Portraits of Pretence

Book 4 in the Sam Plank Mystery Series
Author:  Susan Grossey

Review by:  Arthur Tompkins

Constable Sam Plank is a magistrate’s constable in seventeenth century Regency London. In Portraits of Pretence (available in paperback and Kindle formats at Amazon) the fourth Sam Plank novel, Susan Grossey weaves an elegant and polished tale of art crime, forgery, falsified provenance, smuggling, clandestine collecting, dubious art dealers and untimely death, all against a backdrop of the evocative sights, sounds, smells and ambience of crowded and bustling Regency London.

Susan Grossey is, by day, a specialist in combating money laundering, and also the author of the (now) four Sam Plank mysteries (her Amazon author’s page can be found here). In Constable Sam Plank she has created a gentle, thoughtful, careful, indomitable and very likeable investigator of crime in the heart of England’s great capital.  In the first three Sam Plank novels, Sam tackled financial forgery and bank fraud (Fatal Forgery, set in 1824), investment fraud (The Man in the Canary Waistcoat, set in 1825) and blackmail and corruption (Worm in the Blossom, set in 1826). This time around, it is the spring of 1827 and Sam is plunged into the art market and the criminal dishonesty that swirls in and around it in post-Napoleonic England and Europe. An elderly French artist is found dead, clutching an exquisite miniature painted on ivory in his hand.  The trail leads through the vaults under the then newly-built Customs House in riverside London, visits to the blockade-men stationed in Kent, and in and out of various salubrious and not-so salubrious rooms of artists and dealers in London.

Constable Plank is ably assisted in his investigation, as he was in his earlier outings, by his indomitable and perceptive wife, Martha, his able and swift-to-learn (although not always, in matters of the heart) junior constable William, and a widening circle of memorable supporting characters – some based on historical figures, others plausible and fascinating characters circulating in the milieu of a London bursting at the seams and flexing its commercial, financial and international muscle as it enters the period when Great Britain would dominate the known world.

Ms Grossey is meticulous in her research. Her characters’ language, the streets and the buildings they inhabit, and the street-level topography of central London they walk by day and by night, are a delight. To read the story is to live in the streets of a London on the brink of global greatness, thronged by a deeply rich tapestry of life’s all-too-human variety.  The tone of the novel and the writing throughout is eminently readable and light-handed (a not inconsiderable authorial achievement), and briskly-paced.

The historical background is accurate, but not overpowering – personally I liked the passing and accurate references to the historical development of the protection and repatriation of cultural property plundered in war, and various facets of art crime itself. The many manifestations of art crime that Sam encounters are illuminating, especially for students of contemporary art crime, who will quickly realise that nothing that lies beneath the glittering surface of today’s art world is new, and that the same dark currents twisted and ran riot two centuries ago just as they do now.

Three more Sam Plank mysteries are scheduled, the next one due out (a reliable source tells me) in October 2018...

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Arthur Tompkins is a sitting District Court Judge based in Wellington and one of the founders of the New Zealand Art Crime Research Trust.  For 8 years now he has taught the Art in War course module for the annual Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Heritage Protection presented by the Association for Research into Crimes against Art in Amelia, Umbria, Italy. He has lectured around New Zealand and abroad on art crime, and is a regular art-crime guest on Kim Hill’s Saturday Morning show on National Radio.

A 170-year-old painting of the Great Falls over the Passaic River has been reported stolen from inside the director's office Paterson Museum in Paterson, New Jersey. 

The paintings was set to be displayed in an upcoming exhibition honoring the 225th anniversary of the Society for Establishing Useful Manufacturers, a group of industrialists led by Alexander Hamilton who helped give birth to America's first planned industrial city by harnessing the hydro power of the Great Falls for the city's manufacturing mills.

Outline of Theft

Theft Venue: The Paterson Museum

Location: Lower Market Street in the Great Falls historic district of Paterson, Passaic County, New Jersey

Location in Venue: Stolen from a stack of paintings secured in the director's office for an upcoming exhibition

Victim (Owner): James Eifler, collector (Painting was on loan to the museum)

Time of Theft:  Actual date and time of theft unknown, but likely within the week leading up to its announced theft on November 14, 2016 and during the period where Election Day and Veterans Day made for a shortened work week. It has been speculated that the painting was possibly stolen during the day as the building's security alarm and motion detectors were not triggered.
Open/Closed: Unknown

Duration of Crime: Unknown

When Discovered: Not immediately, the museum director, Giacomo DeStefano, has stated that there were no signs of a break-in at the museum.  DeStefano gave statements saying that the artwork had been stored in his first-floor office inside the museum and he realized it was missing on Monday, November 14, 2016. 

