Caveat Emptor (6 page)

With a miserable scowl on his horribly ugly face, he paused, stared at the painting, and gave me the once-over; but this time, instead of showing me the door, to my surprise he offered me a seat at a seventeenth-century Bolognese table. He sat across from me and didn't utter a word; instead he held the painting, studying it closely. I sat there, nonchalantly gazing around the room. The walls were covered with Gobelin tapestries. Early Italian paintings in architectural frames were displayed on antique easels. Cabinets were filled with sixteenth-century lusterware, bronzes, and antiquities.

Still Ephron hadn't said a word. I noticed several marble busts of Roman emperors resting on pedestals. Their hollow eyes seemed eerily fixed on me and my palms were beginning to sweat. Slowly Ephron started thawing and in a friendly manner began asking me all sorts of questions—who I was and how I'd come by the painting. I didn't even have a story planned, and the only thing I could think of was that I had “inherited a few paintings from my uncle.” By now, I could see he was genuinely interested in the picture, and my confidence returned.

“And what are these other pictures like that you have?” he asked. I described a couple of imaginary Dutch landscapes to him and let the matter drop.

Ephron's gallery was a labyrinth of hallways and rooms going farther back behind us, and he suggested we go back into one of them. In a room we passed that looked like a repair or restoration studio, I noticed a woman in her seventies, wearing an artist's apron. When we reached the back rooms where he kept a horde of Renaissance treasures, he seated me in another antique chair in front of an Italian refectory table. This time he told me to wait and left with the picture, closing the door behind him.

I heard him through the door, talking with the woman in the apron. Obviously they were having a discussion about the picture. I became terrified when I heard the voices get lower and heard the sounds of bottles being jostled about. I suspected they might be performing some kind of tests on the painting. I did my best to suppress my fear. They must have kept me waiting twenty minutes. It seemed like eternity. In my naïveté, I thought perhaps they'd uncovered my scheme and were stalling until the cops came.

At last Ephron returned and sat down. “Well,” he said, “it's a nice little picture, but nothing very important. I don't know if we'd be interested. How much were you thinking of getting?” In a flash, my fears disappeared.

“Twelve hundred dollars,” I said confidently.

“Out of the question!” he protested.

I shrugged my shoulders and began to get up, suggesting that I was sick of waiting around and getting ready to leave. He made me wait and went out into the hall once again for further consultations. While he was gone, I noticed that on the wall were a couple of Flemish portraits similar to the one I was selling and of the same period. One was clearly a wreck, most of the paint was gone, and more wood panel showing than painting. However, it was in an antique Gothic frame. In spite of the stress I was under, I thought that if I could get that piece included in the deal, not only would I have the panel for my next painting, but an antique frame to boot!

Ephron returned and said, “Twelve hundred dollars is impossible. It's not worth more than five hundred.” I knew he was playing games, so I proposed a compromise. “Look,” I said, “give me that picture up there”—I pointed to the Flemish wreck—“and eight hundred bucks.” He was puzzled that I wanted the picture on the wall, and for a second I thought I'd put my foot in my mouth and raised his suspicions. So I quickly said, “Just so I'd have something to put back on my wall.” He took it down and considered it, shaking his head. I knew we were going to make a deal, and I adamantly stood my ground. Finally, doing his best to look as disgusted as he could, Ephron capitulated.

“Okay, okay. You want cash, right?” he asked. I nodded. “Well, you'll have to wait a few minutes,” he said, and asked me to follow him back to the front room. He carried both paintings, placed them on the table, and asked me to have a seat. Again he disappeared with the old lady, who I glimpsed giving me suspicious looks. Again they kept me waiting, and again I heard more whispering. I was cringing in my seat and becoming apprehensive. A couple of times, Ephron came out to assure me that the money was on the way.

