gamboge was not. In its place I found a mixture of lead chromate, which is
a much paler, less brownish pigment, and several other pigments meant to
shift the yellow to the classic mustard tone. While Remington occasionally
used lead chromate, his Hooker’s green was purchased premixed, and the
yellow used was gamboges.
So from this you concluded
that the painting was a forgery? (the judge asked).
…I analyzed the lead in the
lead white to see if there was much silver in it. While the cyanide process
used today to separate those two elements was in widespread use by 1900, I
thought that, if there were a significant impurity in the lead, it might
indicate that the pigment used was old. However, it was quite pure.
This continues for pages, at what should be
the peak of the book’s intensity. Most courtroom scenes are cliffhangers,
but this one is a drowse-maker.
Because of the tendency by art historians to
show-off expertise, the best art-related mysteries, are, in my opinion, by
good writers who choose to write about art, not art experts. (Yes, I know,
I’m likely to be guilty of the same error, but I’m working hard to avoid
it.)
I don’t like mysteries (or other novels, for
that matter) in which violent death, torture and gore is meticulously
described, or that contain too many pages of graphic sex, even when the
books are major prize winners. (Check out Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line
of Beauty, 2004, which won a Booker prize. There’s so much
explicit sex in it, I couldn’t follow the plot, if any. Because of its
title and the delirious praise on the book jacket, many people gave this
book to their great-aunts and other horrified recipients. At Waterstone’s
in London, The Line of Beauty is found in a section of books “of
special interest to homosexuals,” which probably prevented it being a
Mother’s Day gift to dozens of shocked moms and grannies.)
Here are a few of my favorite art-related
mysteries:
Barnard, Robert, The Corpse at the
Haworth Tandoori,
1998. (Yes, I promise, despite the title,
this is an art-related mystery.)
Francis, Dick, In the Frame, 1976.
Francis, Dick, To the Hilt, 1997.
King, Laurie, A Grave Talent, 1993.
Marsh, Ngaio, Artists in Crime, 1938.
Missing some prominent names, right? Read the reviews on the
Internet of some of the books by authors who’ve published a long list of art
mysteries. Sometimes, according to the readers, each successive mystery is
more tedious than its predecessor, but publishers keep publishing them.
Why? That’s a topic for another time. Just to pique your curiosity,
here are some readers’ comments about the books of one of the critics’
favorites: “Too cumbersome to make sense”; “What could be bad?…most
everything”; “A disappointment. Clichéd.”; “Hokey”; “Obvious”; “Mediocre”;
“Predictable.” In every case, I agree. (Mystery Readers International,
www.mysteryreaders.org/subscribe.html, Vol. 21, No. 1, is devoted to
Art Mysteries. Those interested in this kind of mystery should read
it. You will find some very different opinions from mine on certain books.)
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