Of all the astounding winning bids at November's auction of Joan Didion's private belongings in upstate New York, the highest was indeed breathtaking: $110,000 for a portrait of Didion by an entirely unknown painter named Les Johnson.

The catalog identifies him and reports briefly that the painter was a prisoner who painted the picture based on a flap photo in Joan Didion's novel "A Book of Common Prayer".

It is signed with 'L.

Johnson 1977,” and the oil painting had been estimated at $3,000 to $5,000, and that too, presumably, mainly because Joan Didion repeatedly had herself photographed under him during interviews, and once for Oprah Winfrey's O magazine.

Verena Lueken

Freelance writer for the feuilleton.

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Without Joan Didion, just as a picture, the painting seemed little remarkable, she looks gray and bitter in it, with a flower behind her ear, which does not speak for anything in her facial expression.

Nevertheless, 41 bidders fought at the auction, from which the documentary filmmaker Peter Jones emerged as the winner.

The “New York Times” called this name these days.

Above all, however, the newspaper has now found out who the painter actually is.

Or was, he died of an oxycontin overdose in a nursing home in 2002.

The dust raised by the auction reached a friend of the painter and also his brother.

And they told the newspaper the following story, which doesn't quite match the one in the catalogue.

Leslie Johnson, born in 1944, hated his red hair and his name, which he shortened to Les.

He joined the civil rights movement, fell into depression, was arrested at a campaign rally in 1964, but took part in the march on Selma, Alabama, again the following year.

Psychiatric treatment followed, and what was then diagnosed as manic-depressive, and life went to the dogs.

When Les Johnson discovered Joan Didion's books, he found something of his California '60s feel that felt real and familiar.

So he painted the portrait from the small photo and did everything to ensure that she got it.

A chain of acquaintances and friends of acquaintances was set in motion, and in fact the picture ended up with Joan Didion, who, however, did not know exactly where it came from.

Conversely, Les Johnson didn't know if it would ever have gotten to her.

The most famous photo, taken by Albert Watson, on which Joan Didion is sitting under his picture in her living room, dates from 2005. The picture was almost fifty years old and the painter was dead a letter from his friend after his death.

She replied, shocked, warm.

If those involved weren't dead, it would almost be a Christmas story.