The forger who fooled the world - Telegraph The forger who fooled the world Han van Meegeren's The last supper (1940-1941) Serena Davies 12:01AM BST 05 Aug 2006 Frank Wynne tells the extraordinary story of Han van Meegeren, the Dutch artist whose ‘Vermeer' made him a folk hero I've always loved a forger. It's difficult not to feel a surge of joy at the thought of an eminent critic waxing lyrical over the glories of a "17th-century masterpiece" on which the paint is barely dry. If the pinnacle of Western art is arguably Leonardo da Vinci, his shadow self in the pantheon of forgers is Han van Meegeren. In May 1945, shortly after the liberation of Holland, two officers arrived at the studio of van Meegeren, then just a little-known Dutch painter and art dealer. The officers, from the Allied Art Commission, were responsible for repatriating works of art looted by the Nazis.

They had come about a painting discovered among the collection of Hermann Göring: a hitherto unknown canvas by the great Johannes Vermeer, entitled The Supper at Emmaus. Since the Nazis had kept detailed records, it had been easy to trace the sale of the painting back to van Meegeren. Now, they wanted only the name of the original owner so that they might return his priceless masterpiece. When van Meegeren refused to name the owner, they arrested him and charged him with treason. If found guilty, he faced the death penalty. The artist was entirely innocent of the charges against him, a fact he could easily have proved. But in doing so, he would have to confess to a series of crimes which he had plotted for decades and which, in five short years had earned him the equivalent of $60 million. Han van Meegeren was a forger. He loathed modern art - he thought it childish and decadent, a passing fad for ugliness which would soon fade. For years he had eked out a living painting gloomy portraits of rich patrons in a faux-Rembrandt style and had winced as he heard his work ridiculed by his peers.

A prominent critic reviewing van Meegeren's second solo exhibition wrote, "A gifted technician who has made a sort of composite facsimile of the Renaissance school, he has every virtue except originality." The time had come, van Meegeren felt, to revenge himself on his critics. He devised a plan to paint a perfect Vermeer - neither a copy, nor a pastiche, but an original work - and, when it had been authenticated by leading art experts, acquired by a major museum, exhibited and acclaimed, he would announce his hoax to the world. His first step was concocting an ingenious mixture of pigments that "would pass the five tests which any genuine 17th-century painting must pass". Now he had only to paint a masterpiece. The Supper at Emmaus was unlike any acknowledged Vermeer. Van Meegeren, true to his perversely moral scheme, painted it in his own style, adding only subtle allusions to works by the Dutch master, before signing it with the requisite flourish. He had it submitted to Abraham Bredius, the most eminent authority on Dutch baroque art of his day, and the critic took the bait.

Writing in the Burlington magazine, Bredius opined: "It is a wonderful moment in the life of a lover of art when he finds himself suddenly confronted with a hitherto unknown painting by a great master… And what a picture! We have here a - I am inclined to say the - masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer of Delft." Suddenly the world was at van Meegeren's feet. The Supper at Emmaus was bought by the prestigious Boijmans Gallery in Rotterdam for the equivalent of $6 million. More importantly for van Meegeren, it was advertised as the centrepiece, the crowning glory of the gallery's exhibition, 400 Years of European Art. During the exhibition, van Meegeren would loudly proclaim the painting a forgery, a crude pastiche, and listen as the finest minds of his generation persuaded him that his painting was a genuine Vermeer. His triumph was now complete. He had only to do what he had promised himself: to stand up and claim the work for himself, thereby making fools of his critics. Instead, within a month, he was working on a new forgery.

In less than six years, van Meegeren would paint a further six "Vermeers", earning the equivalent of $60 million. With money, came vice - he revelled in fine champagne, became addicted to morphine and was compulsively unfaithful to his wife. He bought dozens of houses and hotels, but even then he could not exhaust his wealth, so he hid hundreds of thousands of guilders in gardens, heating ducts and under the floorboards of his many properties. Often he would forget where he had hidden the money, and 30 years after his death, the Dutch were still turning up cashboxes stuffed with pre-war notes. As van Meegeren's addictions to alcohol and morphine took hold, and the standard of his forgeries plummeted, still experts accepted them as genuine. He discovered that, regardless of how incompetent his painting, how crude his anatomy, how uncertain the provenance, the most erudite Vermeer critics were prepared to sanctify his work. His one mistake had been to allow one of his paintings to fall into enemy hands. No expert eye discovered van Meegeren's forgery.

He was unmasked only because, after six weeks in prison, he cracked: "‘Fools!" he roared at his jailers. "You think I sold a priceless Vermeer to Göring? There was no Vermeer - I painted it myself." There was one thing van Meegeren had not counted on: no one believed his confession. It was one of the officers who naively suggested that if van Meegeren had painted Göring's Vermeer, he could paint a copy from memory. Van Meegeren arrogantly refused. "To paint a copy is no proof of artistic talent. In all my career I have never painted a copy! But I shall paint you a new Vermeer. I shall paint you a masterpiece." And so, surrounded by reporters and court-appointed witnesses, and supplied with liberal quantities of alcohol and morphine, he worked for six weeks painting one final "Vermeer", in a desperate attempt to prove himself guilty. Having been denounced by the press as a traitor, a "Dutch Nazi artist", van Meegeren was now a folk hero - the man who had swindled Göring.

The Reichsmarschall was told that his beloved Vermeer was a forgery while awaiting execution in Nuremberg. According to a contemporary account: "[Göring] looked as if for the first time he had discovered there was evil in the world." In the wake of his confession and the scandal it caused, van Meegeren truly knew the fame he had craved. The trial, when it came, was a three-ring circus. Experts tripped over each other to exculpate themselves. Van Meegeren - more than the prosecuting counsel - was determined that he should be found guilty of committing these "masterpieces", but even now, experts conspired against him, arguing that at least one of his forgeries might be genuine. In the end, however, van Meegeren got his wish: on November 12, 1947 he was found guilty of obtaining money by deception and sentenced to one year's imprisonment. But he would never serve a day of his sentence. While prosecution and defence wrangled to secure a full public pardon from the Queen, the forger - long a consummate hypochondriac - finally succumbed to angina.

