Han Van Meegeren [1889-1947]

 

Henricus Anthonius van Meegeren.

Man and Dog 
David Henty after Lowry.

Art forgers are by nature, shy creatures who seek anonymity and who, if successful, remain in the shadows while the masterpiece they have forged by skilfully re-producing a work of art in the name and style of a famous artist, is sold to a collector while quiet, perhaps astonishing, remuneration is collected by the forger. Normally, these forgeries are not in single figures; once an artist’s style has been painstakingly caught, it can be created again should the forger judge the art market will take it.

Christ and His Disciples at Emmaus.

In a recent blog I wrote about my own little forged work of art which thrills me each time I look at it. It is a fake Lowry by David Henty and I can safely say that the chance encounter with this little picture in the window of an art gallery in Dunkeld, has opened my mind and interest to art forgery and demonstrated the tremendous skill it takes to make art forgery your life’s work! Thus sensitised, I recently watched The Last Vermeer on Netflix and was riveted to learn of the activities of Han Van Meegeren. His story must be unique, encompassing surely the most dramatic art scam of the twentieth century. In his early painting years, he enjoyed some success, quickly becoming a young teaching assistant in the Delft Institut; winning a gold medal for the drawing of a church interior in the seventeenth century style and presenting an early exhibition in Den Haag. Subsequently, his artistic career faltered, and he experimented with copying established works of art.  His existence as a forger came about after a fairly mundane query in 1937 by a lawyer who was a trustee to a Dutch family estate. As part of the estate there was a very large painting of a Christ and his Disciples at Emmaus

Abraham Bredius
1855-1946.

and the lawyer asked a famous Vermeer expert, widely considered an authoritative art expert, Abraham Bredius, to identify this unknown painting. Soon after Bredius had examined it, he wrote a glowing article in the Burlington Magazine, the ‘art bible’ of that time. Describing his excitement at suddenly being confronted by a hitherto unknown masterpiece by Johannes Vermeer of Delft, Bredius wrote that it was unlike all Vermeer’s other works and yet “every inch a Vermeer….. untouched on the original canvas and without any restoration, just as it left the painter’s studio…...In no other picture by the great master of Delft do we find such sentiment, a sentiment so nobly human expressed through the medium of highest art.” He contended that Vermeer had indeed been influenced by Italian painting, as long suspected.

No doubt was expressed by his colleagues, for Bredius’ opinion was held to be ‘gospel’, such was his reputation, but the painting was, in reality, the work of this reputedly ‘mediocre’ living Dutch artist, Han Van Meegeren who naturally remained silent. He had spent four years working out techniques for making a new painting look old. The biggest problem was getting oil paint to harden thoroughly, a process which normally takes 50 years. Van Meegeren solved this dilemma by mixing his pigments with a synthetic resin, Bakelite, instead of oil and then baking the canvas. He used authentically aged canvases by taking an original but inferior seventeenth century painting and removing most of the picture with pumice and water while being careful to retain any network of cracks to aid the subsequent appearance of ageing.

The Card Players. Pieter de Hooch.

After close study of Vermeer’s painting techniques, Van Meegeren tried his hand at reproducing several renowned Vermeer interiors but realised that his forgery could then be directly compared in all aspects to the original which was when he had a brainwave! He knew that art scholars had long suspected that Vermeer had visited Italy to study the Italian masters so he forged an early Vermeer of a religious theme, based on a composition by Caravaggio which the experts would find confirmed their suspicions. This Italian influence had indeed been posited by Bredius and widely accepted as part of the Vermeer 'fake' authentication by the art establishment.

Villa Primavera, Roquebrune, Cap Ferrat.

In In the summer of 1938, Van Meegeren moved to Roquebrune, near Nice, disillusioned with his own lack of success but reluctantly accepting that his conventional art was never going to be substantially recognised by the art establishment and he began seriously to produce fakes. As a means of developing his skills, he produced four unsold paintings in the seventeenth century style: A Guitar Player and A Woman Reading, both in the style of Vermeer; A Woman Drinking in Franz Hals’ style and A Portrait of a Man in Ter Bosch’s style. Only then did he have the confidence to produce Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus, probably the best of his forgeries and the one so confidently authenticated by Bredius in 1939 before being sold for today's equivalent of several million dollars. Within one year, this newly discovered Vermeer was secured by donations from private collectors, Bredius and the Rotterdam ship-owner, W. van der Vorm and presented to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam where it rapidly became the museum’s top attraction.

Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery.

The Card Players and The Drinking Party in the style of Pieter de Hooch came next and The Drinking Party sold to D.G. van Beuningen in 1939 when Van Meegeren moved back to the Netherlands with the threat of WW2 on the horizon. He continued to produce Vermeer forgeries however, between 1941 and 1943 one of which sold in 1942 for 1.6 million Dutch guilders. In 1943 he sold his fake Vermeer, Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, to Field Marshal Hermann Goering in part exchange for 200 looted Dutch paintings plundered by the Germans earlier in the war plus a huge financial sum for himself.

In May 1945 the Allies set up the MFAA, the Monuments and Fine Arts Archives [popularly known as the Monuments Men] originally to locate and identify the extent of damage to buildings of cultural heritage. The scope of this identification gradually included stolen works of art of all kinds as the extent of missing/plundered European art became apparent. Hitler had ordered Top Level arrangements be made for the safe storage of many thousands of pilfered art works and cultural artefacts and Field Marshall Hermann Goering, an especially avaricious collector, widely known for focussing on gathering a wide selection of art for himself, was heavily involved in the planning and storage operation. The planned removal to Germany of cultural treasures from all of Europe became an important aim of WW2 with all the stolen art works temporarily secreted in the Althauser complex of salt mines and the Merker's salt mine plus the Siegen copper mine. The Althauser complex alone hid 6,577 paintings, 137 sculptures and 484 crates full of artwork; Merker's was a huge store for gold bars and European currencies on a grand scale.

Stolen Rembrandt in Althauser Salt Mine 1945.

In May 1945 Captain Harry Anderson of the MFAA discovered Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery in Goering’s personal art collection and was soon able to trace the sale, through Goering's meticulous accounts, to Van Meegeren who was swiftly arrested and charged with collaboration for having sold a Vermeer to Goering. After two weeks of silent imprisonment, Van Meegeren revealed, on June 12, 1945, that he could not be accused of collaboration [punishable by death] because he, himself, had painted the Vermeer. He had also obtained 200 stolen works of Dutch art in part exchange, an act of national good and he fervently believed that he was a national hero rather than a Nazi collaborator. The trial lasted in total for two years during which Van Meegeren confessed that “spurred by the disappointment of receiving no

Publicity in 1945.
"Art forger who duped Goering."

acknowledgements from artists and critics, …. ‘I determined to prove my worth as a painter by making a perfect seventeenth century canvas.” He was detained in prison for another month and then placed in a house rented by the Dutch government and ordered by the court authorities to produce another Vermeer to prove his unbelievable defence, under police guard. He produced Christ Among the Doctors and was believed.

After the verdict was changed from collaboration to forgery, he was sentenced to one year in prison in November 1947 but, one month later, at the age of only 58, he fell ill due to years of alcohol and drug abuse and died of a heart attack in prison, a haunting end to a chiefly ghostly life. In 1950 his household effects and estate were auctioned off in his house at 321, Keizersgracht in Amsterdam. In all, the sale made six million guilders, about 2 million dollars then, worth about twenty times more now. Van Meegeren had managed to live the high life in the late 1930s in Roquebrune where he had bought 57 different properties. His ironic post-death fame as a skilled Vermeer forger would surely have gratified his life-long desire for artistic recognition. Vindication indeed for a huge artistic talent, frequently described as 'mediocre' in his lifetime but sadly curtailed prematurely.

Van Meegeren producing Christ Among the Doctors after
Vermeer, with police oversight. 1945/6.

Van Meegeren at his long trial, 1945.

321, Kaisersgracht, Amsterdam.

One small section of the paintings 
pillaged by the Nazis.

