The Burnt Orange Heresy

My room was musty and close again, although I had not turned off the overhead fan. I didn't want to go through the too-hot-too-cold routine with the reverse-cycle airconditioner-which had far too many BTUs for the size of the small room-so I cracked the door again and clamped it open with the brass hook-and-eye attachment. I stripped down to my shorts and T-shirt, took the art materials out of the closet, and got busy with the picture.

I mixed Prussian blue, adding zinc white a dollop at a time, until I had a color the shade of an Air Force uniform. I thinned it slightly with turpentine and brushed a patch on the bottom of the canvas. It was still too dark, and I added white until the blue became much bolder. I then mixed enough of the diluted blue to paint a slightly ragged border, not less than an inch in width, nor more than three inches, around the four sides of the rectangle. To fill the remaining white space with burnt orange was simple enough, once I was able to get the exact shade I wanted, but it took me much longer than I expected to mix it, because it wasn't easy to match a color that I could see in my mind, but not in front of me.

But the color was rich when I achieved it to my satisfaction. Not quite brown, not quite mustardy, but a kind of burnished burnt orange with a felt, rather than an observable, sense of yellow. I mixed more of the paint than I would need, to be sure that I would have enough, and thinned the glowing pile with enough linseed oil and turpentine to spread it smoothly on the canvas. Using the largest brush, I filled in the center of the canvas almost to the blue border, and then changed to a smaller brush to carefully fill in the narrow ring of white space that remained.

I backed to the wall for a long view of the completed painting, and decided that the blue border was not quite ragged enough. This was remedied in a few minutes, and the painting was as good as my description of it in my article. In fact, the picture was so bright and shining under the floor lamp, it looked even better than I had expected.

All it needed was Debierue's signature.

I had a sharp debate with myself whether to sign it or not, wondering whether it was in keeping with the philosophy of the "American Harvest" period for him to put his name on one of the pictures. But inasmuch as the burnt orange, blue-bordered painting represented the "self" of Debierue, I concluded that if he ever signed a painting, this was one he would have to sign. I made a mental note to add this information to my article-that this was the first picture Debierue had ever signed (it would certainly raise the value for Mr. Cassidy to possess a signed painting!).

Debierue's letter to the manager of the French clipping service was still in my jumpsuit. I took it out and studied Debierue's cramped signature, sighing gratefully over the uniqueness of the design. Forgers love a tricky signature: it makes forgery much simpler for them because it is much easier to copy a complicated signature than it is a plain, straightforward signature. There are two ways to forge a signature. One is to practice writing it over and over again until it is perfected. That is the hard way. The easy way is to turn the signature upside down and draw it, not write it, but copy it the way one would imitate any other line drawing. And this is what I did. Actually, I didn't have to turn the canvas upside down. By copying Debierue's signature onto the upper left-hand side upside down, when the picture itself was turned upside down the top would then be the bottom, and the signature would be rightside up and in the lower right-hand corner where it belonged.

Nevertheless, it took me a long time to copy it, because I was trying to paint it as small as possible in keeping with Debierue's practice of writing tiny letters. To put ebierue inside the "D" wasn't simple, and I had to remember to "write" with my brushstrokes up instead of down, because that is the way the strokes would have to be when the painting was turned upside down.

"James!"

Berenice called out my name. I was so deeply engrossed in what I was doing I wasn't certain whether this was the first or the second time she had called it out. But it was too late to do anything about it. I was sitting in the straightbacked chair facing the canvas, and I barely had time to turn and look at her, much less get to my feet, before she lifted the brass hook, opened the door, and entered the room.

"James," she repeated flatly, halting abruptly with her hand still on the doorknob. She had removed her makeup, and her pale pink lips made a round "0" as she stared at me, the canvas, and the makeshift palette on the low coffee table. The sheet I had used to wrap the once-blank canvas was on the floor and gathered about the chair I was using as an easel. I had spread it there to prevent paint from dropping onto the rug.

"Yes?" I said quietly.