Provenance by Laney Salisbury Read Free Book Online Page B

the painter’s casual elegance was absent. It had been nearly a year since he’d bought the piece and put it up in his home. Now, in the summer of 1989, he decided to get a second opinion. He took it down, wrapped it carefully, and brought it across the Channel to Paris to show to the artist’s widow.
    As heiress to the estate, Madame de Staël retained what in France is known as the droit moral, an absolute right to judge an artist’s oeuvre and declare whether or not a work is authentic. The droit moral is legally binding in France, where it often serves as the ultimate arbiter in disputed cases of forgery.
    As soon as she saw the canvas, the widow de Staël expressed her doubts. What disturbed her even more than the painting itself was the inscription on the back—the scrawled reference to a walk in the park—and the signature, “Nicholas de Staël.”
    “That’s quite wrong,” she said.
    Her husband, a Russian émigré who had settled in France, always spelled his name “Nicolas.” As for the alleged promenade through the park with “Mrs. Richardson,” Madame de Staël knew nothing about it.
    When Mibus returned to London with the painting, he tracked Professor Drewe down through Danny Berger and told him he suspected the de Staël was “wrong.” The artist’s widow was not convinced that the work was her husband’s, and a Parisian dealer named Jean-François Jaeger, one of the foremost experts on de Staël, believed it was a fake.
    Mibus asked for his £32,500 back, fully expecting Drewe to uphold the standard of any legitimate dealer—to refund a client when a work is considered suspect.
    Drewe suggested that they discuss the matter over lunch at White’s, a private members’ club near Mibus’s gallery. Mibus assumed they would have a quick, conciliatory meal and wrap up the whole unfortunate affair, but Drewe avoided the subject of the de Staël. He motioned for the waitress and ordered a three-course meal. He spoke quickly, as if he’d downed half a dozen espressos, and when the food came, he made a pass at the waitress, a thin young woman with a boyish haircut. She ignored him. Drewe was unfazed and continued chatting.
    Mibus interrupted him. What about the painting?
    Not to worry, said Drewe. The work was genuine. Opening his briefcase, he removed two large photographs of another de Staël that had also been signed “Nicholas” and slid them across the table. He explained to Mibus that de Staël was known to have used the English spelling of his name occasionally.
    Mibus heard him out. Like any other European or American dealer, he understood that while the droit moral added weight in disputes over authenticity, it was by no means the deciding factor outside France. Why should the opinion of a family member count for more than that of an expert or scholar? True, Jaeger thought the piece was a fake, but hadn’t Christie’s approved it the previous year?
    Drewe perhaps noticed the doubt flickering across Mibus’s face and hinted that de Staël had had an affair with the woman in the park, and that the widow was letting jealousy get in the way of good judgment. He told Mibus that the piece had previously belonged to John Catch, a key member of a consortium of military defense contractors that owned a large collection of artworks. Drewe himself was a member of the consortium as well as its official representative delegated to sell the group’s artworks.
    He ordered another bottle of wine and began to talk about his own career. Mibus listened politely. Drewe said that his research firm, AceTech Systems Ltd., was developing a machine gun that could fire a thousand rounds per minute. In addition, the company was working on a chemical warfare suit that could be folded up and reduced to the size of a golf ball. Drewe suggested that he was in a position to broker the sale of tanks and F-16s, and jokingly asked whether Mibus knew anyone who wanted to buy a fighter jet. When the dealer tried to steer