Left: Vermeer. Woman in Blue. Reading a Letter.
Right: Van Meegeren, Girl Reading Music.

List of known forgeries by Han van Meegeren

• A counterpart to Laughing Cavalier after Frans Hals (1923) once the subject of a scandal in The Hague in 1923, its present whereabouts is unknown.
• The Happy Smoker after Frans Hals (1923) hangs in the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands
• Man and Woman at a Spinet 1932 (sold to Amsterdam banker, Dr. Fritz Mannheimer)
• Lady reading a letter[71] 1935–1936 (unsold, on display at the Rijksmuseum.)
• Lady playing a lute and looking out the window] 1935–1936 (unsold, on display at the Rijksmuseum.)
• Portrait of a Man [73] 1935–1936 in the style of Gerard ter Borch (unsold, on display at the Rijksmuseum.)
• Woman Drinking (version of Malle Babbe) 1935–1936 (unsold, on display at the Rijksmuseum.)
• The Supper at Emmaus, 1936–1937 (sold to the Boymans for 520,000–550,000 guldens, about $300,000 or $4 Million today)
• Interior with Drinkers 1937–1938 (sold to D G. van Beuningen for 219,000– 220,000 guldens about $120,000 or $1.6 million today)
• The Last Supper I, 1938–1939
• Interior with Cardplayers 1938 - 1939 (sold to W. van der Vorm for 219,000–220,000 guldens $120,000 or $1.6 million today)
• The Head of Christ, 1940–1941 (sold to D G. van Beuningen for 400,000 – 475,000 guldens about $225,000 or $3.25 million today)
• The Last Supper II, 1940–1942 (sold to D G. van Beuningen for 1,600,000 guldens about $600,000 or $7 million today)
• The Blessing of Jacob 1941–1942 (sold to W. van der Vorm for 1,270,000 guldens about $500,000 or $5.75 million today)
• Christ with the Adulteress 1941–1942 (sold to Hermann Göring for 1,650,000 guldens about $624,000 or $6.75 million today, now in the public collection of Museum de Fundatie)
• The Washing of the Feet 1941–1943 (sold to the Netherlands state for 1,250,000 – 1,300,000 guldens about $500,000 or $5.3 million today, on display at the Rijksmuseum.)
• Jesus among the Doctors September 1945 (sold at auction for 3,000 guldens, about $800 or $7,000 today)
• The Procuress given to the Courtauld Institute as a fake in 1960 and confirmed as such by chemical analysis in 2011.

  

  Lady Playing a Lute. Van Meegeren.

  
  

 

2011

 

Autumn Flares and Angel Roofs

 

Abbey Gardens this week.

Virginia creeper adorning
a Bury building.

 As the lovely colours on my long roof terrace fade into October ghosts and I dither about watering, so my eyes notice increasingly, yellow-red Autumn foliage flaring among the green as I enjoy my early morning walk. The beauty of leaves growing old is always a delight to witness and especially beautiful when seen in Autumnal sunshine; bright and warm enough; unlike the summer’s heat and dazzle. To stand beneath a canopy of green is a gift but similarly, beneath an arch of branches adorned with the saffron, russet and scarlet of its dying leaves’ final pageant, reminds one of Nietzsche’s ‘season of the soul.’ And the solitary observer somehow gains the best reward. I recently came across, and only then remembered, John Donne’s wonderful lines:

And remembering that, from the upper slopes of ageing, I savour gratefully the sentiment!  

St Mary's nave with hammer beam roof and
eleven pairs of life-sized angels.

