowers, and hung half a dozen paintings on the
walls.
Redfern walked the auctioneers through the office
and gave them copies of transparencies and some of the provenance
documents Drewe had assembled.
A few weeks later the Sotheby’s catalog for Part 2
of its December 1991 auction included two Nicholson still lifes,
dated 1946 and 1955, and a Le Corbusier entitled Femme Nue.
All three were being offered “on behalf of the Lichfield Mystery
Plays.” All three sold.
Meanwhile, Danny Berger was also doing very
well for himself. He had made several sales abroad through a runner
and art consultant named Stuart Berkeley, who had clients in
Canada, New York, and Japan. When Berger gave the ponytailed runner
a photograph of a Giacometti titled Portrait of a Woman,
depicting the upper torso and face of the artist’s wife, Annette,
Berkeley quickly reported a nibble from a private New York dealer
named Sheila Maskell.
Maskell had shown a photograph of the Giacometti to
Dominic Taglialatella, a dealer with Avanti Galleries on Madison
Avenue. She told him the painting was owned by a John Catch, who
was selling it through a group of “very substantial” Londoners. The
price was $325,000. Taglialatella had a very good client in Sweden
who would probably be interested, and a few days later he and
Maskell were on a plane to London to see the work.
On Drewe’s instructions, Berger had rented a small
warehouse opposite the Golders Green tube station, a slightly more
impressive showcase than Berger’s garage. Here Drewe had hung
Portrait of a Woman, along with a handful of other works
that looked as if they had been undisturbed for years. Now, as
Maskell, Berkeley, and Berger looked on, Taglialatella eyed the
portrait and blew some dust off the canvas. They all stood to gain
thousands of pounds in commissions, and when Taglialatella agreed
to the price, everyone shook hands.
As Taglialatella flew to Sweden to deliver the
painting to his client, the wire transfer went into Maskell’s
account without a hitch, and the following day Berkeley and Berger
got their cut. Each was unaware they had just handled a fake, and
the lion’s share of the money went to Drewe via Norseland.
The scam had taken on a life of its own.