He was hospitalised on the day before he was scheduled to serve his sentence and died some weeks later. Han van Meegeren's greatest gift to the art world is doubt. If forgers throughout the ages have taught us anything, it is to re-examine why we love what we love, to overcome our obsession with simple authenticity and appreciate the work for itself. Is a minor Rothko truly worth more than the finest Ellsworth Kelly? Are we captivated by the serenity and light of a Corot watercolour, or simply the signature? "Perhaps," as the art critic Emily Genauer wrote, "we are almost at the point of sophistication where we are able to enjoy a work of art for what it is." Perhaps. Then again, as Theodore Rousseau pointed out, "We should all realise that we can only talk about the bad forgeries, the ones that have been detected; the good ones are still hanging on the walls." Frank Wynne is the author of 'I Was Vermeer: The Legend of the Forger Who Swindled the Nazis', published by Bloomsbury (£14.99) on Mon.

Han van Meegeren (Painter) - Pics, Videos, Dating, & News Han van Meegeren Dutch Painter and Art Forger Male Born Oct 10, 1889 Han van Meegeren, born Henricus Antonius van Meegeren, was a Dutch painter and portraitist, and is considered to be one of the most ingenious art forgers of the 20th century. As a child, van Meegeren developed an enthusiasm for the marvelous colours used by painters of the Dutch Golden Age, and later set out to become an artist himself.… Read More related links Elly Wierda, Dutch Resistance Fighter, Dies Baltimore Sun Google News - Jul 13, 2011 '&quot;She went to Germany to search for valuable art pieces that had been stolen from the Dutch by the Nazis,&quot; said her son, Andrew Wierda, who lives in West Orange, NJ &quot;Her work led in part to the arrest and conviction of <mark>Han van Meegeren</mark>, an artist who' The Procuress: Fake Or Mistake? Painting Featured In The Third Episode Of Bbc ...

Art Daily Google News - Jul 07, 2011 'It had been found in France, in the house of the notorious forger <mark>Han van Meegeren</mark> (1889-1947). Van Meegeren specialised in forging paintings by Vermeer. He deceived many members of the art establishment and collectors, including the Nazi leader Herman' La Veracidad Del EngaÃ±o ArtÃ­stico A Lo Largo De La Historia El Mundo.Es Google News - Jul 06, 2011 'Es el caso del mÃ¡s conocido falsificador de la historia, el holandÃ©s <mark>Han van Meegeren</mark>, que &quot;comprÃ³ lienzos del XVII que usÃ³ como fondo para crear los falsos e incluso consiguiÃ³ pigmentos iguales a los usados en la Ã©poca&quot;, recuerda RuÃ­z de Samaniego' Magazin Istoric (Iunie 2011) Tribuna Google News - Jul 04, 2011 '...

Contele Almasy, pacientul maghiar (Dana Dolghin), RevoltÄ la DobroteÅti (SteluÅ£a PÄtraÅcu), un secular rÄzboi pe mare: VeneÅ£ia-Genova (Victor Ionescu), <mark>Han van Meegeren</mark>, un artist la falsului (Irina Å¢Äranu), &quot;Spionaj diplomatic&quot; Ã®n Moldova (dr' Learn about the memorable moments in the evolution of Han van Meegeren. CHILDHOOD 1889 Birth Han (a diminutive version of Henri or Henricus) van Meegeren was born in 1889 as the third of five children of middle-class Roman Catholic parents in the provincial city of Deventer.

… Read More He was the son of Augusta Louisa Henrietta Camps and Hendrikus Johannes van Meegeren, a French and history teacher at the Kweekschool (training college for schoolteachers) in the city of Deventer.<br /><br /> Early on, Han felt neglected and misunderstood by his father, as the elder van Meegeren strictly forbade his artistic development and constantly derided him. He was often forced by his father to write a hundred times, "I know nothing, I am nothing, I am capable of nothing." While attending the Higher Burger School, he met teacher and painter Bartus Korteling (1853â1930) who became his mentor. Korteling had been inspired by Johannes Vermeer and showed the young van Meegeren how Vermeer had manufactured and mixed his colours. Korteling had rejected the Impressionist movement and other modern trends as decadent, degenerate art, and his strong personal influence probably later led van Meegeren to rebuff contemporary styles and paint exclusively in the style of the Dutch Golden Age.

Read Less TEENAGE 1907 17 Years Old Van Meegeren's father did not share his sonâs love of art; instead, he encouraged Han to study architecture. In 1907, van Meegeren, compelled by his father's demands, left home to study at the Technische Hogeschool (Delft Technical College) in Delft, the hometown of Johannes Vermeer. … Read More He received drawing and painting lessons, as well. He easily passed his preliminary examinations but, because he did not wish to become an architect, he never took the Ingenieurs (final) examination. He nevertheless proved to be an apt architect and designed the clubhouse for his rowing club DDS in Delft (see image). This building still exists. Read Less TWENTIES 1912 22 Years Old On 18 April 1912, van Meegeren married fellow art student Anna de Voogt who was expecting their first child. … Read More The couple went to live with Annaâs grandmother in Rijswijk. Their son Jacques Henri Emil was born on 26 August 1912 in Rijswijk.

