As Hunter Biden’s life and business dealings have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, leading to this week’s trial on gun charges, the president’s son has said he hoped to keep one part of his life unscathed: his art.
It hasn’t worked out that way.
Mr. Biden, who began to paint in earnest as he lifted himself out of a crack cocaine addiction, started attracting attention for his art three years ago after a Manhattan gallery selling his works claimed that they were being offered for up to $500,000 apiece.
That high price tag — rare for a novice artist — raised questions about whether the works could attract buyers seeking to curry favor with the Biden administration. The art sale spurred news reports, assurances by the White House that there was a plan in place to avoid potential conflicts of interest and, earlier this year, a congressional inquiry.
But in the end, Mr. Biden’s paintings fetched far less. His New York gallerist, Georges Bergès, testified to Congress in January that the widely reported $500,000 asking prices that were attributed to his gallery — including in two emails to The New York Times, one of which was sent in Mr. Bergès’s name — had not been accurate. He said the top price he had received for Mr. Biden’s work had in fact been only $85,000. In all, the gallery sold about $1.5 million worth of his art, according to a tally that was cited during the congressional hearing that Mr. Bergès did not dispute.
Mr. Biden’s earnings proved more modest than the early hype had suggested: He reported $130,984 in gross income from art sales during the first two tax years that he was represented by the gallery, according to his tax returns from those years.
In an interview last week, Mr. Bergès blamed a representative of his gallery, the Georges Bergès Gallery in SoHo, for the reports of inflated asking prices. But he added that Mr. Biden’s art was well worth its cost.
“I think he is a great artist,” he said.
Mr. Bergès, who describes himself as “not a very partisan person” but has donated to both major political parties, including to former President Donald J. Trump, testified for several hours before two Republican-led congressional committees.
“Do you have any reason to believe that President Biden received any benefit from the purchases of Hunter Biden’s artwork?” Mr. Bergès was asked during his testimony.
“No,” Mr. Bergès replied.
The business dealings of the relatives of presidents have long drawn scrutiny, such as Billy Carter’s introduction of Billy Beer and his dealings with Libya during the Carter administration and the Trump family’s business dealings, including overseas, during the Trump administration.
As Mr. Biden’s artworks went on sale, White House officials said in 2021 that a system had been put in place in which the buyers’ identities would be kept secret from the artist, to avoid potential conflicts from buyers who might be seeking access to the administration. Although information about the plan came from the White House, officials later clarified that they were “not White House arrangements,” and that enforcement was up to the gallery.
In January, Mr. Bergès told House members that he had never discussed the matter of an ethical wall with federal officials and that, despite his best efforts, Mr. Biden had learned the names of three of the 10 people who purchased his works.
The biggest buyer of the Biden art was Kevin Morris, a Hollywood lawyer who described himself in congressional testimony as a friend of Mr. Biden’s since 2019. Mr. Morris, whose clients have included Matthew McConaughey and the creators of “South Park,” spent $875,000 on 11 of Mr. Biden’s paintings, he said in testimony to Congress.
A lawyer for Mr. Morris said in a January letter that Mr. Morris had spent more than $6.5 million to help Mr. Biden, including paying his back taxes and resolving a paternity lawsuit by the mother of Mr. Biden’s fourth child. The money took the form of loans from Mr. Morris to Mr. Biden with 5 percent interest and no payments due until October 2025. The Times reported last week that Mr. Morris had told associates he was running out of liquid assets to make any more loans.
During his testimony to Congress, Mr. Morris said he never expected, and was never led to believe, that he could receive any favor from the Biden administration in exchange for buying the art. He said he bought the works because he was impressed by them.
“I like to support first-time artists or starting artists,” Mr. Morris said.
Another buyer whose purchases have drawn notice is Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, a real estate investor and Democratic donor who has contributed regularly to the Biden campaign. She purchased two of Mr. Biden’s paintings, buying at least one of them before the president appointed her to an unpaid position on the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. Ms. Naftali spent $42,000 and $52,000 on the two paintings.
A lawyer for Ms. Naftali, Jason Abel, said in a letter to the chair of one of the investigative committees, which was obtained by CNN and other outlets, that “any attempt to link Ms. Naftali’s art purchases to her appointment to the commission” was “baseless.” He said in the letter that her appointment started not with the White House but with Nancy Pelosi, who at the time was the speaker of the House. “It continues to be that there really is nothing there,” Ms. Naftali said in an interview with Deadline late last year. Her lawyer did not respond to requests for comment last week.
Another buyer, according to congressional testimony, was William Jacques, whom Mr. Bergès has described as a shareholder in the gallery. He spent about $122,000 on four Biden paintings. His identity, Mr. Bergès said, was revealed to Mr. Biden when he saw one at Mr. Jacques’s home. Mr. Jacques did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Biden’s career as an artist may surface at his federal trial in Delaware, where he has pleaded not guilty to charges that he lied about his drug use on an application for a pistol in 2018. The charges stem from a time when Mr. Biden has acknowledged his addiction to crack cocaine and alcohol, a dark period in his life that he escaped from in part by becoming sober, sequestering himself and beginning to paint, according to his 2021 memoir.
Mr. Bergès has said that he found Mr. Biden’s personal story of overcoming addiction compelling, and that it resonated powerfully in his art.
“I see hope; I see perseverance,” Mr. Bergès told the committees of the artwork.
He began to represent Mr. Biden in 2020, after they were introduced by Lanette Phillips, a music video producer who hosted a fund-raiser for President Biden in 2019. (Mr. Morris, who bought 11 of the works, has said that he first met Mr. Biden at Ms. Phillips’s fund-raiser, and that he felt sympathy for the younger Biden, who was unemployed and besieged by paparazzi.) The gallery’s first contract with Mr. Biden gave Ms. Phillips 10 percent of the net proceeds from his art, and described her as the “artist’s agent.” A second contract, dated September 2021, does not mention Ms. Phillips, instead specifying a 60-40 split between Mr. Biden and the gallery.
But Mr. Biden’s career as an artist soon became a target for conservative lawmakers who had long scrutinized his business dealings around the world, suggesting that he was receiving lucrative fees and a board seat on Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, because of his ability to provide access to his father. Last year, as the House started an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, his son’s art career became a topic in a wide-ranging investigation.
Mr. Biden, 54, sat for a daylong interview in February with the House committees. He told them: “I did not involve my father in my business, not while I was a practicing lawyer, not in my investments or transactions, domestic or international, not as a board member, and not as an artist, never.”
Virginia Canter, the chief ethics council at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog, said it had always been unclear to her how it would be possible to ensure that Mr. Biden’s art did not become a conduit for those seeking access to the president. But she said there was no evidence of her biggest concern: that foreign investors could seek the administration’s favor through the art.
Mr. Bergès, 47, said he chose not to renew Mr. Biden’s contract in October, but added that they remain friends and that Mr. Biden was continuing to paint; some of his works still hang in the gallery. In the interview, he said that he had needed to focus on the other artists his gallery represented and that the attention his gallery had received, including death threats, felt overwhelming.
“It was a little bit more than I could chew,” Mr. Bergès told the committees. “I kind of wanted my life back.”
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