The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren
Product DescriptionIt's a story that made Dutch painter Han van Meegeren famous worldwide when it broke at the end of World War II: A   lifetime of disappointment drove him to forge Vermeers, one of which he sold to Hermann Goering in mockery of the   Nazis. And it's a story that's been believed ever since. Too bad it isn't true.Jonathan Lopez has   drawn on never-before-seen documents from dozens of archives to write a revelatory new biography of the world's   most famous forger. Neither unappreciated artist nor antifascist hero, van Meegeren emerges as an ingenious, dyed-  in-the-wool crook--a talented Mr. Ripley armed with a paintbrush. Lopez explores a network of illicit commerce that   operated across Europe: Not only was van Meegeren a key player in that high-stakes game in the 1920s and '30s,   landing fakes with famous collectors such as Andrew Mellon, but he and his associates later cashed in on the Nazi   occupation.The Man Who Made Vermeersis a long-overdue unvarnishing of van Meegeren's legend and a   deliciously detailed story of deceit in the art world.A Look InsideThe Man Who Made Vermeers(Click on Images to Enlarge)Han van   Meegeren, 1945The   Smiling GirlVermeer forgery sold to Andrew Mellon in 1926The Lace   MakerVermeer forgery sold to Andrew Mellon in 1928Christ and the AdulteressVermeer forgery sold to Hermann Goering in 1943A Q&A with Jonathan Lopez, Author ofThe Man Who Made   VermeersQ:It seems incredible that Van Meegeren was able to forge a whole Vermeer oeuvre.  How did he get away with   it?A:Supply and demand played an important role. Vermeers are extremely rare--only thirty-six are known to   exist--and a lot of wealthy collectors wanted to get hold of one.Q:Did real Vermeers turn up on the market in addition to the fakes in those days?A:Sure. The appearance of the occasional gem is what kept everyone searching for more.  One of Vermeer's best pictures,The Girl with the Red Hat, for instance, was discovered in 1925 in a private   collection in Paris. It was the last genuine Vermeer ever found. Andrew Mellon bought it and later donated it to   the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where it remains on view to this day. Mellon was a very generous   man.Q:Didn't Mellon also buy a fake Vermeer?A:Actually, he bought two: the first in 1926; the second, in 1927. He never realized they were phonies. He displayed   them in his home, right next to theThe Girl with the Red Hat, and gave them to the National Gallery along   with the rest of his collection. Mellon's two fakes hung at the National Gallery as genuine Vermeers until the late   1950s, when chemical tests showed them to be made from modern paint. They're kept in storage now. Both of them were   made by Han van Meegeren--as is revealed inThe Man Who Made Vermeers.Q:Who was the “brains” of the operation?A:The man at the center of the plot was an English art collector named Theodore Ward, who was a close friend of Van   Meegeren's. Ward considered himself a true connoisseur of painting and resented wealthier collectors who could   afford whatever they wanted but lacked a deep knowledge of art. He got his revenge with the Mellon fakes. It would   appear, though, that Ward was slightly mad. He decorated the parlor of his London home to look exactly like a   Vermeer interior. There's a photo of it in the book, along with a very nice portrait of Ward by Van Meegeren, in   which Ward is depicted wearing a red velvet smoking jacket, cigar in hand.  He looks immensely pleased with   himself.Q:Van Meegeren never confessed to painting the Mellon Vermeers, but he did admit to painting other fakes, including a   phony Vermeer that he sold to Hermann Goering. Why would he hide one part of his career, but flaunt another?A:It has to do with the circumstances of Van Meegeren's confession. The Dutch government arrested Van Meegeren as a   Nazi collaborator at the end of World War II, charging that he had sold a priceless Vermeer to Goering, the number   two man in the Nazi hierarchy after Hitler. When Van Meegeren admitted that he himself had painted Goering's   masterpiece, it naturally made him quite popular with the general public--and he played it for all it was worth. He   claimed to be a misunderstood genius who had turned to forgery only late in life to revenge himself on the critics   who had scorned him early in his artistic career. He only admitted forging the few works that the authorities   already knew to be connected to him through the straw men who had brought the pictures to market. There were   rumors--even then--that Van Meegeren was really a lifelong crook, but those leads were never investigated. I think   no one wanted to spoil such an appealing story--the little Dutchman who outwitted Goering.Q:Was there anything else Van Meegeren was hiding?A:Yes. Van Meegeren really was a Nazi collaborator.   