Rare Traits (The Rare Traits Trilogy Book I) Page 14

Chapter 13 : July 2009

  Claudia and Ced were still staring at the image of the shepherd on the Piero della Francesca painting when Sally returned home. They told her what they’d found but having never met John Andrews, she could only take Claudia’s word on the resemblance.

  “I’ll search the internet for a photo of him,” said Ced. “He’s probably got a website.”

  But there was nothing. The only time John Andrews’ name appeared was among lists of exhibitors in minor exhibitions.

  “I can’t believe it,” frowned Ced. “He’s an artist; they all want to put themselves out there.”

  He scratched his head as he stared at the screen. “You know, I can’t help but believe this is important. I mean, he’s got a DNA profile that’s off the scale; he’s an amazingly talented artist and now we’ve found his face in a famous Renaissance painting. And then there are those landscapes.”

  He turned to Sally and Claudia. “Listen, tomorrow’s a holiday, I think I’ll drive up to the Lakes to get a look at him. Do you want to come along, Claw?”

  Claudia pursed her lips. “I don’t think he should know we know each other. I don’t want to tempt fate; he might change his mind and report me to the police.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, Claw. Don’t want to risk your career any further than you have already, although I think you’d look pretty sexy in prisoner’s uniform.”

  “Oy, Fisher, watch it!” said Sally, throwing a cushion at him.

  “Hey,” she added, “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you see if you can get a photo of him with this new digital toy you bought me?” She turned to a cupboard and retrieved a camera.

  Ced looked sceptical. “Oh yeah, Sal, he’s really going to agree to a snap of him posing next to one of his paintings.”

  “You’re a forensic scientist, hon. I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

  The following morning Ced set off early, and by ten thirty he was standing outside John Andrews’ gallery looking at the paintings displayed in the window. He was immediately struck by their quality as he carefully assessed each one. One of the landscapes showed a country house set in a valley among formal gardens. He remembered one of the images on Claudia’s phone – it had reminded him of something. This painting did the same and after staring at it for some moments, he realised the something was the work of another artist. What was his name? Frustrated, he pulled out his Blackberry and opened the web browser. He trawled through a number of sites, his eyes scanning the images on each. Then he tapped the screen and smiled. “Got it!”

  The gallery was busy, giving him the chance to explore the paintings undisturbed. He walked towards a central display from where he could see a middle-aged woman in earnest conversation with a man casually dressed in beige chinos and a red and white checked shirt who was showing her a small, framed painting. As the man looked up to explain a point, Ced stopped in his tracks. He had to be John Andrews: his face was straight out of the painting he had been examining on his computer the previous evening.

  Ced slowly worked his way around the gallery, taking in both the landscapes and the portraits, occasionally looking over to where John was continuing to explain a number of his paintings to the woman. After some minutes, he lifted one of the landscapes from the wall and took it and a smaller work to the back of the gallery. The woman followed brandishing a credit card. After wrapping the paintings and bidding farewell to its new owner, John turned his attention to Ced.

  “Are you interested in a landscape or a portrait? I couldn’t help noticing that you were looking at both.” He walked up to Ced and held out his hand.

  “I’m John Andrews,” he said. “Please, take your time to browse my work.”

  “Thanks,” replied Ced, shaking his hand and staring rather more intently into John’s pale grey eyes than he intended. The features were even more remarkable now that the man’s face was close to him.

  “Ced. Ced Fisher. I’m, er, I’m very taken by your work; it’s very unusual.”

  “That’s normally a polite code for people saying they either don’t like it or it’s too expensive,” smiled John.

  Ced laughed. “On the contrary, I think your work is, well frankly, I think it’s stunning. I’m amazed that I haven’t come across it before. And as for the prices, given the quality, I think these are bargains.”

  “That’s very kind,” said John.

  “I’m fascinated by your style,” continued Ced. “Your portraits seem to have more than a little of the Renaissance about them. Is the Renaissance a strong influence for you?”

  John looked at him thoughtfully, not replying immediately. Then he said, “Yes, I suppose it is. I’ve always liked the work of the Renaissance artists and that seems to come through in my work. It doesn’t help, I’m afraid, since many people find it rather old-fashioned — stereotyped, if you like. However, that’s the way it is.”

  Ced’s thoughts were still focussed on art forgery.

  “I was wondering,” he said, “if you undertake commissions?”

