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Laney Salisbury

Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art Paperback – May 25, 2010

by Laney Salisbury (Author), Aly Sujo (Author)

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The true story of one of the twentieth century's most audacious art frauds

Filled with extraordinary characters and told at breakneck speed, Provenance reads like a well-plotted thriller. But this is most certainly not fiction. It is the astonishing narrative of one of the most far-reaching and elaborate cons in the history of art forgery. Stretching from London to Paris to New York, investigative reporters Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo recount the tale of infamous con man and unforgettable villain John Drewe and his accomplice, the affable artist John Myatt. Together they exploited the archives of British art institutions to irrevocably legitimize the hundreds of pieces they forged, many of which are still considered genuine and hang in prominent museums and private collections today.

Print length

352 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin Books
Publication date

May 25, 2010
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.8 x 8.4 inches
ISBN-10

0143117408
ISBN-13

978-0143117407
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Laney Salisbury, a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, has reported from Africa, the Middle East, and New York. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Aly Sujo was an investigative reporter, part of a husband-and-wife team with Laney Salisbury. He covered arts and entertainment for Reuters, the Associated Press, and the New York Daily News. He died in 2008.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The grand moment in the reception finally arrived. Two white-gloved Tate conservators entered the room with a pair of paintings, each about five feet tall. There was a moment of respectful silence. Myatt was stunned.

“Ahh, the Bissières, how lovely,”someone in the room whispered.

Myatt cringed as the group praised the paintings and Drewe’s taste and generosity. The two works were carried around the room, and long before they reached Myatt, he recognized the faint but acrid smell of the varnish he had sprayed on them when he’d finished them a few weeks earlier.

Myatt gripped his chair. If they so much as touched the canvas with a fine brush, the paint would give way and the game would be up. A little further investigative work would reveal that the pieces—purportedly painted more than forty years earlier—had been made with modern, ordinary house paint.

The reception over, the Tate brass escorted Drewe and Myatt down the winding staircase. Stopping at a landing, one of the officials pointed at a place on the wall and said: “This is where we’ll hang these two wonderful pieces.”

Placing a work at the Tate was a remarkable achievement for any artist—forger or not—but Myatt could see only one possible end to what had transpired. He had survived many low points in his past, but none as low as this. Surely he would end up in prison.

Once in the taxi, Myatt, usually deferential toward Drewe, exploded. “You have to get them back.”

Drewe argued that if they were to ask for the paintings back, it would involve a terrible loss of credibility, putting at risk all the time he had put into cultivating the confidence of the Tate’s archivists. But he also saw that as long as the twoc arelessly done forgeries remained in the hands of museum curators, Myatt would remain paralyzed by the fear that they would be his undoing.

The following day Drewe was back at the Tate to withdraw the Bissières. There was a problem with their provenance, questions having to do with the previous owners. In place of the two works, he was prepared to offer a sizable cash donation to the Tate’s archives.

Within days the Tate received a check for twenty thousand pounds (forty thousand dollars) to help catalog the archives, along with a promise of half a million more to come. With this donation, Drewe established himself as a respected donor for whom the doors of the heavily guarded archival department would stand open. The historical records of one of the world’s great museums, and its cherished credibility, were about to become irreparably compromised.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books (May 25, 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0143117408
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0143117407
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.4 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #680,511 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,916 in Crime & Criminal Biographies
- #3,564 in Art History (Books)
- #16,201 in World History (Books)

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521 global ratings

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MPS

well written and thoroughly researched

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 8, 2022

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Good read with plenty of details of the provenance fraud. It would have been curious to know more details about Drewe but … the truth about pathological liars is buried Under lies.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Bernard . Pucker

Excellent read!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 12, 2012

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Published in 2009 after the death of one of the couple of authors this in depth presentation of an extraordinary series of art and documentation forgeries ever.

Years of research were required to effectively present the deeds or misdeeds of John Drewe who seem to become the characters he pretended to be - a physicist, an heir to a remarkable art collection, a Mossad agent, a consultant to the British Atomic Energy Commission and the list goes on. All the while cleverly documenting and selling "modern masterpieces" to the leading dealers in London and elsewhere.

John Myatt - failed painter is swept into this whirlwind of activity and doing a reasonably good job of creating masterpieces by Ben Nicholson, Roger Bissiere, Braques and Giacometti, Graham Sutherland et al.

Drewe prepared an "authentic" provenance for each work and then used "runners" to present and sell them to the likes of Leslie Waddington, Daniel Stern, Peter Nahum among many others. Upwards of 200 works were made and sold.

Drewe parlayed each meeting and relationship into a probable sale.

Eventually he was caught and convicted but it took hard work, chance and luck to bring him down. He was never repentant and was also not out to embarrass the art world. Rather his success was aided by the lax standards where greed is involved.

Although it is a tale related to the modern art world it seems more a story of the disintegration of moral and ethical standards in our world. The authors simply and clearly describe the facts and the events but the take away for me seems much more tragic and universal.

2 people found this helpful

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William de Rham

A well told tale of forgers, con artists, and art fraud.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 5, 2021

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An absorbing look at the world of art museums and galleries, the importance of archives, art scams and frauds, one very talented painter, an almost revolutionary con man, and the long-running crime that had a lot of experts fooled. A book in which at least one criminal is so likeable we root for him and another is so detestable that readers may actually enjoy detesting him. It gets a little technical in places--a little caught up in the evidence--but on the whole it's a very good story very well told.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Compelling and fast-paced true story

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 21, 2010

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I quickly found myself drawn into this fast-paced story of intrique in the art world. It reads like a novel...except it's all true! Art forgers, scammers, gun runners, museum curators, archivists, Scotland Yard detectives, international intrique. This book has it all.