And now to another subject which has caught my eye; the Angel Roofs of East Anglia of which I had not heard until I went into St Mary’s nearby, a week ago to have a real look at the magnificent interior. The roof did not catch my attention until one of the volunteers turned on the lights and all was dimly revealed. Several hundred angel roofs were built between 1395 and the 1530s, and of these over 170 survive including some which have been defaced during and after the Reformation. Virtually all are in churches, and most are in East Anglia. By definition, all feature wooden carvings of angels though there is significant variation in size and detail. They are inaccessible, virtually immovable, hard to see and still harder to photograph, and thus their beauty and craftsmanship, masterpieces of both mediaeval sculpture and engineering, do not have a wide contemporary audience. They are, in fact, overlooked, neglected and almost hidden national art treasures

“Mediaeval religion was intensely visual.” My recently discovered ‘bible’ of angel roofs [details below] reminds the reader that pre-Reformation churches blazed with colour and images for worshippers who chiefly could not read or could not afford the rare, expensive manuscript books if they could read. Wall paintings illustrated the rewards of virtue and the perils of vice while stained glass presented angels, saints, the Holy Family, and niches held devotional statues. The rood, the depiction of the Crucifixion with Mary and St John, was placed high on the chancel arch in every church and angel roofs, both as ornament and often roof support, fitted perfectly into this colourful mediaeval pageantry.

The first, and most magnificent angel roof was in Westminster Hall, designed and built by Hugh Herland, the master carpenter to Richard 11, between 1393 and 1398. It is also the first known example of a hammer beam roof. This “staggering masterpiece of art and engineering” has never been surpassed and began the fashion for angel roofs and hammer beams which followed. It is suggested that Richard 11 [1377-1399] had a particular fondness for angels which played a prominent part in the iconography of his reign. At his coronation, a mechanical angel bowed down to present him with a golden crown; the Wilton Diptych, a portable altar screen made for Richard features eleven angels; angels adorn his tomb in Westminster Abbey and angels welcomed his reconciliation to the City of London in 1392 when an eyewitness account observed that “angels made great melody and minstrelsy.” Clearly angels importantly conveyed, and justified, Richard’s divinely ordained status.  Although it must be remembered that angels were virtually part of everyday mediaeval life with prayers for angelic support commonplace; they were a constant presence in church mystery plays through which religious instruction was presented to the widely illiterate population.

Lithograph of Westminster Hall roof.

Wilton Diptych

From the magnificent beginnings of Westminster Hall grew the fashion for angel roofs and hammer beams [usually but not always created in tandem] in churches which are concentrated in East Anglia. Rimmer [see below] suggests that essential preconditions for such hugely expensive building were money and the will to do the job, plus the technical expertise to accomplish such creations.

The density of church-building in East Anglia reflected the importance of the area [60 churches in Norfolk alone] which was both highly prosperous and one of the most densely populated areas in the country with its successful sheep commerce, fertile agricultural activities and rich coastal waters through which trading partnerships with the Hanseatic League were established. Rich merchants had great power and it was into this very successful region that Hugh Herland, the royal carpenter responsible for the Westminster Hall angel roof, was sent in 1398 to recruit labour for a new harbour at Great Yarmouth. Rimmer suggests it was this single occurrence when Herland would certainly have met and worked with the region’s rich merchants to recruit craftsmen, which planted the seeds of angel roofs with hammer beams in East Anglian churches.

Feathery Norfolk angel.

Blythburgh angel.

Anonymous angel.

The Angel Roofs of East Anglia: Unseen Masterpieces of the Middle Ages.      Michael Rimmer.

St. Mary's Bury St Edmunds.            Clive Paine.

Stunning angel roof, St Wendreda 
Church, Cambridgeshire.

David Henty: Art Copyist

The happy event in the gorgeous Murthly Castle Chapel.

 

At the recent family wedding in Scotland, in Murthly Castle Chapel to be precise, near Dunkeld where chiefly, the family was staying for the celebratory weekend, David, my son, and I, out for a wander in this lovely little town, ventured into the Hatton House Gallery after I became excited at seeing a small L. S. Lowry in the window. The lovely little drawing of a mournful man and his tiny dog turned out to be the work of David Henty, now described as” the best copyist artist in the world today” Viz, he used to be a forger who became famous for his extraordinary ability to forge the work of a multitude of artists. 

[Viz is an abbreviation of Videlicet, itself a reduction from the Latin 'videre licet' indicating 'it is permitted to see.' So 'viz' is used as a synonym for 'namely', 'that is to say'.] 

After Edvard Munsch.

