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