The Art Forger (8 page)

This is a fate I refuse to imagine for
Bath.

W
HEN I LEAVE
the museum, I rush home to be with
Bath.
It feels as if I’m hurrying to meet a new lover: the excitement, the desire, the seemingly endless drenching of serotonin. I whip the sheet off the canvas, and there she is. Alive and intact. Even more beautiful than I remember. I’ve set her on a large easel and pulled up a folding chair so I can sit in front of her, drink her in.

Every time I look, I see something new. Now I notice how much green there is. The blues and the oranges are so vibrant, the women’s skin so pale and luminescent, that I was distracted. Green fills the entire painting, gently stretching out behind all the sharper colors, but very much there.

Then I’m struck by the women’s faces, all in profile, yet each her own. Most of Degas’ bathers are either painted from behind, have an arm thrown over their faces, or are loosely sketched, but these women are clearly individuals. Françoise, with reddish hair and a sharp nose, sits to the right, her leg outstretched; Jacqueline, at the center, tall and powerful, looks over her shoulder at the raised knee Françoise is toweling; Simone, introverted, her features too small for her round face, dries her hair crouched at Jacqueline’s feet.

There’s been an argument going on for decades among art historians with too much time on their hands: Was Degas really an Impressionist? Those who say no point out that Degas didn’t paint outdoors, plein air, as did most of the Impressionists, and that he didn’t boldly splash thick pigments on canvas to capture the moment in front of him. Instead, he did multitudes of sketches and detailed drawings and then worked on the piece slowly in his studio.

But to me, the argument is just semantics, an exercise in mental masturbation. True, Degas painted neither plein air nor spontaneously, but he had his own way of bringing his impressions into the heart of the viewer: his focus on the movement of racehorses and ballet dancers, his depiction of the ordinary milliner or washer woman or bather, caught in a complete lack of self-consciousness.

I turn from
Bath
and squat before the piles of books flanking the north wall. I have a couple of Degas piles: biographies and criticism; books of his drawings, prints, and paintings; diaries and collections of his letters; notebooks of scribbled lecture notes. I also have two books devoted to only his preliminary sketches. Not to mention all the library books, many overdue, on his contemporaries that I’ve been using for my book proposal.

I pull out his sketchbooks and bring them back to the chair. I open the first one and flip through the bather sketches. Degas often used the same models in a number of different paintings. I’m searching for Simone, Jacqueline, and Françoise.

I find a couple of Simone and turn back to the painting for a closer look at Jacqueline. Again, the power of
Bath
assaults me. Although I’m sure I can master the technical aspects needed to avoid detection—stripping the old Meissonier canvas down to the sizing, mixing the correct nineteenth-century paints and mediums, using the proper period brushes—I have no idea how I’ll master reproducing the commanding gestalt of Degas’ masterwork. But
Bath
reaches out to me, touches my heart, and I know I have to try.

I
’M WORKING DILIGENTLY
on the Pissarro for Repro, but all I want to do is go through the Degas sketches and find my three French ladies, maybe even a compositional drawing for the whole painting. I make a deal with myself: one more hour on the Pissarro and then I can take a quick break with the books. Whatever else I’ve decided to do, Repro pays the rent. It also, as Markel so accurately pointed out, gives me a cover.

I’m just settling back into the Pissarro when Markel shows up with a very expensive-looking bottle of champagne and a pair of crystal flutes. Obviously, he remembers the juice glasses from his first visit. We toast to our arrangement and the Gardner regaining its treasure. I pull the sheet from
Bath.

He takes a small step backward as the force of the painting hits him. It’s clear he feels the same way about her as I do. I motion him into the folding chair and pull the rocking chair over for myself. We sit in silence, sipping our champagne and looking at her.

“Like two old folks watching a sunset,” he says.

“Sometimes I cry when I look at it.”

A pause, then, “Me, too.”

“I was at the Gardner yesterday,” I tell him.

“Looking at the empty frame?”

I nod my head but don’t take my eyes from the painting.

“Didn’t feel as guilty as you thought you were going to, did you?”

I whip around. “Why do you say that?”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Of course not,” I say with conviction. “I did feel guilty. I even thought about bringing it back.”

“But you didn’t.”

I shrug.

Markel’s laugh is warm and rich, without a touch of condescension. “You’ve fallen in love with her.”

“Is it that obvious?”

He touches his flute to mine, and our eyes lock. “Takes one to know one.”

“The faces are so specific, so individual, not like most of his nudes.”

Markel looks at the two books of sketches on the floor in front of him. “Find any of them?”

“I just started looking, and although there are hardly any faces in the sketches, I think I’ve found a few of Simone.”

“Simone?”

“Françoise, Jacqueline, and Simone,” I say pointing to each in turn. “Hard to be in love with someone whose name you don’t know.”

Nine

THREE YEARS EARLIER

Markel and Karen Sinsheimer, a senior curator at the Museum of Modern Art, stood in front of
4D,
which rested on an easel in Isaac’s studio. Isaac and I hung back.

Tall and sleek, wearing an outfit that probably cost more than my monthly rent, Karen moved closer to the painting. She took a few photos with her phone, typed in a few notes. The slick, white-blond hair against her youthful face and the taut, lean body came together to create the message she clearly worked hard to send: the no-nonsense, powerful New York professional woman.

No one said anything. We just stared at the canvas. Wine and nuts sat untouched on the coffee table. Isaac shifted from foot to foot. I tried to look only marginally interested, as if
4D
were just another one of Isaac’s paintings, this studio visit no more important than any other.