Jacques van Meegeren also became a painter; he died on 26 October 1977 in Amsterdam. Read Less Show Less In 1913, van Meegeren gave up his architecture studies and concentrated on drawing and painting at the art school in The Hague. On 8 January 1913, he received the prestigious Gold Medal from the Technical University in Delft for his Study of the Interior of the Church of Saint Lawrence (Laurenskerk) in Rotterdam. … Read More The award was given every five years to an art student who created the best work, and was accompanied by a gold medal. Read Less 1914 - 1915 2 More Events 1914 24 Years Old In the summer of 1914, van Meegeren moved his family to Scheveningen. … Read More That year, he completed the diploma examination at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. The diploma allowed him to teach, and he took a position as the assistant to Professor Gips, the Professor of Drawing and Art History, for the small monthly salary of 75 guldens.

Read Less 1915 25 Years Old In March 1915, his daughter Pauline was born, later called Inez. … Read More To supplement his income, Han sketched posters and painted pictures for the commercial art trade, generally Christmas cards, still-life, landscapes, and portraits. Many of these paintings are quite valuable today. Read Less 1917 27 Years Old Van Meegeren showed his first paintings publicly in The Hague, where they were exhibited from April to May 1917 at the Kunstzaal Pictura. 1919 29 Years Old In December 1919, he was accepted as a select member to the Haagse Kunstkring, an exclusive society of writers and painters who met weekly on the premises of the Ridderzaal. … Read More He painted the tame roe deer belonging to Princess Juliana in his studio at The Hague, opposite the Royal Palace Huis ten Bosch. Read Less THIRTIES 1921 31 Years Old He made many sketches and drawings of the deer, and painted Hertje (The fawn) in 1921, which became quite popular in the Netherlands.

… Read More He undertook numerous journeys to Belgium, France, Italy, and England, and acquired a name for himself as a talented portraitist. He earned stately fees through commissions from English and American socialites who spent their winter vacations on the CÃ´te d'Azur. His clients were impressed by his understanding of the 17th-century techniques of the Dutch masters. Throughout his life, van Meegeren signed his own paintings with his own signature. Read Less Show Less By all accounts, infidelity was responsible for the breakup of van Meegerenâs marriage to Anna de Voogt; they were divorced on 19 July 1923. … Read More Anna left with the children and moved to Paris where van Meegeren visited his children from time to time. He now dedicated himself to portraiture and began producing forgeries to increase his income. Read Less … Jo was also known under her stage name of Jo van Walraven, and she had previously been married to art critic and journalist Dr. C H. de Boer (Karel de Boer). She brought their daughter Viola into the van Meegeren household.

<br /><br />In the Netherlands, Han van Meegeren had become a well-known painter. Hertje (1921) and Straatzangers (1928) were particularly popular. Read Less His first legitimate copies were painted in 1923 â his Laughing Cavalier and Happy Smoker â both in the style of Frans Hals. Show Less He married actress Johanna Theresia Oerlemans in Woerden in 1928, with whom he had been living for the past three years. By 1928, the similarity of van Meegerenâs paintings to those of the old masters began to draw the reproach of Dutch art critics, who were more interested in Cubist, Surrealist, and other movements. … Read More It was said that van Meegerenâs gift was in imitation and that his talent was limited, outside of copying other artists' work.

One critic wrote that he was "a gifted technician who has made a sort of composite facsimile of the Renaissance school, he has every virtue except originality." In response to these comments, van Meegeren published a series of aggressive articles in the monthly magazine De Kemphaan ("The Game Cock"). Read Less He raged against the art community together with journalist Jan Ubink between April 1928 and March 1930, and lost any sympathy with the critics in the process. … Read More Van Meegeren felt that his genius had been misjudged, and he set out to prove to the art critics that he could not only copy the style of the Dutch masters in his paintings, but produce a work of art so magnificent that it would rival the works of master painters. Read Less FORTIES Show Less He moved with Jo to the South of France and began preparations for this ultimate forgery, which took him six years, from 1932 to 1937. … Read More In a series of early exercises, he forged works by Frans Hals, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch, and Johannes Vermeer.

Finally, he chose to forge a painting by Vermeer as his masterpiece. Vermeer had not been particularly well-known until the beginning of the twentieth century; his works were both extremely valuable and scarce â only about 35 had survived. Read Less Van Meegeren delved into the biographies of the old masters, studying their lives, occupations, trademark techniques, and catalogues. In October 1932, famous art connoisseur and Rembrandt expert Dr. Abraham Bredius published an article about a recently discovered Vermeer which he described as a painting of a Man and Woman at a Spinet. … Read More The painting was later sold to Amsterdam banker Dr. Fritz Mannheimer. Read Less In 1932, van Meegeren moved to the village of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin with his wife. … Read More There he rented a furnished mansion called "Primavera" and set out to define the chemical and technical procedures that would be necessary to create his perfect forgeries.

He bought authentic 17th century canvases and mixed his own paints from raw materials (such as lapis lazuli, white lead, indigo, and cinnabar) using old formulas to ensure that they were authentic. In addition, he created his own badger-hair paintbrushes similar to those that Vermeer was known to have used. He came up with a scheme of using phenol formaldehyde (Bakelite) to cause the paints to harden after application, making the paintings appear as if they were 300 years old. After completing a painting, van Meegeren would bake it at to to harden the paint, and then roll it over a cylinder to increase the cracks. Later, he would wash the painting in black India ink to fill in the cracks. Read Less 1936 - 1937 2 More Events 1936 46 Years Old Following a journey to the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, van Meegeren painted The Supper at Emmaus using the ultramarine blues and yellows preferred by Johannes Vermeer and other Dutch Golden Age painters.

