Hello all! I am happy to report that the story of the Sonoma County painting has finally reached a conclusion (of sorts). Every so often, I will receive an email from a new visitor to the site that is confused to see such a subject on a site otherwise dedicated to wine, as well as where the story starts. Back when I was still pursuing this field as an amateur, I would use the blog section to discuss meaningful and interesting stories and events in my life. One such post spurred on a mystery that captivated my readers, with many thousands writing and emailing me about it over the years. Since this saga has come to the end, I offer a summary of the inciting incident, and the conclusion that has been reached. I would like to thank the many people who have so graciously reached out and supported me over the years. I only hope that you can find some closure, as I have.
It was during a trip in Sonoma County that this inciting event occurred. My then-fiancée and I were driving up the coast, stopping at the different wineries along the way. Back then, my writing was purely that of an amateur sommelier. It was a beautiful late-spring day, and the sun was only just beginning to move past its prime position overhead. At this point, my fiancée was driving, as I had one-too many glasses of old-vine zinfandel at our last stop. She pulled the coupe onto a dirt track, towards a large gazebo set back far into the property. When we parked, a party of twelve was already there, more red in the face and cheery than even I was. When we approached, they roared as if they knew us, clapping and cheering.
The group turned out to be a collection of high school friends who were meeting up after years without seeing each other. My fiancée and I ended up sitting with them at their table, drinking wine and talking about the vineyards we had visited already. After a while I got a headache, so I excused myself and moved to a little table at end of the gazebo.
One of the men from the group, short with light hair, stumbled over and sat next to me, smiling. His face was red and he introduced himself to me cheerily. I nodded to him and he asked me what I did for a living. I told him about the company I worked at and my passion for wine. I spoke for a while, while he sat quietly, listening intently. After a while, I ordered a jug of wine and asked him what he did.
“I deal with provenance. Do you know what provenance is? Well, it’s a way to make sure a piece of art is real. We track the ownership. And that’s what I do— I keep track of the ownership, I authenticate these things. Most people never get to use their art history degree, but I was lucky. I digress.”
“I was in between jobs at this point. I had been working for a private collector— by the way, the things you would imagine about private collectors… well, that’s another story. But that bastard was richer than you could imagine. Rich enough to warrant an investigation if the butler or the daughter did it with a candlestick or a knife or in the library… but he died peacefully and his estate passed on and pretty soon I was out of a job.”
“Well I got word back from a friend I knew back in college. He was a wild guy back then, but you’d have no idea another art history major would party so much. Crazy times, but now he’s settled down. Anyway, he had a friend who left his law firm to start a nonprofit. And you knew who he had started it with?”
“I don’t think you’ll guess. It was a priest, a Catholic priest. How they met, I don’t know, but a priest and an ex-lawyer started this nonprofit. And they wanted me on board because my friend told them I was the best. They held an interview as a formality but I got the job.”
“Anyway, they had me look over this one piece. They told me that it was found in the Netherlands, in the home of someone who died without any direct descendants. To me, the fact it was in the Netherlands meant it was probably stolen at some point in the Second World War. All I knew is that it was found in the Netherlands, and that it probably wasn’t from there originally. They wanted me to see if I could find a clue about this painting, like the family or museum it belonged to.”
“It was a large, probably the length of this table. There was a man just to the left of the middle of the painting. He was in the foreground, but a little too much. If it had been a photograph, he would’ve been a step too close, leaving him out of focus. But it was a painting and so he was just a little too close. He was smiling, and there was a scene behind him. It was to the right, so if you were him it would be behind you to your left. And the scene was this picnic, and at first it looked so serene. There were people laying on their side propped up on their arms. And these beautiful clouds… I don’t know the word, but shapely. They looked just like a cloud should. There were three men and two women. And one of the men, his back is turned, facing a bush, and he’s on all fours. Like he’s puking into a bush. One of the other men, he had his arm around one of the girls while they were laying down. And the other woman— this is what I remember the clearest.”
A burst of laughter erupted from the group. I turned to see my fiancée, her head thrown back, happily laughing. I smiled. The man watched the scene quietly.
“You were saying, about the painting?” I prompted.
He remained still for a moment, breathing heavily. Then he continued.
“The woman had her body turned towards the man who was puking, like he had just gotten up and left her side. But her head was facing the other man, and he was talking to her. He had this look on his face, a really sly one. He was leaning forward, towards the woman with his hand on the blanket that was laid out. I couldn’t read her face, if she was scared or if she liked him. She had a mix on her face, like, she was scared, but maybe she’d fuck him. She had her hand across the blanket, towards the man that was puking, but her fingers were curled in, like maybe she’d pull the hand back at any second.”
“And I realized of all the glasses that were painted, the only cup that was empty was the one nearest the puking man.”
“And the man in the foreground— I had this feeling he was looking out to the ocean. I don’t know why but I just had this feeling he was standing on the edge of a cliff looking out to the ocean. And whatever it was he was keeping this secret from the two of the picnickers, that couple, the puking man and that confusing woman. But even more than that, his smile was hiding something from what I took to be his people, the other two men, and maybe that other woman. He had an air of authority to him, like he was the one who planned the whole picnic.”
At this point, a waiter came by and set down a jug of wine in the shape of a chicken. He poured himself a glass and drank it down in a gulp. The sun was setting now and a light breeze passed through the gazebo. Then he continued.
“This painting, it made me feel… well, I don’t think I can describe it all too well. It’s a feeling I know I’ve felt before.”
