Written by B.A.Shapiro, “The Art Forger” is part mystery, part romance, part speed course in Art History I and part tourist guide to Boston. Barbara Shapiro teaches creative writing at Northeastern and has put her creative juices to work in this story. Before you begin to read the book, you really need to read the author’s “A Note on the Research.” Although based on extensive art research, this is a work of fiction.
Claire Roth is a thirty-something very talented artist. Unfortunately, she basically is a pariah in the art world due to her claim that she painted “4D,” a modern art masterpiece. The powers that be have deemed that no way could a graduate student have painted this great work of art. Her mentor, lover and all-around cad Isaac Cullion is credited with its creation. When she protests to the curators at MOMA, she basically writes her own ticket to no where. So now, several years later, Claire continues to paint but makes her living by working for repro.com. Her skill makes her one of the best reproduction artists in the country. All of this plus the infamous robbery at the Isabella Gardner Museum in 1990 is the plot’s back story.
Claire is persuaded by a Boston gallery owner to make a copy of the famous Degas painting “After the Bath,” which was stolen in the 1990 robbery. In return she will get her own show, money to pay her many bills, and will help the Gardner get back this lost treasure. It gets even more complicated when she discovers that the original Degas that she is copying is a copy itself.
The plot, although complicated, is fast moving. Interspersed with the creation of the “forgery,” the reader learns what happened to Claire several years before, as well as, reading letters that Isabella Gardner wrote to her niece in the 1890s. Even though so much of this novel is the creation of the author’s imagination, the plot, characters, and the New York/Boston art scene are so well drawn that it is easy to suspend belief and go along for the ride.