THREE BOSTON ART TALES FROM THE 1970's
I. The Hopper Etching
In the late 1960’s, the small college near Boston where I had been teaching for three years, folded suddenly, and I was out of a job. One of my friends, a well-known art dealer, Robert Light, asked me what I was planning to do next, and I told him I had no idea. My musical career was fulfilling emotionally, but not financially. In fact, buying harpsichords, vehicles to transport them, music scores, and maintaining all the concomitant costs amounted to more than I ever earned from performing.
Bob said he had an idea for me. He and his partner Don wanted to spend three months in Greece for the Summer, and he would pay me to stay in their [very grand] Back Bay house and catalog his extensive art library. That turned out to be a life-changing event, especially because my then partner and I were in the midst of renovating our first house, an 1860’s slum in the South End, which was virtually unlivable.
When Bob and Don returned from Greece in the Fall, he was happy with my progress on his library project and suggested I work with him in his art business. Because I had previously studied art and art history, and because I had read most of the books in his library during the Summer, it was an easy transition, and he offered to pay more than I had been earning at the defunct college.
Happy with the opportunity, I was quick to learn a great deal about old master prints and drawings as well as the art business, and I remained with Bob for more than three years. He and Don would spend Summers in Greece, and I stayed in their house, manned the office, managed the correspondence and answered the phones.
Because the business was conducted in Bob’s home, clients arrived by appointment, and it was rare that anyone came to the door unannounced beforehand. There were two memorable occasions, both with happy endings, and the first one was the most dramatic.
The doorbell rang, I walked downstairs, opened the door, and a proper Boston lady was standing on the threshold with a small portfolio in her hands. I invited her in, asked her to sit down, and she explained that her late husband had left the portfolio in his study. Her first inclination, she explained, was simply to discard it, because the cover was old and discolored. Then she decided, because she knew nothing about art, that she should have someone in the business have a look before she put it in the trash.
The title on the folio was “Six Etchings from the New Republic”, and it had been distributed in 1921 as a free gift to garner new subscriptions for the publication. All six etchings were in the original folio in excellent condition, and I immediately recognized the Hopper etching entitled “Night Shadows”, and the other five, in my experience, were worth little or nothing. She was so trusting and naïve I informed her gently that the Hopper was of some value, but none of the others were comparable, and I offered her a check for $5,000 on the spot, (about $$50,000 in today’s currency), at which she fainted, and slipped onto the floor. Startled, I grabbed a bottle of cognac, poured her a small glass to revive her, and helped her up from the floor.
Almost in tears, as well as somewhat embarrassed, she thanked me profusely, in shock that she had almost thrown the portfolio into the trash, and when she had recovered her equilibrium, I gave her the check and she departed in rapture, and I was delighted to have made her so happy and was able to sell the Hopper shortly thereafter for $6,000.
A few days ago, forty-five years later, I was looking at several art auctions online, and the one that caught my eye was an image of “Night Shadows” with an estimated value of $35,000 to $45,000, causing me a moment of regret that I hadn’t had the foresight to keep the etching myself.
II. The Vermont Barn
The second time the doorbell rang was the following Summer. Once again I walked downstairs, opened the door, and found an elegant woman wearing a Tweed two-piece suit, carrying an enormous leather portfolio.
Relieving her of the folio, I invited her in and seated her comfortably so we could converse. She had found the folio in a barn in Vermont and believed it had belonged to her grandfather and decided to drive into Boston to learn what it might contain. Before opening it, I asked the name of her grandfather, and she said: “He lived in California, and I don’t think you would have ever heard of him.” I replied: “As a matter of fact, I grew up in California. What was your grandfather’s name?” She replied that he had been a judge in Sacramento, and his name was Crocker.
