Wandlass seems to have supported her lifestyle over the years by serially stiffing galleries and other painting owners, credit card companies, her condo association, and a pages-long list of other businesses and individuals, as financial records filed as part of her bankruptcy case suggest. "I've been in this business a long, long time, and I've seen a lot of characters in this business," S.F. art dealer Russell said. "But they [the Wandlasses] were the most out-and-out dishonest of all of them."
Wandlass first became notorious in 2002, when she pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges including unlawful delivery of goods in connection with a consignment deal gone bad, according to an Associated Press story. Nonetheless, in July 2005 Anderson signed a one-week consignment agreement with her to sell works by Gustave Loiseau and Louis Valtat valued at $300,000. A year later, he hadn't got his paintings back, despite endless cajoling. Finally, he flew to San Francisco, and walked into the Tenderloin police station to file a complaint (which eventually led to the couple's arrest in December 2006).
Related Content
More About
SFPD inspector Greg Ovanessian visited a South San Francisco warehouse, where the paintings had been crated for shipment. He was bemused by what he found. Documents on file showed that as Anderson's pleas became more insistent, the Wandlasses packaged the frames for the Valtat and the Loiseau — minus the paintings. "It was only when they found out the police were involved that they reunited the paintings with the frames," he said. "You try to think: 'What is in their mind?' If they were pressured some more, and they shipped the empty frames, what was going to be their explanation?"
Thanks to Ovanessian's quick work, Anderson got his paintings back within two weeks. Others who'd placed paintings on consignment with the Wandlasses weren't so lucky.
According to bankruptcy filings, one gallery in New York spent a fortune in legal fees attempting to reclaim a painting. "We are out of pocket $160,000 on the Hoffman painting you stole, plus almost $75,000 in legal fees because of your prolonged efforts to avoid being served," Gordon Avard, controller at the gallery, wrote to Nancy Wandlass in February 2007. "We've chased you almost four years. [But] I can wait a little longer to get paid in full." East Coast collector Neil Weisman was poised to settle for a $50,000 payment in lieu of $2 million he had been owed, according to bankruptcy records
It wasn't just high-flying collectors and dealers who considered themselves victims of Wandlass' way of doing business. For 26 years, Krauth Brand worked as studio assistant to the famed abstract painter Sam Francis. When Francis moved from L.A. to Inverness, Brand and his wife, Theresa, moved with him to manage his property and gallery there. In 1994, when Francis was dying of cancer, he gave Brand a painting, which was recently valued at around $200,000.
Not long ago, the Brands placed the painting with Wandlass to sell on consignment. She sold it for $163,000, but didn't pay the Brands, Theresa Brand said. Eventually, they obtained $10,000 from Wandlass after prosecutor Ring pressed her to pay restitution to some of her victims as part of her plea deal.
Theresa Brand, 62, works as a bookkeeper; her 67-year-old husband now works at a framing shop. Lacking significant savings for retirement, they plan to continue working into the foreseeable future. "We went to all the bankruptcy hearings, and she was always talking about the big score that she had coming," she said. "She always showed up to court with Louis Vuitton purses and all this stuff, and it just killed me."