  “Certainly I do,” nodded John. “If there’s a particular view in the Lakes that you like, I’d be delighted. Alternatively, if you’re thinking of a portrait of yourself, or your wife, girlfriend, kids. I don’t normally need to arrange many sittings. But I prefer not to work from photographs; they simply don’t have the dimensional depth.”

  Ced nodded. “I know what you mean. Paintings based on photographs always look exactly that: paintings of photographs. What about other work? Say I’d like a copy of a famous painting, do you take on that sort of commission as well?”

  John smiled and shook his head. “No, not any more. Not since I was a student.”

  He paused and it seemed to Ced that his eyes were looking through him to somewhere else. Another place and time. John continued talking. “I have more than enough work to keep me occupied full time. I don’t have the need or desire to copy other people’s work.”

  While they were talking, Ced had picked up a framed portrait of a young girl who bore a strong likeness to John himself.

  “Was this a commission?” he asked.

  “No, that’s one of a number I painted earlier in the year of my younger daughter. I didn’t need to keep them all so I decided to sell some of them. They’ve been rather popular. That’s the last of them.”

  “It’s beautiful,” replied Ced, scrutinising the painting closely and nodding in recognition. “That Renaissance influence is really there. I’m a big fan of the Italian painter Piero della Francesca; I take it that you are familiar with his work.”

  More than you could ever know, thought John.

  “Yes,” he said, “I think Piero’s work is brilliant. He was a true craftsman and a revolutionary in his time.”

  Ced looked up from the painting. “I hope you don’t mind me saying, but thinking of Piero has answered a question for me. When I first walked in here and saw you, I thought that perhaps we’d met before, but now I realise that your face is similar to one I’ve seen in one of Piero’s paintings. How incredible.”

  John tried to hide his concern. “A number of people have said the same. I often wonder if one of my distant ancestors was a friend of Piero’s.”

  “You know, it could be more than one painting,” continued Ced, as he looked more intently at John’s face. “I’d need to look again through the Piero catalogue, but…”

  He stopped, realising that John was looking somewhat uncomfortable. He thought it would be better to make light of it.

  “I suppose it’s not that surprising that the same face would appear in a number of works by an artist. After all, once you’ve got a good model, why not use him or her.”

  John didn’t reply. He felt suddenly ill at ease with this man asking him questions. While he couldn’t avoid it from time to time, he still didn’t like associations with the past being noticed.

  Ced looked from John to the portrait of his daughter and back again, noting her pale grey eyes. “Well, whatever the expla
nation, judging from your daughter’s features, the genes in your family must be pretty strong.”

  John decided to change the subject. “How did you develop an interest in Piero? Have you been on holiday to Tuscany? I hear there’s a so-called Piero della Francesca Trail now.”

  Ced smiled. “Yes, I’ve been there and followed part of it, seeking out the original works. Amazing stuff. I’ve been interested in Piero’s work for a long time. My work is connected to artists’ styles. I studied fine art at university and then computing. I’m doing some research into the image analysis of paintings to see if it’s possible to identify what’s called a style signature for a specific artist.”

  Ced thought it best to avoid mention of art fraud.

  John raised a sceptical eyebrow.

  “Style signature?”

  “Yes, I think that once an artist has developed his style, it should be apparent in all his work. It’s what art experts are looking for when they visually examine paintings. What I’m trying to do is computerise it.”

  “Personally, I’d doubt that you’re going to get a computer to achieve what art experts often get wrong. I agree that all artists develop a style, but whether you could always see it is another matter. An artist’s style isn’t that difficult for another accomplished artist to copy, you know. Look at the huge number of copies that are produced of famous works. Some of them are brilliant. And good artists can mimic different styles if they want to. There have been many occasions when top experts have been fooled by copies and I’m sure there are many paintings out there still fooling them.”

  “I’d agree that it’s difficult,” replied Ced, “but where the computer has an advantage is that it can perform any number of endless comparisons of the minutiae of a painting, stroke by stroke; something that ultimately you couldn’t do with a visual examination. What I’m talking about here goes further than an artist’s style, which I agree can be copied. The style signature is a subconscious thing, not something the artist is in control of. I believe that once an artist has developed his style signature – has matured if you like – it will be there in all his work, albeit very subtly. Tell me, as a skilled artist, how easy do you think it would be to copy a work from, say, five hundred years ago? Copy it so well that it couldn’t be detected?”

