Rogues’ Gallery: ‘The Art Forger,’ by B. A. Shapiro
By MAXWELL CARTER
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Illustration by Leslie Herman
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Isabella Stewart Gardner was decidedly eccentric. She walked lions, not
dogs; drank beer, not sherry; and bathed opposite improving maxims
rather than wallpaper patterns. (Some were more ominous than others:
“Secret of two, secret of God; secret of three, secret of all.”) Such
behavior made her reputation, though it was her magnificent art
collection, assembled with the help of the young Bernard Berenson, that
won her lasting fame. In 1903, Gardner opened her Venetian-style gallery
— then called Fenway Court — to the city of Boston, enriching
generations to come.
Today, alas, her name is associated with less savory exploits. In March
1990, two men dressed as police officers looted 13 works from her
museum, including Rembrandt’s only recorded seascape, Vermeer’s
“Concert” and several lesser sketches by Degas. B. A. Shapiro’s nimble
mystery “The Art Forger” revisits this unsolved theft when, more than
two decades on, one of Gardner’s paintings seems to resurface.
Shapiro’s present-day heroine, Claire Roth, typifies the fictional
artist: attractive but disheveled, talented yet struggling. It’s
Claire’s sideline that distinguishes her. To pay the bills, she paints
commissioned reproductions, mostly after Impressionist models. (These
are, she tells herself, copies that simulate the originals, not
forgeries.) At 31, despite her raffish allure, Claire spends lonely
nights on the floor-hugging mattress she’s occupied since breaking up
with her boyfriend and fellow artist, Isaac Cullion, who has since died.
Enter Isaac’s former dealer, Aiden Markel, with an intriguing offer:
copy an undisclosed picture and Claire will receive much-needed cash and
her own one-woman show at his trendy gallery. The painting in question?
On arrival, it bears an uncanny resemblance to a Degas masterpiece
stolen from the Gardner Museum. (Titled “After the Bath,” the work is
Shapiro’s invention, based on four related canvases of the 1890s.) Is it
the lost original? Has Claire been asked to copy or to forge? Does it
matter?
Shapiro’s brisk narrative takes the reader through Boston’s art world,
the logistics of forgery and the perils of attribution, shuttling
between the present and three years earlier, when Claire lost Isaac and
first straddled the line between copying and fraud. Interwoven are
letters from Gardner to a fictitious niece, Amelia, tracing the obscure
circumstances under which she acquired the Degas. (The real-life Gardner
burned all her correspondence. If, as in Shapiro’s imagining, she
acknowledged replies with “Thanksissimo,” perhaps it’s just as well.)
Shapiro writes with assurance, even if she stumbles over the odd phrase
or detail. Never mind that Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, whose painting
is scrubbed clean for Claire’s “Degas,” was one of the most celebrated
artists of his day; nor that Bernard Berenson, Gardner’s adviser and
agent (not “dealer”), whom Shapiro’s fictional curator invokes as the
last word, was fallible, some of his authentications for Joseph Duveen
having later proved unsound. A few plot threads are slenderer than
others, including Claire’s volunteerism and the baldly expository diary
of Amelia’s artist beau, Virgil. Shapiro’s art world blather may verge
on caricature: “He’s working with cobblestones. Very ingenious.” Sadly
it’s not entirely inaccurate.
For those willing to forgive the occasional misstep, “The Art Forger”
will reward their forbearance and, through its engaging premise, their
intelligence. Is black-and-white authenticity paramount or are there
acceptable degrees of attribution? Aiden and Isaac see subtler shades;
Claire isn’t so sure. In the end, with plots uncovered and deceptions
laid bare, Shapiro’s abiding mystery lies not in the act of forgery
itself but in its elusive morality. As Claire reminds us, people see
“what they want to see.”
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