… Read More The experts assumed that Vermeer had studied in Italy, so van Meegeren used The Supper at Emmaus by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio located at Italyâs Pinacoteca di Brera as a model. He had always wanted to walk in the steps of the masters, and he felt that his forgery was a fine work in its own right. He gave it to his friend, attorney C. A. Boon, telling him that it was a genuine Vermeer, and asked him to show it to Dr. Abraham Bredius in Monaco. Read Less 1937 47 Years Old Bredius examined the forgery in September 1937 and he accepted it as a genuine Vermeer and praised it highly. … Read More The painting was purchased by The Rembrandt Society for fl. 520.000 (â¬235.000 or about â¬4.640.000 today),To obtain the relative present day value in Euro's, the amount in Dutch Guilders was given for the year 1938 at inflation calculator from/to Guilders or Euro's.

with the aid of wealthy shipowner Willem van der Vorm, and donated to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. Read Less Show Less In 1938, the piece was highlighted in a special exhibition at the Rotterdam museum, along with 450 Dutch masterpieces dating from 1400â1800. A. Feulner wrote in the "Magazine for the History of Art", "In the rather isolated area in which the Vermeer picture hung, it was as quiet as in a chapel. … Read More The feeling of the consecration overflows on the visitors, although the picture has no ties to ritual or church." Read Less In the summer of 1938, van Meegeren moved to Nice, using the proceeds from the sale of The Supper at Emmaus to buy a 12-bedroom estate at Les ArÃ¨nes de Cimiez. … Read More On the walls of the estate hung several genuine Old Masters. Two of his better forgeries were made here, Interior with Cardplayers and Interior with Drinkers, both displaying the signature of Pieter de Hooch.

During his time in Nice, he painted his Last Supper I in the style of Vermeer. Read Less 1939 49 Years Old He returned to the Netherlands in September 1939 as the Second World War threatened. FIFTIES 1940 50 Years Old He remained at a hotel in Amsterdam for several months and moved to the village of Laren in 1940. 1941 51 Years Old Throughout 1941, van Meegeren issued his designs, which he published in 1942 as a large and luxurious book entitled Han van Meegeren: Teekeningen I (Drawings nr I). … Read More He also created several forgeries during this time, including The Head of Christ, The Last Supper II, The Blessing of Jacob, The Adulteress, and The Washing of the Feetâall in the manner of Vermeer. Read Less Show Less On 18 December 1943, he divorced his wife, but this was only a formality; the couple remained together, but a large share of his capital was transferred to her accounts as a safeguard against the uncertainties of the war.

In December 1943, the van Meegerens moved to Amsterdam where they took up residence in the exclusive Keizersgracht 321. … Read More His forgeries had earned him between 5.5 and 7.5 million guilders (or about $25â30 million today). He used this money to purchase a large amount of real estate, jewelry, and works of art, and to further his luxurious lifestyle. In a 1946 interview, he told Marie Louise Doudart de la GrÃ©e that he owned 52 houses and 15 country houses around Laren, among them grachtenhuizen, beautiful mansions along the famous Amsterdam canals.<br /><br /> During the German occupation of the Netherlands, one of van Meegerenâs agents sold the Vermeer forgery Christ with the Adulteress to Nazi banker and art dealer Alois Miedl in 1942. Experts could probably have identified it as a forgery; as van Meegeren's health declined, so did the quality of his work. He chain-smoked, drank heavily, and became addicted to morphine-laced sleeping pills.

Fortunately for van Meegeren, there were no genuine Vermeers available for comparison, since most museum collections were in protective storage as a prevention against war damage. Miedl then sold it to Reichsmarschall Hermann GÃ¶ring for 1.65 million guilders ($625,000 or $7 million today). Read Less … GÃ¶ring showcased the Vermeer forgery at his residence in Carinhall (about 65 kilometers north of Berlin). Read Less On 25 August 1943, GÃ¶ring hid his collection of looted artwork, including Christ with the Adulteress, in an Austrian salt mine, along with 6,750 other pieces of artwork looted by the Nazis. … Read More On 17 May 1945, Allied forces entered the salt mine where Captain Harry Anderson discovered the previously unknown "Vermeer".<br /><br /> In May 1945, the Allied forces questioned banker and art dealer Alois Miedl regarding the newly discovered Vermeer. Based on Miedl's confession, the painting was traced back to van Meegeren.

Read Less Show Less On 29 May 1945, he was arrested and charged with fraud and aiding and abetting the enemy. … Read More He was remanded to Weteringschans prison as an alleged Nazi collaborator and plunderer of Dutch cultural property, threatened by the authorities with the death penalty. He labored over his predicament, but eventually confessed to forging paintings attributed to Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch. He exclaimed, "The painting in GÃ¶ringâs hands is not, as you assume, a Vermeer of Delft, but a Van Meegeren! I painted the picture!" It took some time to verify this and he was detained for several months in the Headquarters of the Military Command at Herengracht 468 in Amsterdam. Read Less He painted his last forgery between July and December 1945 in the presence of reporters and court-appointed witnesses: Jesus among the Doctors, also called Young Christ in the Temple in the style of Vermeer. … Read More After the trial painting was finished, he was transferred to the fortress prison Blauwkapel.

Read Less 1946 56 Years Old Van Meegeren was released from prison in January or February 1946. Show Less The trial of Han van Meegeren began on 29 October 1947 in Room 4 of the Regional Court in Amsterdam. … Read More The collaboration charges had been dropped, since the expert panel had found that the "Vermeer" sold to Hermann GÃ¶ring had been a forgery and was, therefore, not the cultural property of the Netherlands. Public prosecutor H. A. Wassenbergh brought charges of forgery and fraud and demanded a sentence of two years in prison.<br /><br /> The court commissioned an international group of experts to address the authenticity of van Meegeren's paintings. The commission included curators, professors, and doctors from the Netherlands, Belgium, and England, and was led by the director of the chemical laboratory at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Paul B. Coremans. The commission examined the eight Vermeer and Frans Hals paintings which van Meegeren had identified as forgeries. With the help of the commission, Dr.