Primary Object(s) Taken: Untitled, unsigned oil-on-wood painting depicting the Great Falls, appraised at approximately $9,000 prior to the theft.  Painting is believed to have been painted by an unknown artist sometime in the 1840s.  This date is given as there is a wooden bridge depicted in the landscape across the falls from that era.

Category of Art Object(s): oil on wood painting, approximately 60 cm x 60 cm

Ancillary Object(s) Touched: None, The unnamed Great Falls painting was one of two loaned to the museum for the upcoming exhibition by Eifler.  The second painting, by 19th-century landscape artist Julian Walbridge Rix, was more valuable than the unsigned work, yet it was left untouched in the same office. The museum's director has speculated that the thief may have chosen the unsigned painting as it was slightly smaller than the Rix work.

Ancillary Object(s) Taken: None

Clues Left at Crime Scene: None mentioned in museum's public statements

Suspected Related Crimes: None mentioned in police reports

Entry Method: Thief or thieves walked into the director's office and removed the painting.  The director has stated that his office door is kept locked, except during business hours.

Exit Method: Unknown, the museum is not equipped with CCTV. 

Operational Method: Unknown

Other Notes: The paintings owner, James Eifler has publically speculated that the thief was likely familiar with the museum’s gallery and office areas and was perhaps aware that there are no CCTV cameras in the museum.

According to court documents, in 2005, the paintings owner was charged with insurance fraud for submitting false claims to State Farm about his tools being stolen. Eifler was paid $3,800 for his claim, but the insurance company then contacted law enforcement authorities when he submitted additional claims totalling $12,000 in losses according to the New Jersey Attorney General's Office.  Eifler was later convicted of two counts of insurance fraud, fined $600 and sentenced to probation for one year.

Probable Motive: possibly financial

Follow-up after Post-theft: According to museum director DeStefano, the museum will undergo a review of its security process. Paterson police are checking video footage from other security cameras in Paterson in the area as part of their investigation.  Deputy Police Chief Heriberto Rodriguez is leading the investigation into the theft.

Revised Motive Theory: No details released publically

Arrests: None

Total Length of Investigation: Ongoing

Evidence Used In Prosecution: No details released publically

Criminal Sentencing: Not applicable at this time

Artwork Recovered: No

For information on this theft, please contact the Paterson Police Department's Major Crimes division.

Officer in Charge: Detective Captain Heriberto Rodriguez

Office: (973) 321-1120

Fax: (973) 321-1122

Email: hrodriguez@patersonpd.com

One-day Provenance Research colloquium

Location: 

Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich Germany

Date:  

30 November 2016

Cost: 

The colloquium is free to the public and registration is not required

Note: 

Language of the colloquium is German and English

The Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, or ZI for short, in Munich is Germany's only independent art historical research institute. The last panel of the day is worth pondering: is provenance research an academic discipline or an investigative pursuit?

ARCA thinks it is both and for that reason has incorporated a provenance training course into our 2016 postgraduate program lineup.

From the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte website:

"The ZI was founded in 1946/1947 as an independent research institute in direct connection with the Central Collecting Point (CCP) of the American military government in the former Administrative Building of the National Socialist party. For over 20 years the institute has been researching and publishing its findings on the art history of National Socialism and that of the immediate postwar era. In the specific area of “Provenance Research / Value of Cultural Assets” numerous research, inventory, digitization and database projects have been initiated by the ZI and achieved with various national and international collaborative partners."

A PDF of the day's program can be accessed here.

The event, organized by CAMNES (Center for Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies), in collaboration with the Municipality of Florence (UNESCO Office) and the Academy of Arts and Design of Florence, on the occasion of the anniversary of the inscription of the Historic Center of Florence in the UNESCO World Heritage List, which took place on December 17, 1982, is a part of active collaboration between the city of Florence and UNESCO and follows the latest initiatives, such as the third UNESCO Forum on cultural industries in 2014 and the recent global summit of Mayors 'Unity in Diversity 2015', after which the Charter of Florence was signed.

