Caveat Emptor (24 page)

As we guzzled down the bottle of brandy, Orly confided to me that she was an Israeli and a committed Communist revolutionary. “So am I,” I promptly assured her, immediately getting down on my knees to unlace her boots. She then spent the rest of the night indoctrinating me under the covers.

The next day, back at Tony's gulag, I added the finishing touches, which included soiling and polishing the edges of the paper on more than thirty gouaches, before I packed up and flew back to Florida.

For some time I had been experimenting with various formulations of varnish mixed with amber-colored dyes to apply to my paintings as a final patina. A light patina on a painting has the effect of mellowing the colors and is a desirable enhancement to an antique painting. Only when the varnish becomes too dark over the course of time does it overwhelm the colors, at which time it must be removed. It was therefore my practice to apply a light yellow patina that would add charm to the painting but wouldn't necessitate a cleaning.

The risk of subjecting my paintings to a cleaning was obvious. As I said, oil paint requires at least twenty-five years to become technically hard and not break down when attacked by solvents such as acetone. An antique painting that begins to dissolve during a cleaning would be suspected of being modern.

Although I achieved a certain amount of hardening of the paint by laying the paintings out in the courtyard and exposing them for weeks to the hot Florida sun, the solubility gap between the varnish and the paint was much closer in my paintings than in genuine antique paintings. Therefore, if my paintings were cleaned, at least in the short term, there existed the possibility that the paint could begin to dissolve along with the varnish. It was imperative to make paintings with just the right patina so that no one would even think of cleaning them.

One day, while working on an antique painting for a client, I made a discovery that was beautiful in its simplicity and breathtaking in its effect. Years ago, when I had worked at Sonny's, I'd learned about the use of ultraviolet light in the examination of antique paintings. One of the first things a restorer might do with an antique painting would be to take it into a darkened room and expose it to the rays of an ultraviolet light. In that way, a number of important observations could be made.

First of all, the varnish that was applied to paintings in the nineteenth century was derived from organic compounds. As years passed, the varnish was bombarded by the ultraviolet rays that are present in natural sunlight. The varnish, as well as slowly discoloring, underwent a unique oxidation process. After a hundred years or so of such oxidation, the surface of the painting would give off a strange greenish fluorescence when viewed under the rays of a UV lamp in a dark room.

Modern varnish will not fluoresce. This reflection or coating of green fluorescence, which I'd heard described as “green slime,” can be quite opaque under the lamp, actually obscuring the image of the underlying painting. Sonny had once stated categorically, “You can't fake this effect.” A restorer uses UV light to allow him to see how much old varnish is overlaying the surface of the painting.

UV light is also very useful in detecting any previous repairs or retouching and is an important tool in detecting a superfluous signature. This is because any paint—whether in the form of retouching or as an added signature that was applied
on top
of the antique varnish—will appear jet black against the green fluorescence.

It's also common practice for restorers to examine an antique painting under UV light after a cleaning, to see if any residue of old varnish still remains.

As I leaned over my client's antique painting, which I had just cleaned, I turned on the ultraviolet light at my side to make a final examination, and I noticed that a small puddle of solvent had formed around the cotton swabs I had just used to clean the painting. This rapidly evaporating little pool of solvent was fluorescing telltale green. The thought came to me that I might wring out the solvent along with the dissolved antique varnish from the swabs I had used in the cleaning into a beaker. Then, I reasoned, I might find a way to reconstitute it and apply it to the surface of one of my paintings, thereby transferring the antique varnish, “green slime” and all, from an old painting to a new one.

In a flash, I scooped up the pile of brown-colored swabs on the table and squeezed every drop of the liquid I could into a jar. Next, I ran the precious fluid through a fine-mesh filter and then mixed it up with some modern synthetic varnish. The two substances blended together and formed a transparent amber liquid. I loaded a spray gun with the new concoction and sprayed it all over the surface of a recently painted “Charles Bird King.” After drying it out in the courtyard for a few minutes, I placed the painting on the worktable, pulled the shades, and turned on the ultraviolet lamp. To my everlasting delight, not only did the painting have a beautiful mellow patina, but it fluoresced a perfectly even layer of “green slime,” just as if that varnish had been lying on the painting for a hundred years.

