page_title: Han van Meegeren
section_title: Known forgeries
hierarchical_section_title: Han van Meegeren / List of forgeries / Known forgeries
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Malle Babbe. Een lachende oude vrouw brengt een kan naar de mond. Geschilderd in de trant van Frans Hals.
context_page_description: Henricus Antonius "Han" van Meegeren was a Dutch painter and portraitist, considered to be one of the most ingenious art forgers of the 20th century. Despite his life of crime, van Meegeren became a national hero after World War II when it was revealed that he had sold a forged painting to Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
  As a child, van Meegeren developed an enthusiasm for the paintings of the Dutch Golden Age, and he set out to become an artist. Art critics, however, decried his work as tired and derivative, and van Meegeren felt that they had destroyed his career. He decided to prove his talent by forging paintings by famous artists including Frans Hals, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch and Johannes Vermeer. He so well replicated their styles that the best art critics and experts of the time accepted the paintings as genuine and sometimes exquisite. His most successful forgery was Supper at Emmaus, created in 1937 while he was living in the south of France; the painting was hailed as a real Vermeer by experts such as Abraham Bredius.
context_section_description: 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 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 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 US$300,000 or US$4 Million today)
  Interior with Drinkers 1937–1938 (sold to D G. van Beuningen for 219,000 – 220,000 guldens about US$120,000 or US$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 US$120,000 or US$1.6 million today)
  The Head of Christ, 1940–1941 (sold to D G. van Beuningen for 400,000 – 475,000 guldens about US$225,000 or US$3.25 million today)
  The Last Supper II, 1940–1942 (sold to D G. van Beuningen for 1,600,000 guldens about US$600,000 or US$7 million today)
  The Blessing of Jacob 1941–1942 (sold to W. van der Vorm for 1,270,000 guldens about US$500,000 or US$5.75 million today)
  Christ with the Adulteress 1941–1942 (sold to Hermann Göring for 1,650,000 guldens about US$624,000 or US$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 US$500,000 or US$5.3 million today, on display at the Rijksmuseum.)
  Jesus among the Doctors September 1945 (sold at auction for 3,000 guldens, about US$800 or US$7,000 today)
  The Procuress given to the Courtauld Institute as a fake in 1960 and confirmed as such by chemical analysis in 2011.
  Posthumously, van Meegeren's forgeries have been shown in exhibitions around the world, including exhibitions in Amsterdam (1952), Basel (1953), Zurich (1953), Haarlem in the Kunsthandel de Boer (1958), London (1961), Rotterdam (1971), Minneapolis (1973), Essen (1976–1977), Berlin (1977), Slot Zeist (1985), New York (1987), Berkeley, CA (1990), Munich (1991), Rotterdam (1996), The Hague (1996) and more recently at the Haagse Kunstkring, The Hague (2004) and Stockholm (2004), and have thus been made broadly accessible to the public.
caption: Malle Babbe
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