NEW YORK, NY.- The way Mark Herman imagines it, Jack Black should play him in the movie: the scruffy dog walker whose dying client gave him a long-lost Chuck Close painting, and who then went through serial misadventures trying to sell it.

On Tuesday, Herman, 67, sat for the last time in front of the painting, an abstract nude that looked gargantuan in his cluttered upper Manhattan living room. Since July 13, when the painting was rejected by Sotheby’s auction house, it had been his near-constant companion.

Now, movers from Heritage Auctions were preparing to ship it to Dallas, where it will go up for auction Nov. 14.

“I’m gonna be sad to see it go,” Herman said. “It’s like a member of the family.”

The story of Herman’s painting involves a First Amendment lawsuit, a truculent retired professor, a dogged archivist, a New York Times article and a toy poodle named Philippe. Herman’s instinct was: Coen brothers.

“I’m hoping somebody will contact me,” he said. “Otherwise I could try to get in touch with people who might want to do a screenplay.”

Herman has a lot of time on his hands.

To begin at the beginning: In 1967, Charles Close — not yet Chuck — was an instructor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the school canceled an exhibition of his work because it featured nudity. Close sued on First Amendment grounds, in a case later taught in law schools. His lawyer was a man named Isidore Silver.

Half a century later, in upper Manhattan, Herman became a dog walker and confidant of Silver, who shared a secret: Rolled up in his closet, unseen by anyone, was an early Close painting. As the men’s friendship deepened, and Silver’s health declined, Herman said Silver basically gave him the painting. Read into that “basically” what you will. Silver died last March.

Herman envisioned a windfall. Paintings by Close once sold for as much as $4.8 million. He offered the painting to Sotheby’s, which scheduled it for auction in December but then withdrew it because Close’s studio and longtime gallery had no record of the painting. Instead of a jackpot, Herman had a bill for $1,742, for stretching the canvas onto a frame.

The story’s next character is its hero. Caroline White, an archivist at the University of Massachusetts, unearthed proof that the painting was by Close: an article from a student newspaper in 1967 about the banned exhibition and a photograph of Herman’s painting.




When the Times recounted this story July 23, including White’s find, it set off a flurry of interest in the painting and a casting suggestion. “One reader commented that I was the Dude redux,” Herman said, referring to the lovable stoner in the Coens’ “The Big Lebowski.”

He so is.

Offers came in to buy or sell the painting. Kasmin Gallery in Chelsea had a buyer willing to pay $18,000, Herman said. He turned them down. A week later, they nearly doubled the offer. Still no sale. A real estate lawyer named Alfred Fuente — “I wouldn’t call myself a collector,” he said; “perhaps a budding one, or an aspirational one” — ventured up to see the painting and offered $1,250. Herman passed.

Heritage Auctions, which had earlier declined to auction the painting, now reversed course. If the painting did not look like Close’s well-known later works, it had something else going for it, said Taylor Curry, the firm’s director of modern and contemporary art in New York. It had a history.

“There’s this amazing First Amendment issue, where this case really set the precedent for future artworks,” Curry said. “Without the case, who knows if he’d ever have come to New York.

“And the fact that Mark isn’t a billionaire, and the proceeds are going to go to him for his hard work and companionship, that’s really important to collectors,” Curry added. “People are automatically attracted to the human element of any story. Mark got the dog, too. That speaks to Mark’s character as well.”

Standing before the painting in Herman’s apartment, Curry declined to speculate on the eventual sales price but said initial estimates for the painting would be $20,000 to $30,000, with the hopes that it will sell for much more.

The Heritage movers wrapped the painting in plastic, cardboard and another layer of plastic, and loaded it into their truck. The whole process took maybe 15 minutes.

Herman faced an empty wall and some boxes that had been hidden by the painting.

“I think it will hit me later, more so than now,” he said. Asked how he will celebrate, Herman laughed.

“I’m sure I’ll think of a way,” he said.

The painting is gone. But the Dude abides.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.