Page 7 of All I Want for Christmas

Chapter Three

Otto was still on the phone when Darcy knocked on his door sixty minutes later, but he beckoned her in and she took a seat opposite him, listening to him ‘mm’ and ‘mm-hmm’ down the line as someone else did all the talking.

A colour printout of the portrait lay on his desk and he reached over, handing it to her to study as the one-sided conversation continued.

Darcy stared at the image, trying not to feel dismay at the minimal uplift in clarity. The woman’s long hair was, unusually, not worn up in the fashion of the day, but seemed to be simply pulled back; her dress was high-necked and modest, not a society gown; a simple necklace gleamed at her throat. And it was impossible to read actual colours under the ultraviolet light. She couldn’t tell if the woman had black hair or brown; blue eyes or green or hazel. Normal identifying characteristics weren’t available to her and she was going to have to do this blind. No name. No face. And while she was experienced enough to know that if this woman had been painted by one of the country’s greatest painters, then there would be some sort of record of it somewhere, it was nonetheless almost a hundred years old. If the portrait had been hidden for all that time – if no one else had known it existed, even – what supporting evidence might have been destroyed or lost in the interim?

It was another moment before she realized Otto had finished his call and was watching her. Was her concern evident?

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.

‘...Daunted.’ It pained her to give a negative answer, but her area of expertise was lost female artists, not their famous male counterparts.

‘Good. That’s the appropriate response,’ he nodded. ‘There’s no point in pretending it will be easy.’ He reached for the top file on his stack and handed it to her. ‘This is the standard bio we have on file for Trier. I assume you’ll be starting your search through him?’

‘I’ll have to,’ Darcy agreed. ‘He’s the only fixed point at the moment.’ She scanned the material. ‘Born 1895 in Aalborg; died 1974 in Paris, aged seventy-nine. Never married, no known children...’

‘That list shows his complete works – or rather, hisknownworks – in chronological order.’

‘Okay. It saysHer Childrenwas painted and sold in August 1922, so he would have been...’ Darcy quickly did the maths. ‘He was twenty-seven when he painted it. Still pretty early on in his career.’ She looked up at Otto. ‘Logic would dictate that the portrait was painted first, beforeChildren. Trier must have rejected it, turned the board over and then producedChildren.’

‘I agree. Which gives us a fixed end date – the portrait was painted before August 1922.’

‘Great. So then, we’ve got our first fact,’ Darcy mused. ‘And would you agree that if the portrait couldn’t have been painted after 1922, it’s also unlikely to have been painted very long before that? Artists are invariably broke or tight. I doubt he’d have let the board go to waste for years and years, taking upspace in the studio. It was probably painted no more than a few years beforeChildren.’

‘We can’t be as certain of that, but yes, it’s more than likely. You should at least start with that narrow scope and widen it if nothing yields from those dates.’

‘Okay. Well, I assume Margit Kinberg’s involvement means I’m well placed to gain access to the National Gallery’s archives?’

‘The National Gallery?’

‘Yes – they must hold extensive material on Trier.’

‘They will, but actually, there’s somewhere better. Have you heard of the Madsen Foundation?’

‘No.’

‘Bertram Madsen was Trier’s patron back in the day; a rich industrialist. He gave Trier his big break. His daughter was a noted society beauty and he commissioned numerous portraits of his family for their many houses. He introduced Trier to all the great and good here and put him on the map – until they had a falling out, overHer Childrenno less.’

‘What kind of falling out?’

‘As patron, Madsen had first refusal on all his work. He had set up a studio for Trier at his summer house in Hornbaek, on the coast, and when Madsen saw an early draft ofHer Children, he wanted it for the drawing room of his new mansion on Toldbodgade.’

‘I sense abut.’

‘But Trier sold it to a German tourist who was passing by the Hornbaek house – admiring the garden, of all things. Supposedly they got talking and by the time Madsen knew otherwise,Her Childrenwas already across the border and in a private collection in Munich. It remained out of the country for the next thirty years.’

Darcy sat back, intrigued. ‘I never knew any of this.’

Otto shrugged. ‘It ended Madsen’s patronage at a stroke and things quickly soured for Trier here. The upper class closed ranks at what was seen as his betrayal. No more profitable society portraits were commissioned and he eventually ended up moving full time to France, where he lived between Paris and Languedoc.’

Darcy bit her lip. ‘It seems an extraordinarily short-sighted decision, sellingChildrento a random tourist.’

‘He must have made him an exceptional offer. Artists aren’t usually known for their long-term financial planning.’ Otto shrugged. ‘But perhaps Trier was also tiring of being Madsen’s puppet. Portraits were his cash cow but it was clear from everything he did afterwards that his heart lay with plein air landscapes.Her Childrenwas his key out of those golden handcuffs, whether he had intended it or not.’

‘It sounds very bitter. Will they want to help out now? Especially when it concerns the painting that caused the split in the first place?’

‘Everything’s been long since forgiven. There was a rapprochement of sorts, albeit many years later. It was in the sixties, I believe. Bertram Madsen was long dead by then, but the eldest son, Frederik – I think seeing rising prices for Trier’s work on the international market – established an art foundation. They built a gallery on Stockholmsgade and have spent the past fifty years buying every Trier they can get their hands on. It’s a vanity project, I suppose: they were the original patrons, and with Trier now held in such high esteem in the Danish canon, they want that connection to be maintained. They’re the self-appointed gatekeepers of the Trier legacy once more.’

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