Then, just when I expected a squad car to arrive, I looked on in wonder as a black Cadillac limo pulled up in front of the gallery. A chauffeur got out and opened the rear door. A voluptuous blonde dressed in black and wearing an expensive string of pearls alighted. She was just like the type I'd seen at Parke-Bernet. Ephron opened the gallery door and greeted her. She too gave me the once-over and asked, “Is this him?” Ephron nodded, whereupon she opened an exquisite little black bag. I watched with delight as her fine slender fingers extracted a wad of bills. Peeling off eight Ben Franklins, she handed them to me without a word, turned, gave Ephron a peck on the cheek, and returned to the waiting limo. I eventually learned that the blonde in black was the old man's mistress.

Our business concluded, Ephron got out a piece of paper, wrote down the phony name I had given him and a sentence or two, stating that I had received eight hundred dollars cash for a “portrait of a man.” I signed it, and with a sweet smile he handed me the wreck.

Now that we were old friends, Ephron got back to the subject of the other pictures I'd mentioned that my “uncle” had left me. After making me promise I'd bring them by, he took a pair of plated gold cuff links off his shirt and, grabbing my hand, he said, “You're a handsome young man. I want you to have these … but don't forget those other pictures.” I was thrilled with the gift he pressed into my palm and gave him every assurance in the world that I'd be back with more paintings. As I left the shop with the greatest feeling of relief, I flung the cuff links in the gutter and went straight to Bloomingdale's.

Just moments before, I had been flat broke, wondering how to finance a new voltage regulator for the Bentley, not to mention more hot dogs and French fries at Callahan's. Now, there were eight hundred dollars in crisp new bills in my pocket and a genuine antique painting and frame under my arm!

But my euphoria was short-lived. Just as I was entering Bloomingdale's, it hit me. I had left the manila envelope at Ephron's! It had my
real
name and address on it! Panic-stricken, I swung a U-turn in the store's revolving door and ran back to the gallery. I burst in, and there was Ephron. He looked at me, surprised. In a split second, I caught sight of the envelope lying under the table near the seat where I had waited.

“I forgot something,” I explained, while scooping up the evidence and heading for the door.

“Don't forget the other—” were the last words I heard, as I closed the door and raced back to Bloomingdale's to buy a pair of leather boots on sale.

A few months later a suspicious noise in the engine warned me I was heading for trouble with the Bentley, so when a Brooklyn collector offered me four grand in cash for it, I grabbed the money and made the sign of the cross. With this windfall, I decided to take a trip to London and see Carnaby Street and Piccadilly Circus.

It was February 1970. After getting my passport, I packed my bags, tossed in the other two “Flemish” portraits, and booked a flight on Icelandic Airways. They offered a special “youth fare,” aka “The Pothead Express,” to Luxembourg aboard a ramshackle Lockheed Constellation. The earsplitting sound of the engines and the vibration of the propellers jarred my brains senseless. The food resembled K rations. Passengers in the know were pulling piles of fruit and sandwiches from their knapsacks. A combat-booted girl in a granny dress with strands of beads and amulets dangling from her neck swept up and down the aisle dispensing marijuana brownies. After a stop in Iceland, our flying washing machine continued on to Luxembourg, air time fourteen hours. After we landed and I made it to a hotel, it was impossible to sleep. I couldn't get the sound of the plane's propellers out of my head.

The next day, I took a train to Amsterdam, hung around for a few days, and, after a dreadful channel crossing, found myself in a London B&B on Cromwell Road. The next day, I went out to explore London for the first time. I quickly learned to use the underground system and rode the double-decker buses around town. I was anxious to explore the art galleries and check out the fashions in Carnaby Street. When my interests became known to the proprietress of the hotel, she suggested that I visit the salesrooms at Sotheby's. I had never heard of the place before, since Sotheby's had not yet taken over the Parke-Bernet Galleries in New York. I took a cab to Number 34-35 New Bond Street and looked up to see “Sotheby's Auction Rooms, Established 1744” in letters above the entrance of an impressive Gothic Revival building.

