Mistral's Daughter by Judith Krantz Page B

but should and could
have.   He got fivetimes what he
paid for it, and had trouble keeping awake during the transaction.
    "We," he said to
himself, looking as if one of his pigs had died, "have been selling them
the debris of centuries for too long."   Within a matter of hours he had determined to make a change of
métier.   He would move from the world of
antiques, in which everything that could be sold already existed, to the world
of art, in which profits beckoned on works as yet uncreated.   His well-trained assistants could continue to
run his business, with an occasional visit from him.
    All threat of boredom
vanished as Avigdor contemplated the challenge of making a place for himself in
a trade that already included such giants as Paul Rosenberg, the Bernheim
brothers, Réné Gimpel, Wildenstein and, richest of them all, Vollard, whose
fortune was based on the two hundred and fifty Cézannes he had once managed to
buy from the artist for an average of fifty francs apiece.   It wouldn't be easy, starting from scratch,
in a profession dominated by establishment dealers who handled the work of the
most important modern painters, such as Matisse and Picasso, and who at the same
time were able to attract the custom of the biggest customers, many of them
American millionaires, by the ease with which they could conjure out from their
storerooms a Velásquez, a Goya drawing, or a work by one of the great
Impressionists.
    In spite of the dignified
solemnity of these great dealers, with their gray-velvet-covered walls, Avigdor
knew that their tightly knit world was a snakepit of snarling envy and open,
spiteful rivalry which mounted as news grew of the success of the New York
branches of French dealers.   What tearing
of hair there had been at the news that the Bernheims had gotten twenty
thousand dollars for a Matisse, that Wildenstein had sold a large Cézanne for
sixty thousand dollars, both prices previously unheard of in France.   Clearly, Adrien Avigdor calculated, if there's
that kind of money to be made in men who were absolutely unknown only
twenty-five years ago, there's going to be a similar market for the work of men
who don't yet interest the major dealers.   Only a few princely collectors can afford to purchase old masters to
ensure their own immortality.   Nor are
there many collectors who will risk thousands on artists with reputations that
have been freshly made.   Yet there must
exist many would-be collectors who will risk lesser sums than those needed to
own a Matisse.
    Yes, he told himself, as he
walked along the rue de Seine on which busier Left Bank galleries were already
located, buyers come in three sizes:   the
Andrew Mellon size who only want artists who have stood the test of time, the
Picasso size, in the medium range, and the Avigdor size, who want to get in on
the coming thing, on the ground floor.
    As he scanned the people
sauntering along, he realized that the world had been organized so that men
like him could prosper.   After all,
nobody needed to own works of art to survive.   And yet, human nature is so constituted that once survival is ensured,
once a level of comfort is established, proprietorship of nonessential objects
becomes an immediate desire.   The savage
who adds a second necklace to the first, and John D. Rockefeller buying the
Unicorn tapestries, weren't that different from each other, were they now?   And the peasant's wife who waits for a good
harvest and promptly buys a painted jug to adorn the top of a chest — how different is she from Henry Clay Frick, that cold-eyed Maecenas, who spent
a million dollars for the eleven Fragonard panels that Madame Du Barry,
thinking them too suggestive, had refused to accept from Louis XV?   Yes, falling somewhere between the peasant's
wife and the Rockefellers, there are a lot of potential customers out here,
Adrien Avigdor told himself happily.
    For two years he dedicated
himself to learning his new trade.   Outwardly he