It would be hard to overstate the implications and possibilities of this simple discovery. The knowledge of what the UV lamp reveals was rapidly passing from restorers' workshops to dealers and experts, who had even begun carrying around new pocket-sized UV lamps that enabled them to better examine and assess a painting anywhere and at any time. This was crucial because, for many experts, seeing true antique varnish under the lamp established an uncontested provenance.

The reasoning was simple: if a painting appears to be by the hand of a particular nineteenth-century artist
and
the varnish on the painting fluoresces under UV,
and
since it takes a hundred years before varnish will fluoresce, the painting
must
be genuine. QED. Furthermore, it could be assumed that the varnish in all probability had been applied by the artist himself.

Spurred on by enthusiasm from my new discovery, I decided to scale up and paint some pictures by Martin Johnson Heade, an artist of considerably more value and whose paintings might very well be subjected to a higher degree of scrutiny.

I had recently invested in a fine 35-millimeter camera fitted out with a special lens, filter, and film that enabled me to visit museums and look like any other tourist taking photos of paintings from a reasonable distance. In fact, the camera zoomed in on a few square inches of the painting, giving me accurate photographs of signatures, brushstrokes, and other significant technical details unique to the artist.

My primary interest now was to observe and photograph the elements in Heade's paintings that he copied from painting to painting. Two weeks later, after visiting museums in Washington and New York, I was back in the studio with a collection of close-up photos of hummingbirds, orchids, and signatures of Martin Johnson Heade. When I studied my photos, along with examples of Heade's paintings reproduced in a book on the artist written by Theodore E. Stebbins Jr., the premier Heade expert, I came to the conclusion that so precisely were the orchids and hummingbirds copied from painting to painting that Heade must have had a collection of stencils that he used to trace the models onto each painting.

I raced to the nearest copy machine with prints and photos of orchids and hummingbirds, calculated the scale, and ran off the copies. Back at the studio, I breathlessly grabbed an X-Acto knife, cut out the “models,” and had my own set of stencils.

Two weeks later, the courtyard was littered with a collection of “Heades,” their iridescent hummingbirds and vivid orchids shimmering in the bright sunlight. Some were painted on academy board, others on period “reconstituted” canvas, precisely the type Heade used himself. After the cracking process and an application of my new “antique” varnish, we were ready for business.

A neighborhood hotshot, who frequently dropped by in his new Ferrari, spotted one of the “Heades” in the studio and wanted to see it. This guy hunted locally for paintings; whenever he found something, he'd take it to one of the big dealers in New York. He was having problems with alcohol and cocaine and was hungry to make some cash.

“You gonna sell that?” he asked, recognizing what it was.

“Yeah,” I told him. “But I just found it, and I'm not sure if it's right,” I said to cover myself, but he didn't want to hear any stories.

“I could move that painting in New York fast,” he stated flatly.

“Well,” I replied, “I can't guarantee the piece, but I gotta get twenty-five grand if you want to give it a try.”

The next day Mr. Certainty and the painting were on a flight to the city. When he arrived, he checked into the Plaza Hotel and called me to let me know that he had an appointment the next day with one of the dealers on Madison Avenue. By the end of the following day, I hadn't heard a thing from him. I called the hotel and learned that he'd checked out. Finally he called, telling me that he couldn't sell the painting. In fact, he never tried. Suspecting something was up with the piece, he had lost his nerve. Unfortunately, he had been high on drugs. He had left the painting under his bed when he vacated the Plaza, and he was already at the airport about to catch his flight back when he called. At least he'd had the presence of mind to call the hotel. The painting, he said, was safe and residing in their storage room.

