Looking for fakes and doubts

I wonder what I’m doing right now; what I’ve been doing all this time; what I’m going to do in the time to come. The professional life I’ve been leading so far has been successful, to say the least. I’ve seen paintings nobody has even dreamed of touching. I’ve discovered flaws in the most perfect of works. But what am I? A hunter of mistakes? A soldier enlisted in the army that counters counterfeiters?

I seem to delight only in the wrong-doings of others. I often think of where I am in this picture, working as I am in backgrounds, an extra in a film where the leading role is too prominent to allow the rise of the underlings. I’ve been the shadow of Pissarro, of Matisse, of Caillebotte, of Toulouse-Lautrec. The funny thing is they’ve been all dead a long time; too long to know that I’m crusading for the keeping of their good names.

But art has made me happy. There is this thrill I get when I come close to a painting. It’s nothing to me but an object: a thing on a wall with a life of its own, a life on the verge between fact and fiction. Yes, assessing art does precisely that: puts pressure on the line between originals and fakes, between the real thing and the copy claiming to be it. And I’m the one who’s always there, walking that line.

This is what I usually work against. The best of the best have put their minds
to fool the world, and I am the one who's trying to stop that catastrophe
from taking place. I almost sound like Bruce Willis, don't I?

The other day, I was handling a Pissarro. The work was perfect. It spelled Pissarro all the way. The colour pallet, brushstroke, frame, light, theme, composition. Everything. The purchase was on its way. The dealer I worked with, a close friend of mine, was eager to get the contract signed. It was so good and the share so impossible to turn down. And on top of that he was, indeed, my friend.

“Jesus, James!” he said to me, not just once. He wanted everything done. He wanted my tick – nothing else. A simple tick, a simple flick of the pen on a piece of paper. But, friend or no friend, I couldn’t do it. Not for all the millions in the world. There was this shadow lurking inside my brain that told me no, this is not it. You need to look again. And again. And again. I’d even talked to my mentors about this piece. I’d spoken with my professor at Courtauld, and he took time off to examine this Pissarro with me. He found it very close to an original: the closest a painting can be. But when everybody had agreed, and all loose ends had been tied up, I was still unsure. The monster gnawing at my thoughts was well and alive. And it was then that I saw it. A little flaw in the signature. The ‘a’ ever so slightly different, not impressed into the layer of paint underneath it. As if it had been put there at a later date, when the paint was dry. The only detail that quieted the monster inside me was there, and I rejoiced.

How sad my friend was! He had just lost one of the best deals in a decade. He looked at me like he was going to eat me alive. But he knew I was right. He won’t take it personally, because that’s exactly what I’m trained to do and what he hires me to do: to find forgery where everybody else sees perfection.

The secrecy of my profession doesn't allow me to talk about the piece I investigated.
But this is Pissarro, the way the world admires him. Boulevard Montmartre (1897)
Source: Wikipedia

That’s my life: always acting against my best judgment, always doubting my doubts, always looking for what hasn’t been seen. And on top of all this, my life is the disappointment of others. But I can’t help it. This is my greatest delight, my doom. So what am I? What?