  “You mean make a forgery?”

  Ced saw that John had raised his eyebrows at him in surprise.

  “Um, yes and no, I don’t mean for criminal purposes necessarily,” he lied. “I mean for someone who might want to own a very special work, one truly produced in the way an old master produced it.”

  “That would involve using all the relevant materials from the period, but I really don’t think that people who commission top copies of old masters care whether the materials used are the same, as long as the painting looks like the original. In fact, they would probably want to be assured that their money had been spent on something that was likely to last; that the colours wouldn’t fade and the painting wouldn’t separate from the ground layer. However, if you mean forgeries that are intended to fool the art world, there have been countless attempts. But it’s very hard to outwit a modern scientific analysis. It wouldn’t only be the paint that was used, but also the substrate for the painting — the canvas, or for early Renaissance work, the tavola. You’d have to get hold of genuine fifteenth century pieces of wood. As for frescos, they are painted on walls and ceilings, so you couldn’t just produce one out of a hat. Those that remain are well known. It’s very unusual for a new work to emerge, as happened with ‘The Awakening’ a few years ago. And that went through a huge barrage of tests for authenticity. No, I don’t think it could be done; there would always be differences.”

  “I tend to agree with you,” nodded Ced, “but not everyone has the resources to pay for a detailed analysis. Of course, there have been cases where a copy has been produced to replace an original. More than one museum or gallery around the world has paintings on display that are thought to be valuable old masters when the truth is that what they have adorning their walls are copies, the originals being in some rich and crooked collector’s treasure trove.

  “You know,” he went on, hoping to steer the conversation towards his eventual goal, “it would be fascinating to compare the work of someone with your skill with the old masters. I wonder, would you agree to me using my computer analysis techniques on your work and comparing your style with Piero and his contemporaries to see how much of their technique comes through in yours?”

  John was horrified, realising that if such an analysis were successful, it would reveal more than a connection with Piero; it would link him with many of his own paintings over the last five hundred years. Feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the way the conversation was going, he thought it was really time to get rid of this persistent young man.

  “What would be the point?” he said, looking at his watch. “Do you think I am forging old masters?”

  Ced saw the unsubtle hint but chose to ignore it.

  “Not at all. As I say, it would be fascinating to see if the various influences can be identified.”

  “I really don’t see any value in it.” John was dismissive. “Surely it would be better to compare the contemporary works of the period with each other to see how much influence one artist had on another at the time, all assuming, of course, that your approach works.”

  “Well, for the older works,” countered Ced, “it’s harder than you might think. For the more minor artists, there is often great debate about the authenticity of a painting, so it’s difficult to establish a starting point. Even for a well-known artist like Piero, there is still a lot of debate over exactly when he lived and was painting. It seems fairly certain that he died in late 1492 but his birth date isn’t known precisely.”

  He was born, thought John, on June 1, 1412, fifteen years to the day before I was. We were always amused by the coincidence.

  Ced continued. “To have a modern painter who paints very much in the style of the old masters would give a very valuable reference point since there would be no doubt over the origin of his works, while at the same time they couldn’t be confused with older works since the artist clearly couldn’t have been involved in painting them.”

  Oh, how wrong you are, young man, thought John.

  “The whole process is really very straightforward,” continued Ced, “and would cause you no inconvenience. Since I normally can’t move the paintings I’m examining, the imaging equipment is designed to be totally portable.”

  John held up his hands and shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m really not convinced by all this. Supposing I were to agree to this imaging and supposing, just for a moment, that my technique is as good as you seem to think it is and you can’t find any difference between my style and Piero’s. What’s that going to prove? Simply that your method isn’t working since, as you have so rightly pointed out, I cannot have been involved with paintings by a man who has been dead for several centuries.”

  “It would mean that my technique wasn’t sensitive enough, that it needed refining further. In fact it would be a great test for the analysis.”

  “Perhaps,” said John, “but it seems to me that your idea of what research is all about is wrong. Surely the point is to develop a theory, test it thoroughly and if it fails the test, then reject it. You shouldn’t develop a theory and then mould the testing to prove it; that would be bad science as well as being a waste of time and money. Who is funding this wild goose chase anyway?”