Coremans was able to determine the chemical composition of van Meegeren's paints. He found that van Meegeren had prepared the paints by using the phenolformaldehyde resins Bakelite and Albertol as paint hardeners. A bottle with exactly that ingredient had been found in van Meegeren's studio. This chemical component was introduced and manufactured in the 20th century, proving that the "Vermeers" and "Frans Halses" examined by the commission were in fact made by van Meegeren. The commission's other findings suggested that the dust in the craquelure was too homogeneous to be of natural origin. The matter found in the craquelure appeared to come from India ink, which had accumulated even in areas that natural dirt or dust would never have reached. Read Less … 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 to the critics by forging paintings of some of the world's most famous artists, including Frans Hals, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch, and Johannes Vermeer.

He so well replicated the styles and colours of the artists that the best art critics and experts of the time regarded his paintings as genuine and sometimes exquisite. His most successful forgery was Supper at Emmaus, created in 1937 while living in the south of France. This painting was hailed as a real Vermeer by famous art experts such as Abraham Bredius. Bredius acclaimed it as "the masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer of Delft" and wrote of the "wonderful moment" of being "confronted with a hitherto unknown painting by a great master". <br /><br />During World War II, wealthy Dutchmen wanted to prevent a sellout of Dutch art to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, and they avidly bought van Meegeren's forgeries, thinking them the work of the masters. Nevertheless, a falsified "Vermeer" ended up in the possession of Reichsmarschall Hermann GÃ¶ring. Following the war, the forgery was discovered in GÃ¶ring's possession, and van Meegeren was arrested on 29 May 1945 as a collaborator, as officials believed that he had sold Dutch cultural property to the Nazis.

This would have been an act of treason, the punishment for which was death, so van Meegeren confessed to the less serious charge of forgery instead. Read Less He was convicted on falsification and fraud charges on 12 November 1947, after a brief but highly publicized trial, and was sentenced to a modest punishment of one year in prison. On 12 November 1947, the Fourth Chamber of the Amsterdam Regional Court found Han van Meegeren guilty of forgery and fraud, and sentenced him to a minimal one year in prison. … Read More While waiting to be moved to prison, van Meegeren returned to his house at 321 Keizersgracht, where his health continued to decline. During this last month of his life, he strolled freely around his neighborhood. Read Less Van Meegeren suffered a heart attack on 26 November 1947, the last day to appeal the ruling, and was rushed to the Valeriuskliniek hospital in Amsterdam.

While at the hospital, he suffered a second heart attack on 29 December, and was pronounced dead at 5:00 pm on 30 December 1947 at the age of 58. … Read More His family and several hundred of his friends attended his funeral at the Driehuis Westerveld Crematorium chapel. In 1948, his urn was buried in the general cemetery in the village of Diepenveen (municipality of Deventer).<br /><br /> After his death, the court ruled that Van Meegerenâs estate be auctioned and the proceeds from his property and the sale of his counterfeits be used to refund the buyers of his works and to pay income taxes on the sale of his paintings. Van Meegeren filed for bankruptcy in December 1945. On 5 and 6 September 1950, the furniture and other possessions in his Amsterdam house at Keizersgracht 321 were auctioned by order of the court, along with 738 other pieces of furniture and works of art, including numerous paintings by old and new masters from his private collection.

The house was auctioned separately on 4 September, estimated to be worth 65,000 guilders. The proceeds of the sale together with the house amounted to 123,000 guilders. Van Meegerenâs unsigned The Last Supper I was bought for 2,300 guilders, while Jesus among the Doctors (which van Meegeren had painted while in detention) sold for 3,000 guilders (about $800 or about $7,000 today.) Today the painting hangs in a Johannesburg church. The sale of the entire estate amounted to 242,000 guilders ($60,000, or about $500,000 today). Read Less A Dutch opinion poll conducted in October 1947 placed Han van Meegerenâs popularity second in the nation, behind only the Prime Minister's and slightly ahead of Prince Berhard, the husband of Princess Juliana. … Read More The Dutch people viewed Van Meegeren as a cunning trickster who had successfully fooled the Dutch art experts and, more importantly, Hermann GÃ¶ring himself.

In fact, according to a contemporary account, GÃ¶ring was informed that his "Vermeer" was actually a forgery and "GÃ¶ring looked as if for the first time he had discovered there was evil in the world". Lopez indicates that Han van Meegeren's defense during his trial in Amsterdam was a masterpiece of trickery, forging his own personality into a true Dutchman eager to trick his critics and also the Dutch people by pretending that he sold Christ and the Adulteress, a fake Vermeer, to GÃ¶ring because he wanted to teach the Nazi a lesson. Van Meegeren remains one of the most ingenious art counterfeiters of the 20th century. After his trial, however, he declared, "My triumph as a counterfeiter was my defeat as a creative artist." Read Less He did not serve out his sentence, however; he died 30 December 1947, in the Valerius Clinic in Amsterdam, after two heart attacks. … Read More It is estimated that van Meegeren duped buyers, including the government of the Netherlands, out of the equivalent of more than thirty million dollars in 1967's money.

Read Less Original Authors of this text are noted on . How Mediocre Dutch Artist Cast 'The Forger's Spell' : NPR How Mediocre Dutch Artist Cast 'The Forger's Spell' Embed Embed How Mediocre Dutch Artist Cast 'The Forger's Spell' How Mediocre Dutch Artist Cast 'The Forger's Spell' Embed Embed Han van Meegeren IRPA-KIK, Brussels hide caption toggle caption This painting launched van Meegeren's career as a forger. "Christ at Emmaus" differed from any Jan Vermeer in that it was religious in subject matter and larger than anything by Vermeer. Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam hide caption toggle caption Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam This painting launched van Meegeren's career as a forger. "Christ at Emmaus" differed from any Jan Vermeer in that it was religious in subject matter and larger than anything by Vermeer. Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam Van Meegeren's "Christ with the Woman Taken in Adultery" was a major triumph because of whom he fooled into buying it. But it also was his undoing.

