The Art Forger

The “rediscovered” painting is all over the news, and Claire cannot stop thinking about what will happen if she gets caught. At the same time, she has a solo exhibition to prepare for. Markel offers her a time slot just a few months in the future, during the Christmas season when the art market is good. She begins to visit his gallery and become more public about their professional relationship, although she still asks him to keep their romantic entanglements private. She visits Jake’s for the first time in weeks and reveals the Markel G show to her friends.

In this one-paragraph chapter set three years prior, Claire receives word from Karen Sinsheimer that after six long weeks of waiting, the committee has determined that “4D is the work of Issac Cullion” (191).

Markel tells Claire that the Gardner Museum has determined her copy of After the Bath to be the original, stolen painting. She wonders what this means for them. Markel believes it to be a bad sign, since the buyer will now be more heavily investigated. Claire and Markel distract themselves by continuing to prepare for her solo show.

At Markel’s behest, Claire agrees to attend a Halloween party full of important art world people. She is shocked to find that people treat her completely differently than they have in recent years. She had become a pariah in the art community after her claim to 4D was rejected, but with the solo show coming up, people are suddenly treating her with respect. At the party, she runs into Rik for the first time since he left for Paris; he has returned early due to the news about After the Bath. Later, Claire returns to her juvenile detention center art class for the first time since the drug scandal, only to find that the class has been cancelled indefinitely.

Belle again writes to her niece, this time five years after the previous letter. Amelia has just announced a new baby daughter. Belle writes that she finally attended a horse race with Degas and her husband, and later she went to Degas’s studio alone. He gifted her a translucent gown, which she tried to refuse. She writes that the rest of the story is best told in person the next time they meet.

Rik and Claire meet for a drink at a location where no one will know them. Rik feels completely out of the loop after his Paris trip; he didn’t even know about the show at Markel G. She fills him in on everything that has happened, including her love affair with Markel. She knows that Rik is the only person she can trust to not leak the information and draw skepticism about the legitimacy of her Markel G show.

Rik invites Claire to the elaborate ceremony that the Gardner Museum is hosting for the reinstallation of the Degas painting. She was unable to get a ticket through Markel and was glad for the excuse to skip the event. At Rik’s insistence though, she decides to attend. Later, she visits Markel, who makes her a delicious-looking sandwich, but she is unable to eat due to anxiety surrounding After the Bath. Markel reassures her that she will never be implicated. This does not make her feel better; she knows that both of them are lying to each other.

Three years earlier, Claire is reeling from MoMA’s announcement that Issac painted 4D. Feeling helpless and foolish, she reaches out to Beatrice, the art historian who watched her paint the copy that was supposed to prove her story. Beatrice admits that she believes her and that others at the museum were also on Claire’s side. However, she warns her against trying to appeal the decision, telling her to move on, that MoMA is not worth going to war with as an up-and-coming artist.

Claire is back in her studio, attempting to work on her paintings for the Markel G show. Instead, she decides to return to researching the possible forgers who could have created the After the Bath copy that was displayed in, and then stolen from, the Gardner Museum. She narrows the list to a few key names who worked in Paris and/or Boston in the same period as Degas.

When she tells Markel about her research, he seems confused and annoyed. He suggests that she is becoming obsessed with the crime and that her nervousness will raise suspicion if she isn’t careful. She promises to listen but returns to her research as soon as they part. One name in particular sticks out to her, Virgil Rendell. Suddenly, she realizes that Rendell is the painter of a portrait of Belle’s niece Amelia, which she has seen at Sandra’s house. This links Belle directly to a well-known art forger, and from the skill of his original painting, Claire knows he would have been capable of copying the Degas.

Belle writes to Amelia in early 1897, again from Paris. She reports that she is ill but has purchased a number of important paintings recently that will be wonderful additions to the museum her husband has agreed to build for her. She ends the letter with more information about Degas, again written in confidence. She reports that she visited him in his studio and agreed to model the translucent dress he had given her on her previous visit. After seeing how much he admired her in the dress, she agreed to allow him to remove it. She describes an ecstatic scene of finally feeling like her body, which she saw as ugly and old, was being appreciated for what it was.

Markel is hard at work promoting Claire’s show, and she is hard at work finishing the paintings in time to be framed. When she finally finishes at 3:00 am one morning, she collapses on the couch and has dreams about her paintings selling at the show. She is awoken by a call from Markel, who hopes she can stop by the gallery to celebrate before heading out to a weekend spa visit that he has booked for her. She wants to go but refuses, her studio is messy, and she does not want mice to invade while she is away for the weekend. Chantal, one of the Markel’s assistants, stops by to collect the paintings. As Claire is waiting for the car to take her to the spa, she turns on the news and see that Markel is being arrested.

This is another flashback chapter, in which Claire faces the repercussions of her attempt to legitimize 4D as her own. Rumors portray her as an out-of-control ex-girlfriend trying to exact revenge on an artist who chose to rebuild his marriage instead of staying with her. To make matters much worse, she receives a frantic call from Issac’s wife, who tells her that Issac has taken his own life. His wife blames Claire directly and begins to spread her narrative in the media. Claire has her final review for her MFA during this time, and despite showing realist paintings of unhoused people using classical techniques, the professors claim that her paintings are derivative of Modern artists like Chagall and Munch. Although occasional news coverage mentions that her claim may have been true, she is labelled “the Great Pretender.”

Claire visits Markel at the Nashua Street Jail, which she views as a more depressing version of the juvenile detention center where she used to teach art classes. She sees downtrodden citizens being turned away from visiting their relatives and feels that her race and class standing give her privileges that many other visitors do not have.

When she is finally placed in a room with Markel, he is distressed that she has come. He says that there is no way he is getting out of jail. To make matters worse, the people who sold him the “original” After the Bath haven’t received their money and are threatening to cut off Markel’s finger to access the room where it is stored, which is locked with a fingerprint ID. Claire begins to tell him about the research she has been doing and her conviction that the “original” artwork is also a forgery. Clare again visits Sandra, who has found some boxes in the attic that might contain information for Claire’s supposed book. At first, she is disappointed in the old newspapers and trinkets contained in the box, but then she finds a journal that clearly belonged to Virgil Rendell. She is intrigued to find that Virgil talks badly about Belle throughout the book, and that it is obvious he was in love with Amelia.

Belle writes to Amelia again, one year after the previous letter. She asks that Amelia burn this letter and destroy the ashes, as it contains information that no one else can ever know. Belle reports that she visited Degas’s studio again and that he gifted her a large painting, the last in his After the Bath series. It depicts three nude women, one of whom is Belle herself. She is taken aback by this and does not know how to proceed. On one hand, she cannot imagine turning the gift down, as Degas painted it specifically to hang in the museum. On the other hand, she cannot imagine the consequences of displaying the work, especially how her own husband would react. She asks Amelia to help her come up with a plan as soon as possible.