I believe what alarmed me the most was how easily people were duped by the scheming John Drewe and his art forger, John Myatt. Drewe was the real villain in this tale. Myatt was really the starving artist who was just trying to make a few extra pounds to support his kids. He did not start out as a forger but crossed the line into the deceit through the machinations of Drewe.

I've read Eric Hebborn's Drawn to Trouble where he took great pains to "age" his forgeries, particularly to techniques, papers, oils, and other materials. John Myatt used cheap canvases and cheaper wall paint! Drewe attached fake labels and planted documents in the archives of some of the best museums in the world. Why didn't he get caught sooner? He lied and fabricated stories about himself, his wife, family connections, and just about anything else that would be convenient to his purposes. There is even strong evidence that his actions resulted in the death of a young woman as he tried to cover his trail.

How he managed to fool so many people for so long is at the crux of this story. If you are at all interested in the subject of forgeries and spoofing the hoity-toity of the art world, you will enjoy this book.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Three slight weaknesses in an otherwise admirable book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 9, 2010

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I very much enjoyed this book. I learned quite a lot about how the "art world" works. The story is a compelling one, the research seems solid, the writing is fluent and engaging, and the book is a remarkably easy read when you consider how much technical material is covered in it. The authors have a real knack for descriptive writing, making things that the reader cannot see real and solid in the mind's eye.

However, there were three things that I found frustrating about the book. First, the lack of illustrations -- it seems as if the book would have been stronger if there had been images to help the non-expert understand the ways in which the forged pieces were good and the ways in which they fell short. Second, I was left with real curiosity about what Drewe had been doing prior to this scheme. I wish that the authors had managed to uncover this information. it seems odd to me that where they are willing to make educated guesses (always identified as such!) about other things, they had no theories to advance about this particular point. And finally, I find myself wondering where the painting Myatt says he did not do came from.

These are minor quibbles, and should in no way stop anyone with an interest in art, in confidence games, or in interesting well-told stories from picking this book up and getting a great deal of enjoyment out of it.

7 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Brida

A fascinating read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 15, 2019

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I don't pretend to know anything about art; I know if I like a painting, and for me, that is all that really matters. I appreciate the skill of an artist. But, what really intrigues me is what makes art so desirable that it reaches ridiculously high prices. And why, if a painting fools experts, does its sale price decrease through the floor, when the artist has shown just as much skill as the original artist? Quoting a forger called van Meegeren within this book, this sentiment is also pondered by those who have forged artwork:
"Yesterday, this picture was worth millions of guilders and experts and art lovers would come from all over the world and pay money to see it... Today, it is worth nothing, and nobody would cross the street to see it for free. But the picture has not changed. What has?" (p.238)

Although he was talking specifically about art, this highlights the curious nature of collecting, and what makes one item more desirable than another. What "Provenance" does is to show you how John Drewe recruited John Myatt, and then managed to pull off one of the biggest art cons of recent times. It is a fascinating read, going into a lot of detail - you really do get a good idea of the people as they really are. It is incredible to think that Drewe was able to get away with this for so long. And it raises fascinating questions around art and the art world.

One person found this helpful

Bryn's Barkery

A Must-Read!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 12, 2015

Verified Purchase

I am so glad I had the opportunity of reading this book. I first heard about the very talented John Myatt via a painting programme on TV, then again in another series. His history piqued my interest, and I bought the book - and it's one of the best books I've read (and I read a lot of books.) As others have commented, it's extremely well-written and packed with fascinating information about the art world both historical and contemporary. John's role in the "crime" was, I believe, a result of being easily-led by a greedy trickster, and John took his punishment and has come out the other side a better person for it. The book really does read like a novel, and I finished the book in record time because I couldn't put it down. I would recommend this book to anyone, regardless of whether they had an interest in art (as I do) or not.

8 people found this helpful

Andy G

Truth is stranger than fiction

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 13, 2013

Verified Purchase

I first came across this story watching a documentary on the Crime and Investigation Network. I could not believe the complexity and sophistication of the scam perpetrated by John Drewe and his accomplices. Surely no one could get away with such an audacious scheme for so long. The whole thing seemed like something from a movie script. I wanted to know more, so I picked up this little volume.

This book is a thoroughly researched and insightful treatment of what were a truly remarkable series of real-life events. The writing is engaging and never dull; even when it comes to discussing the finer points of art history; and the colourful cast of characters are really brought to life by the author's literary style. If I had one complaint, it would be that the constant shift in narrative perspective becomes a little wearing. While the approach works when dealing with primary characters, it is less effective, perhaps even a little confusing, when it involves minor characters who only pop up once or twice. That, however, is a small complaint. All in all I recommend this book as well worth a read!

4 people found this helpful

Lynn McGilvray Douglas

Riveting true story.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 20, 2017

Verified Purchase

This is a can't put down book ! An intoxicating page turner and a book waiting to be filmed. An astonishing true story which opens up the seedier side of the art world with a fantastic fast paced account of this most elaborate of con's. The big disappointment was the complete lack of any illustrations of the forged paintings and drawings or photographs of those involved, which for me would have given more substance and interest to the book.

2 people found this helpful

Jacqueline Ledder

Great read if you like art

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 10, 2019

Verified Purchase

Excellent read. Particularly if you like art and it’s history. Unbelievable how the art world could be conned in this way. I enjoyed thinking there are still lots of forgeries out there that no-one knows about.

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