Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

The Past behind me- a new day. Paul DeGaston

The two sisters called me yesterday morning. A dealer in Escondido had recommended that I appraise a collection of prints that they had stored in their garage since time immemorial. Their parents had received them somehow, but the how, why, who and wherefore's had all slid into faded history.

They brought them up yesterday, in an old wood and copper box. There were fourteen of them, mostly drypoint, but some very competent aquatints as well. I suggested that they go get a coffee or go next door to Leslie's while I did some preliminary investigation work.

I have sold prints and works on paper, along with paintings, since the late 1970's. My first company was called El Flechador Del Sol and concentrated on works on paper. I am in no way one of the high echelon print dealers but I have been fortunate enough to have some very fine examples of printmaking pass though my hands over the years; Baumann's and Kloss's, Capps, Diebenkorn, Martin Lewis, Whistler, Rembrandt, Durer and many others. I was instrumentally involved in creating a few major print exhibitions and I would like to believe that I can recognize a certain level of quality when I see it. Even have tried my hand at aquatints myself. Enough of my bona fides.

Yoshida - Paul De Gaston

That is why I found it curious that I could find nothing about this particular artist, Paul De Gaston. Anywhere. I checked Artprice and AskArt. Nothing. Googled him, found one aquatint of the Nile that sold at some obscure auction for peanuts and a WWAR reference to an Ainu print pulled by the artist at the turn of the century.

It is highly unusual to find an artist this competent with such a paucity of historical record.

I called my friend Steve in Phoenix, a very well respected and versed print dealer and he didn't have a clue. Couldn't get a hold of Roger Genser. I started focussing on the name and not the artist and wasn't prepared for what I found next.

The first reference I found for a Paul De Gaston was for an abortionist connected with the infamous Black Dahlia murder case.


(17) Dr. Paul De Gaston:
DeCaston was identified as an abortionist who practiced under the alias, Dr. C. J. Morris in downtown Los Angeles. He was tried for murder in 1934 and served time for performing abortions. His name and address were found in Elizabeth Short's address book after her murder.


The next thing I found was a website written by DeGaston's son that threw a bit of light on his father:

Paul Robert De Gaston - Born June 28, 1902, Pakhoi (now Beihai), Kwangsi-Chuang (now Guangxi), China
Died December 12, 1956, Sunset Strip, Los Angeles County, California



    My father was a very sensitive, intelligent, musical, and handsome man. He was strong, and as a young man engaged in boxing. He was an artist, musician (even played violin with the Glendale Symphony Orchestra), part-time movie actor, and a pioneer in performing abortions. He loved and knew classical music and could play the violin very well, the flute well, and the piano OK. Unfortunately he used his abilities often in a selfish way to the hurt of others, and very much of himself too. At times he was quite generous. He did want to make his family in his third marriage with my mother work. That was a difficult task as mother was very headstrong though she loved him, and no man was good enough after my Dad. But my Dad could not keep an even temper, losing his temper at times, and going too far in corporeal punishment. This finally resulted in my parents divorcing.


    My Father was interred duing World War II, having been "denounced", but never proven [not even a trial], as having pro-German sympathies, in various concentration camps including North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, and finally Terminal Island in Los Angeles Harbor. While my father was at Terminal Island mother took me and sometimes Cami to visit him. We used to ride the Red Car from the elevated terminal in downtown Los Angeles to San Pedro, and then take a ferry to Terminal Island. The Red Car was a real electric train, and went at speeds in excess of 60 miles per hour down the right-of-way through south LA, Compton, and Watts which paralled and was next to Alameda Boulevard. While in concentration camp, my father met and became friends with a famous Austrian artist, Hovanetz. Hovanetz taught my father to paint. Some time later after the war, Hovanetz returned to Vienna because he was offered a commission to paint the dome (as I recall) of some important and/or historic building.


...It did seem improbable that Father was only 4 years and 11 months older than my mother. He looked a lot older. He "lied" that he had served in the World War I serving in France, and that war was from 1914-18 (for America it was 1917-18). My father had to have been at least 18, and probably more...as we might gather from the picture included below showing him boxing while still in China (but maybe that pic was post-China?  My mother was 49 at the time of Father's death. She didn't have a grey hair. My grandmother, Anna de Gaston, at 82 or so years of age still had partly almost black hair mixed with her grey hair. I don't believe that there was any premature greying in the de Gaston line, but my father lying in his coffin (whom I had not seen for years) had about 50 per cent grey hairs in the top of his scalp, and mustach, and the sideburns were predominantly grey.  I was rather taken aback. Father had always played games as exactly how old he was because he looked young for the age that he claimed, and liked to fool people. 

Old China, Chinese Mother 2/10 Paul DeGaston

The Supplicant - Sun worshipper - Paul DeGaston

Mending Nets, Old China - Paul De Gaston

Now, I am thinking this is probably the same guy. An artist, and born in China. Several of the prints have chinese themes. But where did he get his training in printmaking? Was he a student of the great Hiroshi Yoshida? I find reference to a 1934 National Geographic article on China written by a Paul DeGaston.

"My Father standing in his medical office in Seattle, Washington, about 1940.  My Dad was an entrepreneur, and quite intelligent as he did this without formal medical training, and specialized in abortions."

His son's website had this interesting picture of father in the abortion clinic. A doctor with no medical training? Very strange to say the least. 

I continued digging and found this government document from World War II authorizing the apprehension of DeGaston or whoever he really was. A nazi spy perhaps, with a string of alias's. Was he Teodore Herman Bach, the german alien sympathizer or agent from Washington? Or just an innocent artist with a string of pseudonyms wrongly fingered by the government? 

This has to be the strangest appraisal I have ever undertaken and has all the makings of a great George Smiley whodunit. I am going to do a little more searching and see what turns up. I have taken the prints on consignment. If you have any more information on De Gaston I would love to hear from you. I include pictures of the rest of the prints for your inspection. Paul Robert DeGaston, or whoever he actually was, was an enigma, but through all the intrigue and deception he was nonetheless a very talented printmaker whose artistic footprint seems to have largely vanished from this earth.

Great Dane 6/25 - Paul DeGaston

London Fog - Paul DeGaston

At Bay - Paul De Gaston

Aquatint sailboat - Paul DeGaston

Untitled - Paul DeGaston

Untitled - Paul DeGaston

Anti- aircraft, aquatint 1 of 5 - Paul DeGaston 

Cowboy Race - 5 of 25 - Paul De Gaston

From Douglas Frazer Fine Art- Bellevue, WA

My friend Doug Frazer at frazerfineart.com tells me that he has photographs of Huc M. Luquiens shot and signed by De Gaston and once owned a painting by the artist as well. 

***

10:44 p.m. 2/25/12

I got on Ancestry.com tonight and found a plethora of information on DeGaston and his several wives, Violet, Ruby, Leona. Birth dates always different but definitely maybe, probably not the same man. (See, The continuing story of Paul De Gaston and discover Paul Percy Degaston)  If you can figure the darn thing out, please let me know. Death cert shows him born in 1877, although he most often claimed 1891. His mother's maiden name was Bach so the FBI alias strikes a chord.  Worked for a period of time in San Francisco as a photographer. Lots of trips to Hawaii. I have reviewed the manifests. For some reason he engaged in a lot of misdirection, sometimes claiming to have been born in New Jersey and giving out the wrong middle name on occasion. Paul DeGaston was an artist, an abortionist, a photographer, a possible axis sympathizer and definitely a very complicated man.

I will keep looking.

Read Part II.