Author B.A. Shapiro admits she had long been fascinated by Isabella Stewart Gardner whose fortune financed the famous Gardner museum in Boston, but couldn’t figure out how to make either a fiction or a biography about her work.

She writes:

… I began taking a series of art courses that toured galleries and museums with a well-known artist for a guide. She opened my eyes, not just to the wonder of what we were seeing, but to the complicated worlds of creating, collecting, curating, and selling works of art. I also developed a fascination with art theft and art forgery. Now, I thought, now I really might have my Belle [Isabella Gardner] book. So I wrote synopses, created plot charts, developed character sketches, then scratched it all and did it again. I was growing closer, but the pieces weren’t all quite there; something was missing: I couldn’t see the end.

Simultaneously, I was struggling with writing and wondering if I should just give up the whole endeavor.

One day, as I was ruminating on how difficult life was for anyone in the arts and feeling more than a bit sorry for myself, my missing link appeared in the form of a question: What would any of us be willing to do to secure our ambitions? Unknown artists, famous artists, collectors, brokers, and gallery owners? Me? Belle?

So I expanded my cast of characters and gave each one a temptation their egos couldn’t resist, including a struggling artist willing to make the ultimate Faustian bargain, and then I added them to the mix of art theft, art forgery, the Gardner Museum heist, and, of course, my buddy Belle. Suddenly, just like the Cowardly Lion, who became brave when he had his medal, I became brave when I had my plot. The Art Forger is the result.

As Shapiro’s remarks indicate, The Art Forger delves into the moral and emotional dimensions of forgery, both through the protagonist’s self-recriminations about the task at hand—forging a Degas stolen from the Gardner—and through her reflections on an earlier scandal that scuttled her career. Shapiro’s depiction of the politics and personal rivalries of the art world are of considerable interest here, and her accounts of the history of forging and of the technical processes that fool authenticators lend a further fascination.

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The Art Forger centers around a fictional fifth version of Degas’ “After the Bath.”  As Shapiro notes in her book, the fifth version differed significantly from the others because Isabella Gardner preferred his highly glazed and naturalistic earlier paintings to his more Impressionist later paintings.  The “After the Bath” series came quite late in Degas’ painting career and his brush strokes were quite prominent.

The first in the series was painted in 1883:

The next is dated 1885:

I assume this is the next one, though the Degas website simply labels it “After the Bath 3”:

The final one was painted between 1890 and 1893:

You may notice all of these pictures come courtesy of the Edgar Degas website. There you can find a nice biography plus images of all his paintings.

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Surely your curiosity was as piqued as mine when Shapiro repeatedly had Isabella Gardner refer to how unattractive she felt she was. Beauty, they say, is in the eyes of the beholder. This is how Anders Zorn depicted her:

And this is how John Singer Sargent depicted her:

A bit of a Tom-boy, perhaps, but not unattractive. The camera has a slightly different verdict. Here’s a photograph of her with Jack:

And one of her alone:

“Imperious” seems like a fitting description and Shapiro’s having Amelia reluctant to defy her seems well warranted. These two photos come from Travis Simpkins on his eponymous* website, which presents a nice collection of photos from Louise Hall Tharp’s 1965 book, Mrs. Jack: A Biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner. Included are photos of her several homes, of her with her dogs, and in a portrait by Whistler. The website is definitely worth a visit.

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One more thing. Michael Lewis (Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Blind Side) is doing a series of podcasts called “Against the Rules.” One episode is about the “authenticators” of art, the experts who determine whether a painting is a forgery. This is a link to the iMac/phone/pad/pod version of the podcast.

Another one more thing: Nancy G. brought to my attention this article from the New York Times about a copy artist who specializes in knocking off items that will be auctioned by Christy’s.

• I’ve waited years to use that word!