Not only did I know the name of her grandfather, I knew his home, a splendid mansion with its substantial art collection he had bequeathed to the municipality after his demise. I also knew that he had studied with a Harvard professor named Paul Sachs and that he had gone on two art buying trips to Europe in the early 1900’s. As a child, I had been fascinated with the mansion, then called The Crocker Art Gallery, and spent many hours looking at the paintings, the heavy Victorian furniture, and a case filled with multi-colored crystal glasses from Bohemia. Further, in high school, with two other students, as a trio we performed all over the city, thanks to the encouragement of our music teacher, Eleanor Morgan, an oboist with the San Francisco Symphony, and we frequently gave recitals in the mansion’s ballroom, without a doubt the most elegant room in Sacramento.
She was surprised by my knowledge of the judge and his collections, and at that point we spread the portfolio out on the rug and opened it. The first work was a large ink drawing in a massive Victorian mat, inscribed in Spencerian script, “Albrecht Dürer”, and, to my surprise, the drawing was signed and dated. The second work was another large and impressive drawing, again in a massive Victorian mat, inscribed “Martin van Heemskerk”, in a handsome Flemish script, also signed and dated by the artist. The third work was inscribed “Hans Holbein”.
All drawings were in excellent condition, and I explained to the woman that we would take the drawings for examination and study when the boss returned, and that was fine with her. I gave her a detailed receipt for the works, and she left to return to Vermont.
During the next couple of weeks I began to study the works, and it seemed that they were, in fact, genuine original drawings by the masters. When Bob returned, he was stunned, because the Dürer was not only original, but had been known only through a single, hundred-year-old photograph. The van Heemskerk, too, was an original drawing by the artist, and the Holbein was a very beautiful contemporary copy. With the owner’s permission, and to her great delight, the Dürer was sold to a major museum for $100,000, and the other drawings were placed in museums for substantial sums, given their age and rarity.
III. The Bonnard Screen
Bob and Don moved to California in 1971, and I opened my own private gallery on Beacon Hill.
One of my clients loved old master drawings, and when I located a work which I thought he might like, I always gave him a first refusal, and over the years, he became a trusted friend.
One day he told me that when his mother died, he and his sister were each bequeathed several valuable works from her collection, and that his sister wanted to sell one to help pay for her daughter’s college tuition, and would I consider assisting her with a private sale, because she didn’t want the publicity of a public auction.
Of course I agreed and asked to see the work in question, which turned out to be a four-panel screen by Pierre Bonnard. Not only was it large and impressive, it was extremely rare, because when it was originally printed in a small edition, almost all the prints in the edition were destroyed by a flood in the Paris printer’s basement storage unit.
At the time, I frequently did business with the Boston Museum, and its curator, Eleanor Sayre, was a discerning and discriminating client who had recently received an award from the Spanish government anointing her a member of the Society of Isabella la Catolica for her contributions in assisting the Prado with their print collection.
Consequently, I set up the Bonnard screen in my dining room and invited Eleanor to lunch, inventing a saffron and squash soup for the first course which I called “Sopa Isabella la Catolica”, and seated her directly across from the Bonnard screen. As I suspected, she was both impressed and amused, and I told her the work was available from a local collection and the owner would be delighted if the screen could somehow remain in Boston. Offering her a first refusal, I suggested she bring her Assistant Curator and the Museum Director over to see piece, and that the price was forty thousand dollars, a high but not unreasonable price at the time.
Two or three weeks went by, and she hadn’t yet responded, and in the interim, the Curator of Prints from Philadelphia paid me a call, and when he saw the screen, without even a second thought he said: “I want that!” I had to inform him I had given Eleanor and the Boston Museum a right of first refusal, and if they did not decide to purchase the piece, he would be next in line. Disappointed, he asked me to let him know as soon as possible.
That same afternoon, I telephoned Eleanor and told her what had transpired, and that I would appreciate her letting me know what she and her colleagues decided. They came over the following day, and agreed it was too fine and rare a work to refuse.
When I told the owner the work was being sold to the Boston Museum and what a price I had set, she was astonished - and also thrilled that the funds would cover her daughter’s tuition for the entire four years of college.
