Part 1 of 2. The Danger Of Judging A Book By Its Cover

The Rhododendron were in peak bloom on a July afternoon in 2000, when an elderly gentleman visited my one-man gallery at The Greenbrier, a 6,500 acre, five-star resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. He was accompanied by his adult children and his grandchildren. He and his family were flying home and only had a few minutes to spare, but the following morning he called back to purchase a painting he had seen. I received a call from the employee at my gallery who had interacted with him the day before, with the good news that she had made a sale. The painting the client purchased was entitled “Nude,” and, as the title implies, it was a nude of the beguiling 26-year-old model with whom I had recently begun working. “Who bought the painting,” I inquired.
“Some old guy. He was really old. I think he may have been a pervert.”
Well, naturally.
A few months later I produced a new brochure which featured, among other subjects, another painting of that same model wearing a black kimono that had Chinese styled cranes embroidered on it. It was entitled Draped Cranes.

PDD9

I mailed it off to my list of collectors. Two days later, quite early in the morning, because I forwarded the gallery calls to my home each evening, I received a call that woke me from a deep sleep. It was the old pervert. After I managed to croak out a groggy “Hello,” he asked:
“How much is “Draped Cranes”?”
It took me a few seconds to figure out to what he was referring. Finally, shaking the cobwebs from my head, still half asleep, and in a thick morning voice I answered, “Thirty Thousand dollars.”
“Do you take American Express?”
That was, word for word, my exchange with the old pervert. Short and to the point. That woke me up faster than a double expresso. We shipped the painting to his office address in Birmingham, Alabama. About this time, I had begun a practice of printing out beautiful, personalized, self-adhesive wine labels on which I reproduced a full color image of the painting the client had purchased. At the top of the label it read The (customer’s surname) Collection. William Wolk Fine Art was printed along the bottom. I always selected an excellent wine (in case they actually drank it), arduously scraped off the original label with a single edged razor blade, and then applied our vanity label. Altogether, it took about forty-five minutes to prepare. I shipped them out in secure custom wine mailers.
I sent a bottle of wine to our art collecting pervert in Birmingham as a little “Thank you.” It had pleased him so much that a couple of days later, he called me to ask if he could get another bottle. “Yup.” Then, just a few minutes’ later, he called back again to ask if he could get two full cases.
When the wine bottles were ready, I called the client and told him that I could either ship the order to him, which would be pricey and a bit risky, or I could deliver it personally and, if he’d like, I could also bring down some additional paintings for him to see.
“Bring down everything you have!” We were invited to spend the night at his home and join him for dinner at The Club. I had never pulled a trailer before and felt a little uneasy about it, so I rented the smallest U Haul trailer available and arrived at the client’s home with seventeen paintings and an easel in tow. That was all the trailer could accommodate.
From the street, the house appeared to be a simple single-story ranch, typical of the average neighborhood in which it resided. Because of its modest setting and proportions, it didn’t look like a home that I would normally associate with one of my collectors. We parked out on the curb and began bringing in paintings. His house contained the biggest collection of art I have ever seen. The display was so extensive that the frames were touching to the point where one could not see the wall color behind them. I actually shifted a frame just to peek behind it and discovered the wall color to be lime green! It didn’t matter; one couldn’t see it through the display of paintings anyway. Paintings everywhere; above door frames, on the backs of doors, up to the ceiling molding, down narrow hallways. Everywhere. I suspected that if I asked the old pervert what color his walls were, he wouldn’t even remember.
To be continued…