Courtesy of Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst, The Hague hide caption toggle caption Courtesy of Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst, The Hague Van Meegeren's "Christ with the Woman Taken in Adultery" was a major triumph because of whom he fooled into buying it. But it also was his undoing. Courtesy of Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst, The Hague "The Astronomer" is one of Vermeer's most famous works. Van Meegeren painted a botched copy of the left hand and forearm in "Christ at Emmaus." The Louvre hide caption toggle caption The Louvre "The Astronomer" is one of Vermeer's most famous works. Van Meegeren painted a botched copy of the left hand and forearm in "Christ at Emmaus." The Louvre Experts in the 1940s judged the woman in van Meegeren's "The Last Supper" (right) to be a match for "The Girl with a Pearl Earring" by Vermeer.

Mauritshuis, The Hague, and Caldic collection, Rotterdam hide caption toggle caption Mauritshuis, The Hague, and Caldic collection, Rotterdam Experts in the 1940s judged the woman in van Meegeren's "The Last Supper" (right) to be a match for "The Girl with a Pearl Earring" by Vermeer. Mauritshuis, The Hague, and Caldic collection, Rotterdam Were it not for a knock on the door in 1945 Amsterdam, Han van Meegeren might have been forgotten. He was a small and dapper man, a Dutch artist of limited ability. He was also a forger — and the force behind what a new book says was the greatest art hoax of the 20th century. Van Meegeren passed his paintings off as newly discovered works by renowned 17th century artist Jan Vermeer. He fooled experts and collectors, including the second-most powerful man in Nazi Germany, Hermann Goering, and pocketed the equivalent of $30 million before he was unmasked.

Edward Dolnick, author of The Forger's Spell, says there were several reasons why van Meegeren, who tried his hand at imitating Franz Hals and other Dutch painters, decided to make a career of Vermeer. "One was that he was just about the greatest brand name of them all," Dolnick tells guest host Linda Wertheimer. "In art, this is the equivalent of Rolls-Royce or Tiffany or something — if you can get away with Vermeer, that shows how terrific you are and it's where the money is. In addition, Dolnick notes, Vermeer's biography is almost a complete blank. The absence of information left "lots of elbow room to fill in the gaps as you saw fit because nobody knew what the real story was," he says. Article continues after sponsorship That Vermeer produced only about 35 or 36 paintings was also helpful. Other major painters of the time, such as Rembrandt, typically created 10 times as many works. "So for art historians," Dolnick says, "one of the great questions is: Where are all the others? So you might guess that there once were more and they were lost, which is what a forger would like you to guess.

It might also be that he simply painted terribly slowly. No one knows." When van Meegeren settled on Vermeer, he did extensive research and experimentation with canvasses, paints and aging techniques. And he developed an ingenious way to hoodwink the experts through the use of plastics. The forger's biggest challenge was making a painting that was only a few months old seem as if it were 300 years old. It takes decades for an oil painting to fully harden — if you press your finger into a blob of paint on a recent painting, you could probably make a dent. Van Meegeren needed to make paint that would look old, which meant it had to be dry. So he bought a pizza oven, Dolnick says, and tried time and again to mix a paint that could withstand the heat of the oven and harden, but not lose its brilliance. Time and again, his experimental paints burned up or melted. Then he hit on dissolving a small amount of plastic into the paint and that let him get away with his colossal hoax.

Although van Meegeren made a number of painting that mimicked Vermeer's style — tiny pictures with rich fabrics, clear blues and bright yellows, light streaming in from the left — they were unsuccessful. Instead, he decided he had to create works that were vastly different because of a phenomenon that Dolnick refers to in his book as "the uncanny valley." "What he learned was that if you come close to getting an imitation just right, the closer you come for a while the more convincing people find it," Dolnick says. "But when you get ... almost all the way there but not quite, at that point — and no one quite knows why — people begin to look closer and suddenly they focus not on how close this imitation is to the real thing, but on the last little gap that keeps it from being real. "Van Meegeren found that a forgery that was close was almost worse than if he hadn't tried at all, because as soon as it was close, the experts would focus on the difference between the forgery and the real thing," he says.

"What turned out to be a much better strategy for van Meegeren was to make a painting that had a few hints of Vermeer but that wasn't like any of the known Vermeers, and then let the experts fill in the gaps themselves. Let them say, 'Aha, didn't I always tell you that Vermeer had much more to him than you thought? It's not all ladies reading letters, it's sometimes completely different paintings like this new one we've just found.'" Taking a huge gamble, van Meegeren began to make paintings that people might think looked strange but would say was a Vermeer. It paid off handsomely. "The experts didn't say, 'This painting purports to be a Vermeer but doesn't look like any of his. I wonder if maybe it's not,'" Dolnick says. "What they said is, 'It doesn't look like any Vermeer, therefore Vermeer was even a greater genius than we knew. Who knew he was such a multifaceted man?'" The painting that made van Meegeren was called "Christ at Emmaus," after the Bible story in which Christ reveals himself to several disciples after he has risen from the dead.

It was different from any Vermeer in that it was religious in subject matter and much larger than anything Vermeer was known to have done. In essence, the painting was "proof" for the experts of what they had thought must exist but had never seen. "Christ at Emmaus" was so well received that van Meegeren began churning out one biblical painting after the other, each selling for millions of dollars. "Now they didn't have to look like the Vermeers that we know, they only had to look like the Vermeer that he had introduced into the accepted works," Dolnick says. "So van Meegeren's task got easier and easier." One of the most famous of the series was titled "Christ with the Woman Taken in Adultery," which Dolnick says was a major triumph because of whom he fooled into buying it. "At this point, essentially no Vermeers had turned up in centuries. All of a sudden, they're turning up practically every six months and the collectors want in on this game," Dolnick says. "One of the biggest and greediest collectors of the day was Hermann Goering, the No. 2 man in Nazi Germany. ...

