‘Stickers?’ She grabbed the book avidly, her diffidence forgotten.
Claire stood at the work table, hands on hips, inviting inspection of her handiwork. The replacement frame was finished, indistinguishable from the original. It sat empty. Next to it was the repaired stretcher, a cross-braced timber rectangle, naked of fabric. Beside them was the unstretched canvas of Dry Gully. Ochre red and russet brown, it looked like the freshly-flayed skin of some desert reptile. Then there was another piece of canvas, the same size as Dry Gully. This one was a rather amateurish seascape that seemed to have been roughly cut down from a larger picture. Finally, propped open with a thick ruler was a reference book, The Dictionary of Australian Artists.
‘I thought there was something odd about this picture.’ With all the exaggerated staginess of a conjurer about to execute a marvel of prestidigitation, she proceeded to show me what. First, she turned Dry Gully over and invited me to examine the condition of the canvas. Before, when it hung on the stretcher, it was a dusty parchment colour. Now, it was a fresh-looking chalky white. Attached to the fabric, right in the centre, was a small piece of paper on which was printed an image, some words and a number. As I bent forward for a closer look, Claire whisked the canvas away. ‘One thing at a time.’
She pointed to the other canvas. ‘When I took the Drysdale off the stretcher, I found this underneath.’ To demonstrate what she meant, she turned Dry Gully face down on the table and placed the fragment of seascape over it, also face down. The two canvasses fitted together perfectly. Dry Gully ’s obverse side now appeared the same dirty cream colour as when it was still stretched. ‘Two canvases,’ said Claire. ‘One on top of the other- creating the impression that the painting in front is much older than it really is.’
‘Why would someone do that?’ I asked.
She now removed the false back and allowed me to examine the little square of paper. It had serrated edges and bore an image of the Sydney Opera House surmounted by the head of William Shakespeare. Australia Post, said the inscription, 43 cents. UK-Australia Bicentenary Joint Issue.
‘Big Bill in Tinsel Town,’ I said. ‘What does it mean?’
‘It means that if Russell Drysdale painted this picture,’ Claire said. ‘He did so posthumously.’ Her index finger settled on the biographical entry in the reference book. ‘By 1988, he’d been dead for seven years.’
‘You mean it’s a forgery?’
Jesus H. Christ. What was it about me? I’d only been in this culture caper three days and the fakes were jumping out of the woodwork at me. First Our Home, now Dry Gully. Was no representation of the Australian landscape, no work of art safe now that I was in the field?
Claire’s professional curiosity was piqued, but she wasn’t jumping to any conclusions. ‘Not necessarily. It’s certainly not an original, but as to being a forgery-well, that depends.’
‘Depends on what? Surely it’s either genuine or it isn’t.’
Claire sucked in her cheeks and held the counterfeit Drysdale up to the light, as if trying to penetrate its secret. ‘I’m no expert, but this seems to be a very competent attempt to replicate Drysdale’s work. But the fact that it’s been done with a considerable degree of skill does not, in itself, make it a forgery. Owners of valuable artworks sometimes have high-quality copies made-to reduce their insurance premiums, from fear of theft, in case of accidental damage. They lock the original away, hang the copy and let people think it’s the original. Perhaps your friends did that.’
‘What, like a duchess who keeps her diamond tiara in the safe and wears a paste imitation?’ Except there were scant few duchesses around the Trades Hall.
‘Exactly. Or maybe your friends are just engaging in a little harmless pretension. Bought themselves a replica and told people it was an original.’
What sort of friends did she think I had? ‘Not these people,’ I told her. ‘Not their style.’
‘I don’t suppose you happen to know if it came with a certificate of authenticity, do you?’
‘What’s that?’
‘A letter provided by the seller giving details of the picture’s origins and attesting that it is what it’s purported to be.’
I told her I couldn’t imagine my friends buying anything without all the paperwork being in order.
‘You don’t happen to know where they bought it?’
‘It was arranged privately, I believe. Through a firm called Austral Fine Art.’
She swung a phone book down from a shelf. ‘Never heard of them. But there’s no shortage of art dealers in this town.’ There was a page of them, including the Aubrey Gallery. But no Austral Fine Art.
‘Forgery isn’t my area, I’m afraid,’ Claire said. ‘My only experience has been with inaccurate attribution and genuine mistakes. The National Gallery has a Rembrandt self-portrait that turned out not to be a Rembrandt at all. We changed the caption to “School of Rembrandt” and left it where it was. But deliberate misrepresentation, that’s another matter altogether.’
I was deliberately letting her walk me the long way around this, covering all the bases. I already had a grim feeling that I knew what it meant. But I wanted to be absolutely sure I wasn’t jumping to any conclusion just because it was the obvious one. ‘What do you think the stamp means?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Interesting isn’t it? It’s obviously some sort of personal mark. A secret signature, if you like.’
‘If it’s secret, why is it in such a prominent place? Surely that would increase the chances of the deception being discovered?’
‘True,’ she agreed. ‘Perhaps whoever did this intended that it be discovered.’
‘But why would a forger want to be discovered? Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose?’
‘It would if the motive was financial gain. But in some cases I’ve heard about, the forger was less concerned with money than with fooling the experts. After the critics and curators have waxed lyrical about the unmistakable hand of the master being visible in every brushstroke, the forger pops up and reveals that the picture in question was painted not by Van Gogh in Arles in 1889, but by Joe Bloggs in Aunt Gertrude’s garden shed last December.’
How did the declaration found in Marcus Taylor’s pocket go? You so-called experts…You speculators and collectors who do not even know what you are buying… You are all allowing yourselves to be deceived and defrauded. There was another line, too. Something about taking action to draw public attention. Since the note was found on his body, the assumption had automatically been that the action he meant was his suicide. But if he hadn’t, in fact, killed himself, what could he have been referring to?
‘Gracie, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘Can I borrow back that sticker book for a minute?’
Gracie, having found the stickers already stuck down, was feeling gypped enough. She warily surrendered the album. ‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘Just for a minute, but.’
The stamps dated from the previous year. Beneath each, inscribed in minuscule block capitals was a name. Some I recognised as belonging to artists. William Dobell was below a stamp commemorating the Seoul Olympics. Runners breasting a tape, 65 cents. Margaret Preston got paired with a possum. The British-Australian joint issue with the high culture theme bore the inscription ‘Drysdale’.
The CUSS catalogue that Bernice Kaufman gave me was still in my pocket. I unfolded it and checked the names against those under the stamps. There was a stamp corresponding to every artist in the collection. Thirty- eight names, thirty-eight stamps. The album was Taylor’s register of production, his output ledger.
Claire, naturally, was regarding my behaviour with a degree of incomprehension. ‘What’s all this?’ she said.
‘Just a minute.’ Using The Dictionary of Australian Artists, I checked two of the names. Noel Counihan and Jon Molvig. I wouldn’t have known their work if it was up me with an armful of impasto, but their names rang a bell. According to the reference book, they were both dead. I tried a name I didn’t recognise. It wasn’t listed. Nor were three others that were unfamiliar. By the look of it, the CUSS art collection contained only works by dead or undiscovered artists.
If this meant what it looked like it meant, the whole lot were what Salina Fleet would probably call referential images at the cutting edge of post-modern discourse. Fakes.
‘For Chrissake, tell me what’s going on!’ Claire was getting impatient, irritated by my lack of communication. ‘This is a joke, right? You’re playing an elaborate trick on me, aren’t you?’
‘I wish I was,’ I said. ‘Mind if I use your phone?’
‘Only if you tell me what’s going on.’