“When I was a kid, I’d have so much trouble falling asleep. My house had these tall, tall, ceilings, taller than this gazebo. And I’d lay in bed with my eyes closed, squeezing them shut really hard. I would imagine some monster just on the other side of my eyelids. Just real close like this— half an inch from my face. And I’d imagine it would stare at me with these big bulging eyes, and that if I opened my eyes to meet it something bad would happen. It scared me so badly I moved my bed into the corner of the room and I’d sleep facing the wall. It felt like that.”
“So I asked the priest, I said, listen I need to know who donated this piece because I have a lot of questions for them. The priest told me it had been sent by some third or fourth cousin of the owner of the house, but he didn’t know their name. And I told him, I said listen. I’m not going to work on doing anything with this painting until you get me in contact with someone who knows something about this, this, this painting. Do you understand?”
He poured himself another glass, and behind him my fiancée was shouting in joy. I watched as she danced around the table, happily singing along with the rest of the group. He was quiet again.
“And what did he say?” I asked
“Well— nothing. He moved me off the piece and I quit soon after that because I got a job offer from some museum in San Francisco and I took it.”
“Do you ever find out the name of the painting?”
He thought for a moment before answering.
“It was something like— An Afternoon Scene. Something like that.”
After that he finished off a third glass and got up to join the rest of his group. I was sitting at the picnic table, thinking about the scene in the painting before my fiancée came over and sat on the bench next to me and asked if I was okay. I didn’t feel any buzz anymore, just some nagging feeling of agita in my stomach thinking about the painting.
Over the next few years, I tried finding any information I could about the painting. Long-time readers might remember my other blog posts where I documented my (frustrating) lack of success. My wife would tease me about the painting, but I just couldn’t get the image out of my mind. It was like it was there, just at the edge of my memory, like a word stuck at the tip of my tongue, like I had seen it before, but couldn't place it in words, or even in the thought of words. I knew it could only be solidified if I could see it, if I could come face-to-face with it.
Close to a decade later, well after my career had taken off, I was invited to the opening of an art exhibit in New York City. My wife had come down with a fever the day before, which almost led me to cancel the trip entirely, but she insisted that I went by myself. When I arrived, the host introduced me to some of the guests and we exchanged pleasantries.
Eventually, I had to duck into the bathroom. When I stepped out of the men’s room, I saw him.
I’m not sure exactly how I recognized him at such a distance and after so much time. I was stunned for a moment, but I broke into a brisk walk and made my way straight to him. He was staring over a painting, sipping away at a champagne flute. The painting showed a man slumped against a bathtub, his head resting at an uncomfortable angle. I cleared my throat, and he turned around.
“Excuse me, but I believe we’ve met before— do you happen to work at a museum in San Francisco?"
The man studied my words for a moment before his eyes widened.
“You— Sonoma County, is that right?”
“Yes, yes, that’s exactly right. I was with my wife— rather, my fiancée at the time.”
"Ah. Your wife." The man politely nodded.
We chatted for a few minutes, and he told me that he had left that job and had been working at a museum in Manhattan for the past three years. When the conversation lulled, I decided to ask him about the painting that had been nagging in the back of my mind for ten years.
“This might sound a little odd, but that day in Sonoma County, you told me about this painting you came across while working at a non-profit— do you remember this?”
I recounted the details he told me, the man smiling in the foreground who was a step too close, the picnic blanket, the man bent over with his head in a bush, the woman and the man who were laughing, the man leaning in towards the drunken man’s wife; I described the ocean, the feeling that he was standing on the edge of a cliff face and the clouds that hung overhead.
The man was very quiet. He stood silently for a minute before replying.
“It’s true that I spent some time at a nonprofit, but I’m afraid I never came across such a painting. My time there was fairly mundane.”
I pressed him, recounting every detail he had given me— the house in the Netherlands, the Second World War, the way he would sleep facing a wall. He was red in the face now, but it was caused by some kind of shame, rather than alcohol.
“I apologize to you, I do. I had a lot of wine that day— too much it seems. I remember the story that you are talking about. But there was no such painting, I swear to you. It was something I made up, a drunken joke. The non-profit was focused solely on art from the Indians of New Mexico, we never took in any paintings from Europe.”
I could tell that he was telling the truth. I began to feel claustrophobic, so I quietly excused myself from the exhibit. When I reached my hotel room, I called my wife to tell her what had happened, but the thought of her voice made my stomach turn so violently that I hung up the phone after the second ring.
I was shaking, softly at first, and then more violently. A deep grief came rising up to my chest— not the grief of losing a loved one, but a grief like the sorrow for a language that died with its final speaker. I curled onto the bed, still shaking, and thought of the painting— and I could see it now, more clearly than I ever could. I could make out the smile of the man, his unscrupulous companions, the drunken man, the woman who was afraid but wanted to fuck; and I could see the texture of the paint, the brushstrokes that ran across the painting; and then I could taste the salt of the ocean and feel the mist from the tide crashing against the rocks, and I could hear retching and hollow laughter, and I could feel the cliff and the way that the edge pulled on those who stood over it.
I have now accepted that the painting was a drunken fabrication. For those that have followed this blog since the beginning, I apologize that this could not have ended with a cleaner resolution. Over the years, many have emailed me and reached out, offering assistance and their own research to find such a painting. I wish that I could have delivered a better outcome, the title, the name of the artist, a photo of the painting. The reality is that it is not something that I could so easily share with you. Now I feel at peace, and the image of the painting has all but left my head. If not for this blog, even the memories of it would fade, and I can no longer remember the feeling it would create in me.
To those who are not satisfied with this answer, I leave you with this. Although the painting cannot be found on any canvas, it did truly exist, if only for a moment, in that hotel room.