This was the first time anyone beside the two of us had seen
4D
. Karen was here to decide whether it would be accepted for the MoMA show, and by doing so, give the painting its authenticity. Markel was there in his role as Isaac’s dealer, but his opinion mattered to us almost as much as Karen’s. Markel knew Isaac’s work better than anyone. If he was fooled, we were home free.

I wished we’d put out water. I needed some but didn’t want to move. Isaac and I had been fitful and edgy before they showed up. We knew what we had done, what we were doing, and we didn’t know how it was going to turn out. I glanced over at Karen, who was taking a photograph of my hourglasses, and at Markel, who was also inspecting them, and thought I might faint. I assumed Isaac was in a similar state.

I had tried to get him to talk about how he felt. But, of course, in true Isaac fashion, he evaded, joked around, then evaded some more. Maybe he didn’t want to talk or maybe he didn’t know how he felt.

For me, it was simple. I had painted
4D
as a gift, to help him when he needed help, to get him through a bad patch. As far as I was concerned,
4D
was a bridge I helped build to carry him to his next piece. And I wanted more than anything for Karen and Markel to buy into the painting, for it to hang in the show, and for Isaac to move on and do the kind of work only he could do.

Karen turned and held out her hand to Isaac. “Congratulations, Isaac. It’s wonderful. Better than wonderful. Better than any of your previous work that I’ve seen. We’ll take it.”

I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath until I heard it come out in a long hiss. I threw my arms around Isaac and squeezed long and hard. He barely responded. Shock. Shock and relief. I stepped away, grinning.

“Great. Fabulous.” Markel pummeled Isaac on the back. “I agree. It could be your best.” I knew that this wasn’t just “agent speak.” Markel truly agreed.

“Thanks,” Isaac said stiffly, almost trancelike. “Thanks both of you.” Then he looked over at me. “And a tremendous thanks to you.”

While the three of them clustered around the painting, I went to the freezer and pulled out the bottle of champagne I’d hidden behind the ice cream. “Champagne, anyone?” I called.

Markel came over and took it from me. “May I do the honors?”

I scrounged around the cabinets for wine glasses and handed them to Markel. “Let the festivities begin.”

When we finished off the champagne and moved on to wine, Isaac began to loosen up. In fact, he became positively loquacious.

“Yes, it was really eye opening to work with time in a completely different way. The series has always been about time as linear, flat, a speck of our experience. But this opened it all up, pulled it out in all directions, gave it depth.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “I can’t even remember when I came up with the idea.” Then his eyes lit on mine, and he grinned. “It was Claire.” He raised his glass to me. “Let’s drink to my brilliant, talented, beautiful Claire.”

We all toasted, and then he leaned over and kissed me. “Who’s a great talent in her own right. It won’t be many more years, Karen, before you’re showing her work.”

“I’d love to see some,” Karen said.

“You’ll be sorry you said that,” I warned. “I have your number.” Maybe there was such a thing as karma, as Small was always insisting. Maybe this was my payback for helping Isaac.

“Please do call. Send some slides. I should be in Boston again in a month or so, and if I like what I see, I’ll pop over for a studio visit.” Karen Sinsheimer was nothing if not politic, and I understood it might mean little. But it also might mean much.

“Oh, you’ll want to make a visit,” Markel said. “Claire’s work is different from Isaac’s.” He waved at
4D
. “In some ways, night and day from this. But she’s got a sure eye and an even surer brush. The quality of her colors is quite remarkable.”

“Amen to that.” Isaac gave my shoulders a squeeze, then turned to Karen and resumed his musings. “You know,
4D
’s got me thinking about a series within a series, time in many dimensions. First dots, then lines, then our world, then across space, black holes. Who knows where it might take me.”

“That sounds like it could be interesting,” Karen said.

But Isaac knew as well as the rest of us that “interesting” was a euphemism for boring. “Or maybe I’ll just stick with the fourth dimension for a while,” he amended. “Time as a river, always flowing, always there.” He threw some cashews into his mouth. “Upstream to the future, downstream to the past. All of it, along with the present, existing simultaneously. You just have to float high enough above it, perhaps in the fifth dimension, to see what it really is. To see where to step in. And where to step out.”

“Now that sounds very cool,” Karen said with real enthusiasm. “Keep talking.”

Isaac leaned back in his chair, hooked his hands behind his neck, and looked at the ceiling. “I see movement. Thick paint flowing, always flowing, over and under itself, forward and back. Wet-on-wet. Scraping through the layers of paint to reveal what’s underneath, scraping through the layers of time. All there, but above and beneath each other, some seen, some almost seen, some overwhelmed and hidden by another layer of time.”

I tried to catch his eye as he spoke my words, claimed my ideas, but he was fixated on the ceiling.

“Now that concept’s got legs.” Karen waved at
4D
. “And
4D
is a great beginning, your starting point for the real exploration of—”

“Who we are,” Isaac interrupted. “Where we stand in relation to the cosmos. How it all might fit together.”

“Let me know when you’ve got something to show. But think about including more of this.” Karen pointed to the crescents. “I just love the layering of meanings. The play with painting styles across time.”

“Already on it,” Isaac assured her.

She checked her watch, stood, and placed her glass on the table. “Well, this was a delightful afternoon. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.” She turned to Markel. “I’ve got to catch the next shuttle, but if you want to take a cab with me out to the airport we can talk. Start to make the arrangements.”

Markel was, of course, amenable. We all shook hands and congratulated each other; there were hugs and kisses and lots of laughing. As she walked out the door, Karen reminded me to call. I promised her I would.