He takes looted paintings and trades 137 of them for this one Vermeer, which is going to become one of the jewels of his collection." But that painting was also van Meegeren's undoing. The Nazis were known for meticulous record-keeping, and after World War II ended, the paperwork for Goering's prize "Vermeer" listed van Meegeren's name. When the police rapped on van Meegeren's door in 1945 to question him about what they thought was a routine matter, the forger didn't have a very convincing answer. "Most forgers fool one person too few, that's what does them in. Someone says, 'Wait a minute, this is wrong,'" Dolnick says. "That never happened with van Meegeren. What happened with him was this mix-up with Goering, which brought the authorities on the run." Van Meegeren was tried, convicted and sentenced to a year in prison in 1947. Nearly two months later, he died of a heart attack without serving even a day. Ironically, he died a hero.

Although van Meegeren had hobnobbed with the Nazis during the occupation of Holland, he styled himself as a Dutch patriot during his trial. As Dolnick puts it: "He says, 'Of course I sold it to Goering, I knew what better person to con than this great Nazi bag of wind. How could a person demonstrate his patriotism, his love of Holland more than I did by conning the great enemy of the Dutch people?' And the Dutch ate it up. They liked him." Excerpt: 'The Forger's Spell' Van Meegeren a forger or a painter? The question is: was Han van Meegeren an ordinary forger. The answer could be yes and no. Yes, he did paint an image and would sign it with the signature of Frans Hals or more often Johannes Vermeer. But no, he was himself an established painter, although the styles he used he borrowed from other painters. Moreover, he did not copy actual paintings but came up with something new. For instance, he new that in the then known work of the old masters like Vermeer some parts were missing.

Little of Vermeer's earlier work was known, and the little part that was known was different in style from his famous works. So with his painting skills and some own inventions for the treatment of paint he was able to produce paintings that could very well have been actual paintings by the hand of the young Vermeer. He managed to sell them through the most ingeniously thought out stories and outwitted the art critics of that time. 'De Emmausgangers' and ' Laatste Avondmaal' were sold to the museum Boymans-van Beuningen in Rotterdam. He became rich very fast but became an alcoholic. After the second world war, Van Meegeren was prosecuted for collaboration for he sold "Vermeer's" 'De Overspelige Vrouw' to Herman Goring. He realised that his punishment would be milder if he would confess the forgery, the judges however did not believe him and gave him two weeks time to create another Vermeer ( " Christus en de schriftgeleerden in de tempel"). When he succeeded in doing so he was praised for the deed of resistance and was sentenced to one year of prison for forgery. He died after several weeks.

After his death, a couple of people tried to break his story and proof that the paintings were actual Vermeer's. De Sterke, a rontgenspecialist, Boymans director Hannema, artcollector van Beuningen and Decoen, a writer all supported the genuineness of the Vermeer paintings by saying that it is an impossibility that Van Meegeren could have mimicked the 17th century techniques the paintings show. Han van Meegeren - Example Problems Han van Meegeren Han van Meegeren, byname of Henricus Antonius van Meegeren (Deventer, October 10 , 1889 - Valeriuskliniek Amsterdam, December 30 , 1947 ), was a Dutch painter and master art forger . Van Meegeren's life was linked to that of the great Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer , who died in 1675 . Vermeer had not been particularly famous until around the beginning of the 20th century, and only about 40 of his works had survived.

At the end of the Second World War , the Allies came upon a salt mine in Austria where the top Nazis had hidden works of art they had plundered from the occupied countries of the Reich . The military brought in art experts to ensure that the treasures were properly handled, identified, and repatriated. Among the treasures were artworks from the collection of Nazi Reichsmarshall Hermann Göring . Göring's collection included a Vermeer that none of the experts were familiar with, and investigation traced it back to a Dutch citizen who was running a nightclub in Amsterdam named Han van Meegeren. The Dutch authorities pegged him as a collaborator when he could not explain the origins of the Vermeer, and arrested him in May 1945 . Van Meegeren was potentially in very serious trouble, as he could be charged with treason , which carried the death penalty . After several days of intense interrogation, he told the authorities the truth, which they did not believe at first: He had painted the Vermeer himself. Exactly how Van Meegeren became a fraud is an interesting story, because he didn't do it for the money, at least not at first.

He had been born in Deventer , the Netherlands in 1889 . Though he initially studied architecture at the Delft institute of technology , he developed skills as a painter and a strong interest in the Dutch classic painters. His father violently opposed his work as a painter, but Han van Meegeren had a passion for it and could not be swayed from his life's work. From his early period as a student in architecture, one of his lesser known works still survives. It is the building (1914) of the local rowing club in Delft of which van Meegeren was a member. Ironically, this building was built in a 17-th century style, making it hard to recognize today that it is in fact much younger. Still, he had chosen a difficult path. He had turned away from modern art and there was no way he could achieve recognition for painting in the styles that were popular centuries earlier. He was belittled by the critics to the extent that he could no longer exhibit his work. Van Meegeren thought the local art critics were mean and ignorant, and he decided to prove it by publicly embarrassing them.

Van Meegeren was intimately familiar with the painting techniques of the Dutch masters, and decided to produce a fake Vermeer. He would let the art critics praise it, and then reveal that it was a fraud, proving their ignorance. His specific target was Dr. Abraham Bredius, who was a recognized authority on Vermeer and who Van Meegeren particularly despised. Van Meegeren was a painstakingly methodical forger. The painting not only had to be executed in Vermeer's style and skill, it had to look ancient as well. Van Meegeren found a 17th-century canvas to paint on, created his own paints from raw materials by old formulas to ensure that they were authentic, and used the same kind of brushes that Vermeer was known to have used. He came up with a scheme of using phenol and formaldehyde to cause the paints to harden after application, as if they were centuries old. After completing the painting, he baked it to dry it out completely, rolled it over a drum to crackle it a bit, and later washed it in black ink to fill in the cracks.