David Henty’s work is meticulously and lovingly recreated to the finest detail; he has honed his craft over 25 years to master the techniques and nuances of some of history’s most iconic artists. His work has fooled scientists and art critics alike, being practically indiscernible from originals of such artworks by Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, LS Lowry, Caravaggio, Leonardo Da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh, Norman Rockwell, Chaim Sautine, Carel Fabrituius, Claude Monet, Jean Michel Basquiat, Ewin Landseer, Walter Sickert, Rene Magritte, David Shepherd, John Singer Sargent, Gabriel Rossetti, and the list goes on. The sheer breadth of the artists he can copy, continues to amaze.

After Lowry

The card accompanies the purchase of
a Henty to assure authenticity!

David’s history as an artist started, appropriately enough, with a short stint in HM Prison for forging U.K. passports during the handover of Hong Kong in the mid-1990s. It was while serving his sentence that David decided to take painting classes and became inspired to start painting seriously, after being seduced by the stories of the artists with whom he was becoming acquainted and by the technical genius of these artists. Gradually, he became more and more interested in attaining a higher level of expertise himself and developed a strong desire to become ‘connected’ to the very psyche of the artists, even dreaming of their lives and their masterpieces. Eventually, he had taught himself, through rigorous preparation and a wholly immersive research process, the art of copying, and flawless reproduction and his obsession meant wherever possible, he would even source the same materials, pigments, brushes, canvases and boards, to stay true to the period.

David Henty with his Van Gogh.

David underlines that his paintings are a very different discipline to that of producing original artwork. Copying is notoriously demanding, and it is much more technically challenging to follow someone else’s lines and brush styles. But he relishes this technical challenge of mastering an artist’s eye, and once he has an affinity with the artist, he is able to replicate their style to an amazing degree of closeness. David’s preparation for a painting begins long before his brush even touches canvas, and consequently, “each piece comes with its own unique narrative as a 'David Henty' painting, original in and of itself.”

Until he was exposed in a 2014 Telegraph investigation, David Henty had already sold more than 1,000 forged art works through internet auction sites. “The forger’s den” is how David Henty describes his little storeroom in Saltdean. It is stuffed with old frames, canvases, auction catalogues and well-thumbed hardback books on famous artists which line the walls. And then there are the paintings. Here is a Gabriel Rossetti, dating back to his prison days. There is a half-finished Caravaggio’s Medusa. At the back of the room is a small Lowry painting. And there are two stunning Van Goghs – a self-portrait and a landscape – both actual sizes stacked against a wall. In his bedroom is a half-finished take on Millais’ Ophelia and a gorgeous version of Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ. Getting through the front door requires squeezing past a giant Francis Bacon, and in the living room, on an easel, is Picasso's Weeping Woman still drying.

David Henty goes straight.

Recent press attention from the likes of The Sunday Telegraph, Daily Express and high-profile appearances on Sky News and BBC Radio 4, just to mention a few, confirm a mounting interest in David Henty's artwork and a renewed appreciation for this increasingly respected genre. With a strong and growing gallery presence, and a lengthening list of private collectors, David’s work is in high demand, and with a discerning repertoire, a long list of projects and commissions are now on the table from a Mediterranean tour, prospective shows in the United States, scheduled shows in Dubai, UAE and beyond. David also gives lectures and speeches on technique and the intriguing art of forgery at private, corporate and charity events.

Each original piece is presented in its own bespoke, handmade frame and signed on the reverse by David Henty to certify its authenticity. I thought long and hard about Henty's Lowry in the Hatton House Gallery which I knew Icould barely afford even though its cost was not remotely near the fee for an original Lowry! After some consideration I decided to purchase it as I really loved it …. and do love it. I asked for a free re-frame of the picture as the very ornate, large, gilt one it had, didn’t fit the image, for me. And voila, one month later, Man and Dog arrived, bringing untold pleasure in its plain, black frame! It was fortunate that I did not know of an unexpected bill for Belgian tax which was awaiting my return, in my post-box at home!

A small display of Henty's numerous copies.
An astonishing and virtuosic range.

LS. Lowry
Man with stick.

David Henty
Man and Dog.