On the basis of what is reported in the Charter of Florence to the points set forth below this event will:

• support the UNESCO campaign #United4Heritage regarding the defense of the cultural heritage; encourage the establishment of scientific committees in support of the "Blue Helmets of Culture" - promoted by the Italian government - and support programs of international cooperation for the preservation and protection of heritage;

• make available to UNESCO and its National Commissions, Governments and local administrations a network of specialists, particularly in the field of conservation and heritage management, in order to activate a protection network of cultural and natural heritage, endangered by conflicts and natural disaster events;

CAMNES and the Municipality of Florence (UNESCO Office) have constituted a Scientific and Organizing Committee, which met in Florence on June 28th with the specific purpose to define and organize this upcoming event. The project behind this conference is based on the fact that the scientific community of archaeologists of the Near East is able to make an active and important contribution in addressing not only academic and field research issues, but most importantly those related to prevention, conservation and enhancement of archaeological and cultural heritage in contexts currently affected by conflicts, more specifically Iraq and Syria.

For these reasons they felt necessary to bring together all the scholars of this discipline – currently active, involved or potentially interested in projects of excavations and research in Syria and Iraq - with the aim of producing concrete proposals and projects based on the following topics:

HERITAGE AT RISK: elements related to specific contexts and issues pertaining to the critical assessment of specialists. Analysis of specific issues regarding archaeological sites, architectural monuments and museums in the affected areas, as well as preventive mode of action.

LOCAL STRATEGIES OF PROTECTION / OPERATIONAL MODELS: identification and development - including a critical approach to the past – of new research and conservation methodologies, which satisfy the changing requirements of action and the necessities imposed by specific contexts. Already implemented best practices/projects to be disseminated and shared in integrated projects developed jointly by various actors. Rules, laws and bureaucracy issues, including questions related to the illicit trafficking in antiquities. 

ARCHAEOLOGIST AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION IN THE CONTEXT OF CRISIS: archaeology, as a social science, is strongly connected with the contemporary society. Archaeologists as "cultural mediators" – between, on the one hand, cultures of the past and present and, on the other, between the Western culture and those of  host countries - in addition to the official relations with the local authorities, operate completely immersed in the socio-cultural areas in which they operate; archaeologists’ privileged position, rendering them both witnesses and sources of information in times of conflict and crisis.

PUBLIC ARCHAEOLOGY and COMMUNICATION: analysis of critical issues pertinent to the relationship with local communities ("Local perception of cultural heritage") for the protection and enhancement of heritage. Development of communication and dissemination strategies based on activities undertaken and planned by archaeologists on-site.

STAKEHOLDERS: avenues of interaction with the scientific community and institutions in host countries (regarding both excavations and museums). Issues relating to training of the local staff.

For a detailed list of the event's Programme as well as details on the Scientific and Organizing Committee please see the CAMNES website here.

Posted BY:  Summer Clowers

In 1446, Michelangelo Buonarroti sculpted a sleeping cupid out of marble and buried it in "sour" earth. This acidic dirt made the sculpture appear much older than it really was. The cupid was sold as an antiquity through a dealer to Cardinal Raffaelle Riario di San Giorgio. Someone informed the cardinal that he had been duped and he demanded his money back; he gave up an original Michelangelo, which undoubtedly would be worth a fortune today. This cupid ended up in the d'Este collection in Mantua, but unfortunately, is lost today.

Yesterday, at a much talked about media event at the Academy of Architecture in Paris, Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, a professor emerita in art history at the University of Toronto presented the findings of her new book, Vincent Van Gogh: The Lost Arles Sketchbook.  The book contains a grouping of sixty-five previously unknown sketches, primarily drawn using a reed pen with brown ink, which the historian asserts is a long-lost sketchbook, made up of drawings done by the artist while he lived in the south of France.  

Historically, there are four confirmed Van Gogh sketchbooks which encompass 150 drawings from the artist's stays in Antwerp, Nuenen, Paris and Auvers-sur-Oise. All four of the previously known sketchbooks are part of the Van Gogh Museum collection in Amsterdam and are meticulously stored in their prints and drawings archive, away from public view due to their sensitivity to light. 

These recognized sketchbooks contain rudimentary sketches and figure studies, with only a few more detailed and elaborate compositions. One of these, a sketchbook with a marbled inside cover, contains some of the artist's first known drawings of people and places. This sketchbook captures the rural life of the artist's stay in Nuenen. 

This pocket-sized sketchbook contains Van Gogh's sketch of the church in Nuenen. This not only dates the sketchbook, but it helps to authenticate the oil on canvas painting he later completed for his mother, Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church at Nuenen which was stolen from the Van Gogh Museum in 2002 and then recovered 14 years later in Italy. 

