Owen
Ziegler is a well-known art dealer in London who specializes in Dutch
paintings, and especially Rembrandt. But an economic recession has been a drag
on the art market; times are tough and getting tougher. Ziegler is forced to
part with a beloved Rembrandt painting, entrusting its ale at auction to another
dealer and friend. The friend claims that the Rembrandt is a fake, and Zeigler
is facing ruin.
He
also facing his own murder. His son, Marshall, finds his father’s body in the
basement of the gallery. Owen has been tortured as well as killed. The scene is
reminiscent of a Rembrandt painting. Marshall, a translator who lives mostly in
Amsterdam, has had no interest in art, the art market, or the gallery. And
then, some days after his father’s death, he receives a package from his dead
father.
The
package: a bundle of letters written in the 1600s by Geertje Dircx, Rembrandt’s
housekeeper and supposed lover. What the letters say is that Rembrandt employed
their son, Carel Fabritius, to paint many of the paintings he claimed as his
own. And the letters include something else: a list of the fake Rembrandt
paintings.
The
art market, already suffering from the recession, faces almost certain annihilation
if the letters become public. And it appears someone is killing people to make
sure that doesn’t happen.
You
have just stepped into the world of The
Other Rembrandt by Alex Connors. And it is a world where nothing, and
no one, is what they seem to be, where everyone involved carries with them a
double story, almost a double identity. It is the world that Marshall Zeigler
decides to crash, to bring his father’s killer to justice.
Connors,
who’s written similar novels about painters William Hogarth, Titian, Bosch and
Caravaggio, knows her art. The novel is not only a story of murder and
suspense; it’s also an exploration of Rembrandt and his world, how he worked as
a painter, and how paintings come to be valued (and valuated) in our own times.
She uses the true story of the affair between Gertje Dircx and Rembrandt to
create a fictional world that is engaging and credible.
No,
the story of the letters isn’t true. At least, that’s what it appears. Or does
it?
Painting: The Night Watch by Rembrandt
van Rijn, oil on canvas (1642), Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
