The Crow's Nest 10

10

            I relate what happened to the portraits.  Becoming part of my stock by purchase, I … ”put them away” meaning I leaned them up in a warehouse, high, dry, dark, cool and safe.  Of course I read the penciled names but did nothing more.  “I will wait” I said “until she is dead”.  I did this.  By then I TOO understood that … “Do you know their names?”  I certainly do.  “Will you tell me the names?”  I certainly will not. …was THE appropriate historic AND commercial directive.

            The paintings themselves were “what they are”.  At the best possible they …could… be attributed to a regional Boston – coastal Maine portrait painter hoping for a high point of, for example, Chester Harding who painted just such ilk without hesitation or signing them:  A professional Maine couple in Boston for the week, pre-painted body forms on prepared canvases waiting in the artist’s studio, a sitting for two, the faces painted in, the finished and still wet portraits crated in their frames for the ride back home in Maine.  Harding has received more attention in recent decades just because he DID paint portraits of people like this.  His portraits are a one on a scale of one to ten.  A ten, should one need example, is John Singer Sargent’s “DAUGHTERS OF EDWARD DARLEY BOIT”.  THAT portrait is an example of an artist who could paint… when painting a portrait,  THESE portraits were an example of a job painter getting money from aspiring middle class climbers who …knew nothing about art;  They received exactly what they paid for… and were very pleased and proud.  For the mother, it is a credit to HER art sense that SHE knew they were “no good” and evidently determined this HERSELF; through her self-education of art in her lifetime.  In the end she succeeded in bettering herself to her great grandparents through the very medium of THEIR self betterment.  WOULD they be proud of her?  And further… and I include the selling of the portraits to me…, are these actions by the mother (her efforts at erasing the family trail) THE CULTURAL APEX of this family?

            The commercial finalization of these portraits was based on the above denotations.  I understood that …I… should not mention the names in pencil.  Further I understood that the portraits were not to be sold by ME, a known professional, for I would then “be asked” … a whole bunch of stupid art & history questions about them.  No… I need not purvey them at a high bar to … get the most money.  Why?  Because within the antiques and fine arts trades are… a very large group of… aspiring middle class climbers who… are “dealers” …by their self appointment and… business card.  For I to get the absolute most easily accessible money for these …oil on canvas in original frames untouched, as found… was very simple.  I had a fellow-yet-much less-known dealer friend simply show up with them at a country auctioneer’s office …with a few more “similar such” items and …cool & calmly… consign them to auction without comment.  From there after, antiquarian sleuth took it’s course.  Of course the auctioneer found the penciled names.  Of course he considered them fine-getting-finer fine art once the “names were found” and “Probably a Boston ARTIST like HARDING”.  Of course he couldn’t keep the lid on this COMMERCIAL sunrise so…:  In come the competing sea of above described business card foisting dealers who… never speak to or acknowledge each other except in candy sweet kisses and … that NEVER mention their commercial interest in a pair of …just-not-quite-yet-discovered “IMPORTANT” “MAINE” prominent merchant family portraits… that …throughout the whole commercial procedure… have nobody ever mention anything about …anything.

            The bidding rises.  The hammer drops.  The portraits are “discovered”, even getting a tiny photograph-with-note in an antiques dealer trade journal.  They are professionally “cleaned”, “restored”, “researched”, “attributed”, including the frames.  They appear with splendor “for sale”; offered with pride and prize by “that kind of dealer” who sell them to “that kind of collector” who …with pride and prize… hang them in their home and “lend them” to a local historical society.

            My associate receives the check and a slap on the back from the auctioneer,  “BRING ME SOME MORE LIKE THOSE!”.  Don’t worry, WE WILL.