Inside, an exhibition of nineteenth-century European paintings was in progress. The walls of the stately rooms were literally crammed with canvases. Some were haphazardly propped against the wall. Dealers and collectors, some speaking Italian and French, pulled pictures from the walls like shoppers buying a bunch of bananas from a street stand. In the midst of all this, I noticed a woman, who looked to be in her eighties, wearing a magnificently ludicrous hat, swinging her cane in the direction of a painting that had apparently offended her taste, and loudly declaring to the edification of the entire room, “Nothing could ever possess me to buy that painting. I simply couldn't live with it!”

As she ranted on, I joined the crowd and studied the paintings before me. Some appeared to be in perfect condition and were beautifully framed. Others, no less valuable, were in such disrepair, in such bad need of cleaning, that they were barely visible through layers of yellowed varnish. It was thrilling to think that all these pictures that had once graced the walls of mansions and town houses would soon meet their fate on the auction block and continue their journey through the ages.

London held one excitement after another for me. I discovered Christie's in St. James's and was once again astounded by the spectacle of so much art. From there I went to King's Road, where I came across a number of antique markets. Upon entering one, I found some dealers with whom I felt I could do some business. The next day, I returned with one of my paintings and met a dealer who was interested. He requested that I leave the piece with him for a day. When I returned the following afternoon, he made me an offer.

An hour later, and three hundred pounds richer, I was sitting in an expensive restaurant eating the first good meal I'd had in a week and thinking about my second sale. The speed and ease of the transaction gave me confidence. Now I knew that the Ephron sale wasn't just luck. The very next day, I went to Camden Passage with the other portrait. It was the first one I had painted, so I wanted to sell it fast for whatever I could get. Once again I found an interested dealer who showed it to several colleagues. Before I knew it, I had another two hundred pounds in my pocket and was in ecstasy.

Three months later, after I had searched out every art gallery, museum, and antique market in London, I was back in the States with fond memories of my stay in Britain. However, times were changing and having fun at the Castle was over. Tom was having more and more difficulty dealing with alcoholism. As he began to lose touch with reality, I spent more of my time at Tony and Barbara's apartment in the city.

Barbara was very interested in my artistic development, and for the next year I was completely under her spell. I was her slave. I hung on her every word, and she had a tremendous effect on my life. She was convinced that it was my destiny to become an artist. Although she was impressed, even amused by my surrealistic paintings, she spent a considerable amount of time and breath urging me to “progress,” to find myself artistically and become part of the current “movement.”

The more trouble I had in my struggle toward self-discovery, the more crises I encountered, the more attention Barbara paid me. The more I confided to her lovely ears, the more she listened. The more she soothed, encouraged, and flattered, the more I loved her. She was, in my mind, the height, the very pinnacle of sophisticated perfection. She was the epitome of all that was cool, intelligent, and knowing. But our days of hanging around the Village and sipping tea at the apartment came to an end when Tony got Barbara pregnant. They fled the environs of Fifteenth Street and headed for the serenity of the country, where they became parents of a beautiful baby girl.

One day, while looking through a newspaper, I noticed a Help Wanted ad asking for “young artists.” In spite of my draft status, I called the number. It turned out to be an art restoration studio. The man who ran it, Erwin Braun, aka Sonny, was one of the best conservators in the business, and all the major collectors and galleries used him.

He invited me to come down to his studio in a loft on Twenty-First Street off Fifth Avenue. After I arrived, Sonny took one look at a small copy of a Brueghel sporting an antique patina that I pulled from my shoulder bag and hired me on the spot.

Half artist and half philosopher, Sonny was possessed of a sarcastic and razor-sharp Jewish wit that he used unmercifully on his employees. When it came to restoration, though, Sonny could be described as near genius. As a matter of fact, the definition of what exactly constituted “genius” was a matter of constant and heated debate at Sonny's studio.

Sonny hired young artists to train as in-painters, i.e., artists whose job it was to touch up and make repairs on antique paintings during the restoration process. Although Sonny was an expert in-painter, he had to use his valuable time to clean the antique pictures, the most critical and potentially dangerous job. Nobody else even dared entertain the idea of cleaning a picture, for if the powerful solvents used to dissolve old discolored varnish weren't used correctly, they could destroy the painting.