  “I couldn’t agree more about the principles of research,” replied Ced. “Every researcher should keep an open mind and be prepared to see his theory collapse. I just don’t think I’m at that stage yet. As for my research, it’s funded using money – a very modest amount I should add – from an Arts Council grant. The equipment is all fairly standard and not very costly in the scheme of things. The complicated part is the development of the software and I do that largely in my own time.
I’m prepared to do so because I think my research could have long term benefits to the art world.”

  But not my world, thought John.

  “Well, I’m afraid you haven’t convinced me and I don’t want my gallery cluttered up with scientific equipment. We’re coming into the summer season when I sell most of my work. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. There must be other artists out there who are less busy and who could help your research.”

  Ced felt that he’d really gone far enough. He didn’t want to alienate Andrews completely. He’d prefer to try to leave a door open so that he could return later. As he was musing on this, he realised that he’d picked up the portrait of Andrews’ daughter.

  “I don’t think there are artists with your skill, particularly in the techniques from the early Renaissance. However, it’s your decision and I have to respect it.”

  He held up the portrait.

  “I’ve been looking again at this wonderful portrait of your daughter. What price are you asking for it?”

  Taking the portrait from him, John turned it over and pointed to a label.

  “It’s marked up at £2000, but I’ve been thinking about it too. My wife was very reluctant for me to put it on sale even though we have others,” he lied. “I think I’m going to accede to her wishes, so I’m afraid it’s no longer on sale.” He gave Ced a cold smile and put the painting to one side.

  He must be well pissed with me, thought Ced. What has he got to hide?

  Ced decided on a parting shot.

  “I was wondering if perhaps you are familiar with the work of Francesco Moretti, the wartime artist? He produced many paintings of the bomb damage in London, but he also specialised in works showing lakes, gardens and large country houses.”

  He was surprised at the effect this seemingly innocent question had on Andrews. The colour drained from his face and he became distinctly agitated.

  “I’ve, er, I’ve heard of him, of course, but only vaguely. I’m not really familiar with his work,” he stuttered, looking around as if he was suddenly desperate to escape.

  John’s reply surprised Ced. Moretti was quite well known. And now he was dead his work had increased substantially in value. A landscape artist should certainly know his work.

  “Why do you ask about Moretti?” John’s question was guarded.

  “Well, it’s just that while we’ve been talking, I’ve been looking at those paintings over there.”

  Ced pointed to two large pastoral scenes, the central focus of each of which was a fine country house with a lake and gardens. “There’s also one in your gallery window.”

  “I’ve studied Moretti’s work quite extensively,” he lied, “and all three of these works could have been painted by him.”

  As John watched Ced Fisher turn on his toes and walk from the gallery, his mind was spinning furiously.

  Francesco Moretti. If Fisher had noticed a link, how long would it take for him to recognise links with other artists he had been? He clearly knew his art and the computer analysis was potentially a serious problem.

  Ced Fisher was unaware of John Andrews’ dilemma. He was angry with himself for having alienated the man, as well as being even more confused by him. Why did he have such an attitude? He was a professional artist who lived by selling his paintings. Not only that, he was an exceptional artist in a world full of talented artists. Why wouldn’t he want to participate in a comparison with the old masters? OK, maybe not participate, but why so negative? What had the man got to hide?

  Perhaps he is involved in the forgery game after all, mused Ced. Perhaps he has a lot to hide. Maybe I’ve struck gold and found a master forger hiding away in the innocent recesses of the Lake District.

  He returned to his car. Having now more or less convinced himself of Andrews’ criminality, he decided that a photograph of Andrews would be very useful, although he wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do with it apart from compare it with faces in five-hundred-year-old paintings. He drove the car to a spot on the other side of the road from the gallery, parked and waited, feeling extremely self-conscious.

  After an hour, he saw John coming out of the gallery with his wife, who must have returned while Ced was fetching his car. Ced fired off half a dozen shots zoomed in on John’s face. He was about to drive away when he remembered the photographs Claudia had taken on her mobile phone of the landscapes in the gallery window. Their quality wasn’t good enough for serious comparison work and although Sally’s camera was still only a point-and-shoot, it had a far better image quality than a mobile phone. But to get some half-decent shots, he would have to get closer and to do that he needed to wait until the gallery closed and Andrews had left.

  He sat up and looked around at the hills stretching up behind Grasmere. He had his running shoes and some kit in the boot of his car. What better way to pass a few hours than pounding the paths and hills of the Lake District?