I called the hotel and, using his name, explained that I would send a friend with a signed letter to pick up the painting. A couple of days later, Alexandra presented a letter at the Plaza, retrieved the painting, and FedExed it down to me.

The next opportunity to test-market a “Heade” was preordained in heaven by a situation that had transpired some months previously. Mr. F, a particularly obnoxious young art dealer who had heard about us and needed someone to take care of his paintings, showed up at our studio. He brought along a couple of poor nineteenth-century paintings that needed cleaning. He tried to impress me by showing how much old varnish was on their surfaces with a small pocket UV light he'd brought along.

He was pleased with the result, and I assumed we had another customer. In the course of time, Mr. F brought us more paintings to clean and promptly paid his bills. Finally, he showed up one day with several paintings that needed a considerable amount of work. After we completed the job to perfection, not only did Mr. F persuade us to deliver the paintings to his client, who lived twenty miles away, but then stiffed us for the bill! When I called him to discuss the matter, he told me to “go call a lawyer,” and hung up.

With a little checking around, I discovered that cheating partners and tricking uninformed people out of their paintings were among his specialties and that everyone who had done business with this asshole got screwed. I also learned that he ran ads offering to “purchase old paintings” and give “free appraisals” in the local newspapers in hopes of finding another sucker. I
also
learned that when all his tricks failed, he'd been known to lay out large sums of hard cash to get a painting. Under these circumstances, I couldn't imagine a better guinea pig to spring a “Heade” on than Mr. F.

I had recently made the acquaintance of a lawyer in Tampa who spent his every waking minute in Tampa's innumerable nude bars. So addicted was he to that atmosphere that he even met clients in these dives to discuss their cases. I discovered his magnificent obsession one evening after dining with him in a respectable restaurant, where we discussed an accident case.

I made the mistake of allowing him to show me around Tampa after dinner. For the next four hours, I was dragged from one lap-dance emporium to another along the Dale Mabry strip. In the course of this odyssey, I was introduced to a tall, leggy blonde, who, I was assured by my legal friend, was really a struggling college student working on her PhD in nuclear physics and only humped fifty guys a night to pay her tuition. Apart from her professional duties, my friend informed me, Jasmine could be called upon for just about any kind of moneymaking enterprise.

The idea came to me that if I could use someone untraceable, a “cutout,” to approach Mr. F with a “valuable” painting, I might just even the score with him, and Jasmine might just be the right girl for the job. We met at a diner in Tampa and, as promised, Jasmine didn't care if a painting was hot, a fake, or radioactive. As long as she could make a score, she'd gladly sell it to the pope. When I told her that we had to get her some false ID so when the deal was done nothing could be traced to her, she was way ahead of me. Not only did she have more than one phony driver's license, she actually had come equipped with a stolen license plate that she slapped over her real one when making house calls to sensitive clients.

The trick of this particular gig, as I explained it to her, was to get paid in hard cash.

Given the fact that M. J. Heade was such a hot commodity, and given the fact that Mr. F advertised “Cash Paid” in all his ads, I didn't see a problem. The cover story we concocted was simple. Jasmine would check into a motel, one she hadn't used before. From there, she would call Mr. F, claiming to be in town to sort out some things left to her by a recently departed aunt. Among the items would be the painting, which her late aunt had told her ten years ago was worth fifteen thousand dollars. Concerned about handling such a valuable item, she thought it a good idea to seek some professional advice—and had seen his ad for “Free Appraisals” in the local papers. She wouldn't mention that she wanted to sell the picture, just that she wanted to verify its value.

Mr. F's ads for free appraisals were nothing but bait to lure suckers to his shop in the hope that he could steal their paintings. I planned to turn the tables on him. I told Jasmine that by mentioning that her aunt had once told her the painting was worth fifteen thousand dollars, she would prevent Mr. F from snowing her. This way, he'd know right off the bat that if he didn't talk serious money, he'd lose her.