The newly discovered  40.5 by 26 centimeters sketchbook presented in Paris this month contains among other drawings, a self-portrait as well as portraits of bar-owners Marie and Joseph Ginoux, the artist Paul Gauguin, and a series of landscapes and still lifes.  There are also three sketches of the Yellow House on Place Lamartine in Arles.  Van Gogh rented four rooms in the now famous house on May 1, 1888. 

But the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is not convinced of the sketchbook's authenticity.  On the basis of 56 high-quality photographs sent to the museum for consultation in 2008 and 2012, their experts gave an early opinion on its sketchbook's authenticity – an opinion omitted in this recent publication, most likely at the behest of the owners of the would-be Van Gogh album.

Citing the type of ink represented in the drawings, (Van Gogh used purple and black ink) the state of the paper and deviations in the technical skills and characteristic style of the famous artist's other sketchbooks, experts at the museum do not believe that these drawings are the authentic work of Vincent Van Gogh.  In a harsh rebuttal they stated that "the drawing style of the maker of the drawings in The Lost Arles Sketchbook is, in the opinion of our experts, monotonous, clumsy, and spiritless."

They also voiced serious concerns about the sketch book's provenance. 

The museum's public statement on the purported sketchbook can be read in its entirety here.

But Welsh-Ovcharov stands by her theory that the work is not a fake and has stated "Van Gogh experimented here with the rhythm of the lines and just distribution. Remember: these works are made without [a] perspective frame. And in a very short time. The drawings are not intended as finished compositions. Rather, they are doodles. "

Discovering a new sketchbook, flush with so many previously unknown drawings, 126 years after the artist's death would be highly unusual, but the choice of ink is also an anomaly. 

When Van Gogh sketched, he often favored pen-and-ink, using a quill, steel, or reed pen instead of black chalk, charcoal or pencils.  One of the inks he preferred was crystal violet (CV), a synthetic dye that was first made in 1883, not sepia shellac, as was used in this newly discovered sketchbook. 

Brightly-coloured CV triphenylmethane ink was inexpensive to manufacture and often replaced natural dye inks in works of art during Van Gogh's lifetime.  But the cheap ink came at a high price, one that proved devastating to the Van Gogh's authenticated sketches.  Crystal violet (CV) ink is very UV light sensitive. 

Photodegradation to Vincent's drawings, sketched using the ink, have discolored rapidly.  Some of the artist's drawings using the ink have turned various shades of brown and others have faded almost entirely.  This sorrowful reality can be seen in the contrasting photographs of one of Van Gogh's drawings below.

Time being a cruel master, Van Gogh's CV ink sketches have proven to be so sensitive to ultraviolet light that many of them are virtually unrecognizable.  To protect what remains, the museum's curators at the Van Gogh Museum have stored the bulk of the artist's ink drawings, his letters, and the four authenticated sketchbooks in the museum's archives, away from harmful UV light and of necessity, away from public view.  

Analyzing these historic photographs, we can see an eighty-year time lapse of the ink doing its damage.  The black and white photograph above and to the left is from Jacob Baart de la Faille’s 1928 premier catalogue raisonné des œuvres de Vincent van Gogh. The color photo above and to the right is from the Van Gogh archive. The image today is sadly almost unrecognizable and shows in detail just how severely the artist's purple ink drawing has faded, now just a former brown shadow of its former self.

Curiously, the images in the newly discovered sketchbook, reproduced in this YouTube video, remain crisp and vibrant, now matter how clumsily they were executed.  

By comparison, photographs of Van Gogh's drawings inside his four sketchbooks in the Van Gogh collection show that the artist's own drawings have not fared near as well.  Each of them has been preserved in the following digital collection albums:

98 photographs from the Nuenen Sketchbook, 1884 - 1885

60 photographs from the Nuenen, Antwerp and Paris Sketchbook, 1885 - 1886

80 photographs from the Paris Sketchbook, 1886

94 photographs from the Paris and Auvers-sur-Oise Sketchbook, 1890

Comparing the two, not as a professional curator, which I am not, but as a curious writer, I would ask Professor Welsh-Ovcharov why she thinks that the famous painter would have stopped using purple or black ink, switching to seppia shallac ink in this newly-found sketchbook, only to then revert back to CV ink later?  

I would also ask her why the sketches in the four Van Gogh Museum sketchbooks represent more rudimentary imagery than the more elaborate "doodles" she feels were drawn by Van Gogh this long lost album.

By: Lynda Albertson

 true then it would be the fifth known intact sketchbook Vincent van Gogh. The four previous examples date  and were previously published as a facsimile edition.