During the occupation, Van Meegeren painted propagandistic artworks (under his own name) for the German-installed   puppet government of the Netherlands, gave large sums of money to Nazi causes, and even sent a polite note to the   Führer in Berlin, as a token of his admiration. Remarkably, Van Meegeren's interest in Nazism actually dated back   to a period long before the occupation. As early as 1928, five years before Hitler assumed power as chancellor of   Germany, Van Meegeren could be found parroting selections fromMein Kampf. The reality is that fleecing   Hermann Goering was just an ordinary business transaction, not a political statement. Van Meegeren truly believed   in the fascist dream. After the war, that was a big problem.Q:How did Van Meegeren's fascist sympathies play into the types of “Vermeers” he painted?A:Well, forgeries often reflect the tastes and attitudes of their own time just as much as those of the period they   attempt to imitate. Mellon's fake Vermeers, for instance, strongly resemble the society portraits that Van Meegeren   painted under his own name during the 1920s. Back in Mellon's day, nobody noticed this anachronism because people,   in general, respond almost instinctively to the elements that seem familiar and comprehensible in an artwork, even   one presumed to be centuries old. It’s part of what makes fakes so seductive.  But, by the mid-1930s, Van Meegeren was no longer painting pictures of pretty Dutch society girls. He had become   deeply interested in Nazi visual culture, in particular, so-called Volkgeist imagery, a kind of propaganda art   which attempted to represent the pure spirit of the Aryan race. Van Meegeren's later Vermeers are essentially   Volksgeist images presented in the guise of 17th century paintings, an art-historical hoax that changed the past to   suit Van Meegeren's twisted view of the present.  Today, people look at Van Meegeren's later Vermeer forgeries and   wonder how one on earth anyone could ever have mistaken them for the real thing. But they are “Vermeers” born of   the Nazi era, and we should be thankful that they seem incoherent to us today, because it shows how far we have   travelled from the mood and preoccupations of that moment. It's no coincidence that Hitler's personal photographer,   Heinrich Hoffmann was a big fan of the “Vermeers” that Van Meegeren pumped out during the late 1930s and early 40s.   They gave him the illusion of seeing his own aesthetics projected back into history. It was a kind of sinister   narcissism, really.Q:Do you think an art hoax of such proportions could happen today?A:In the annals of forgery, Van Meegeren is unique for the way he bent history to his will. He had an idea about the   past, about the essential spirit of the Dutch people, and, with his fake Vermeers, he created the visual evidence   needed to “prove” his point. There's never been anything else quite like it, and hopefully there never will be   again. The entire idea behind Van Meegeren's project was a product of his era, the fascist era of European history.  That said, though, ordinary forgery--the kind done for pure profit--continues unabated. There's a family in England   that was arrested recently. They had been making and marketing fake Gauguin sculptures for decades. They were quite   clever about it--studied Gauguin's style and life history, created phony documents to fake the ownership history of   the individual pieces. It's really not an uncommon story. Forgery is a big business. Always has been; always will   be.Q:Do you think Van Meegeren would have been pleased by the appearance of not one but two biographies of him this   year?  How are the two books different?A:Oh, he would have been thrilled! He loved attention more than just about anything in the world, and I'm sure,   wherever he is right now, he's smiling.   My guess, though, is that Van Meegeren would probably find the other fellow's book a bit more flattering, because   it's closer to the storyline that Van Meegeren himself created for his life and career back in 1945. Personally, I   don't believe that Van Meegeren cast any kind of “spell” on people, nor do I think that the collectors and dealers   that Van Meegeren duped were necessarily foolish--Andrew Mellon, for instance, was by no means a foolish man. The   other book repeats a lot of Van Meegeren's self-serving mythology.  My book doesn't do that. It is about the specific historical circumstances that allowed the Vermeer swindles to   occur. It's steeped in the intimate details of the history of the art market, the history of the Netherlands, and   the history of Van Meegeren's career as it really happened. And I think that kind of depth of involvement with my   subject matter shows through in my conclusions. I don’t present Van Meegeren as a man in isolation, but as a   product of his times and of the sordid milieu in which he operated.   The central issue the other book misses is that Van Meegeren was not a lone gunman. It takes a loosely coordinated   web of self-interested, morally compromised individuals to push a second-rate product into the marketplace as   though it were a masterpiece.  That sort of thing still goes on today, and not just in the art world, but in every   conceivable field of endeavor.--This text refers to thePaperbackedition.