The Art Forger, a Novel, which will be released in late
October. is a delightful novel of
intrigue that involves questions of forgery, the still unsolved March 1990
heist from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, a blackballed artist
whom nobody believed had been the actual painter of a purported masterpiece by
her lover, an improbable artistic triumph, and the imagined relationship
between Gardner and Edgar Degas. The theme of the story seams to question
whether experts and art lovers see what they want to see and authentic works of
suspect origin to protect the name of a venerable institution or from a more
base perception to protect a valuable asset.
I found the novel particularly
fascinating given the recent exposes in Vanity Fair and the New York papers
regarding the questioned provenance of several paintings sold by a well known
esteemed gallery that has since shuttered its doors. This story resonates
because we all know that even the most well regarded experts have been fooled.
It makes one wonder how many museums unknowingly display wrongly attributed
works.
While the novel starts off a bit
slow, within a few chapters it picks up and reeled me in like a prize fish.
This is a great story and I can see this ultimately made into a successful
film.
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