File:SupperatEmmaus-Meegeren.jpg The Supper at Emmaus by van Meegeren It took Van Meegeren several years to work out his techniques, and when he was done he was pleased with his work. It wasn't just that he thought it was a convincing fraud. He had always wanted to walk in the steps of the masters, and he felt that his forgery, The Supper at Emmaus, was a fine work in its own right. Van Meegeren put his fraud in motion, and Dr. Bredius was completely taken in, just as Van Meegeren had hoped. The Dutch art establishment was completely fooled as well, though when the painting was shown in Paris one perceptive or possibly merely cynical critic called it a "rotten fake". Van Meegeren was enjoying this wild ride, but it was only starting. He wanted to reveal the fraud, but when he sold the fake Vermeer for the equivalent of what would now be several million dollars, he unsurprisingly had second thoughts. He had proven to his own satisfaction that the Dutch art establishment was ignorant, and that would have to do as long as he could make good money.

Between 1938 and 1945 , he produced six more fake Vermeers, as well as fakes of works by Frans Hals and Pieter de Hooch . It would seem that people would have become suspicious after a while, but with the distractions of the war and Nazi occupation Van Meegeren was able to continue his activities essentially unmolested. Since there was an active and secretive trade in artwork anyway during the occupation, his fakes could ride along with the process as parasites. One of Van Meegeren's forgeries was sold in 1942 for 1.6 million Dutch guilders, making it one of the most expensive paintings ever sold. The last of Van Meegeren's fakes was Christ With The Adultress, which changed hands a number of times and finally ended up in the collection of Reichsmarshall Göring, who handed over an outrageous sum for it. Göring wasn't too concerned about the money, however, since he paid in counterfeit currency. Christ With The Adultress was found in the Austrian salt mine by Allied forces, and led to Van Meegeren's arrest.

When he told the police that it was a forgery, they didn't believe him, and challenged him to show he could paint a copy of one of the supposed fakes. He replied that he could create an entirely new fake. He was put under house arrest, and in three months he painted a new forgery, The Young Christ Teaching In The Temple, under the eyes of undoubtedly flabbergasted police. The story got into the press and attracted worldwide media attention. The charge was changed to one of forgery. In the week before the trial, a poll showed he was the second most popular man in the Netherlands, after the prime minister. The trial began on 29 October 1947. Van Meegeren, then 58 and in failing health, was delighted with the show and the media attention. He really wanted to be found guilty, simply as confirmation that he was a master forger. The art experts didn't want to testify, since it would confirm they had been duped, but a committee was put together to investigate the forgeries. Van Meegeren knew his paintings would be X-rayed to see what was painted on the old canvas underneath, and he told the committee what they would find.

They did so, and after only two days on trial, Van Meegeren was found guilty of forgery. He was sentenced to two years in prison. His health was so bad, however, that he went to a clinic instead of prison. He died on 29 December 1947. Although Van Meegeren may have not been much of a role model, he had walked in the steps of the Dutch masters as he had always wanted to do; made a fortune for himself in trying times; made fools of the art establishment that had reviled him, and who nobody else liked; even tricked the Nazis; become an international celebrity and a national hero of sorts; and then made an exit effectively unscathed. Reference Template:Vectorsite This article was originally based on Goebel's: The Confidence Artists External links Site dedicated to Han van Meegeren which also shows and discusses most of his forgeries. Van Meegeren's architecture: walltower and rowing club , buildings van Meegerens designed (sites have pictures, but comments in Dutch) Literature Bredius, Abraham, A New Vermeer. Burlington Magazine 71 (November 1937), pp.

210 - 211; An Unpublished Vermeer, Burlington Magazine 61 (October 1932), p. 145. Tietze, Hans, Genuine and False (London: Max Parrish & Co., 1948). Coremans, P.B., Van Meegeren’s Faked Vermeers and de Hooghs, trans. A Hardy and C. Hutt (London: Cassel, 1949). Schüller, S.: Falsch oder echt? Der Fall van Meegeren. Bonn 1953. Language: German. Goll, Joachim: Kunstfälscher. pp. 179 – 187. E.A.Seemann Publishing House Leipzig, First Edition 1962 (with pictures Number 106 – 122 and Literature pp. 249 - 250). Language: German. Godley, John, Van Meegeren, Master Forger. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967. Lord Kilbracken: Fälscher oder Meister? Der Fall van Meegeren.

Wien/Hamburg: P. Zsolnay 1968, 291 S., with 38 pictures, 22 x 14 cm. Language: German. Exhibition catalog Essen and Berlin: Fälschung und Forschung. ed.: Museum Folkwang, Essen, and Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin. 1976. Language: German. ISBN 3-7759-0201-5 . Werness, Hope B., Han van Meegeren fecit in: Denis Dutton , ed., The Forger’s Art: Forgery and the Philosophy of Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Jones, Mark, ed., Fake? The Art of Detection. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Ahrens, Klaus and Handlögten, Günter: Echtes Geld für falsche Kunst, Remchingen 1992. Language: German. Exhibition catalog Rotterdam: Han van Meegeren , ed.: H. van Wijnen. Den Haag 1996.

17 x 24 cm, 128 p., 30 Black and white- und 16 color pictures, Language: Dutsch. nl:Han van Meegeren

Question: Which 17th century Dutch painter did the forger Hans van Meegeren most often copy?
Answer: Jan Vermeer