Master Forger Wins Over Dutch Museum he Duped

Jakarta Globe, Mariette le Roux, May 25, 2010

Han van Meegeren put experts to shame by passing off his Vemeers, including ‘The Supper at Emmaus,’ as the real McCoy.

An art forger who sold a fake to Nazi Air Marshal Hermann Goering is finally getting the recognition that eluded him in life — from a museum he conned out of a small fortune seven decades ago.

The Boijmans van Beuningen museum in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam has swallowed its wounded pride to host an exhibition focusing on the tricks and tools of Han van Meegeren, one of history’s most successful art forgers.

One of his greatest achievements came in 1937 when he persuaded the museum to part with 540,000 guilders, about 4.5 million euros ($5.6 million dollars), for what it believed was a previously unknown work by the 17th-century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer.

“It is ironic, I guess, but art is ambiguous,” curator Friso Lammertse told Agence France-Presse of the exhibition, which runs through Aug. 12.

“Of course, forgery is wrong. But van Meegeren was a master of his craft, that of forgery.”

The fake Vermeer, “The Supper at Emmaus,” drew huge crowds at the time — “people stood in silent reverence before this painting,” the curator said — and enjoys pride of place in this exhibition.

“Van Meegeren’s Fake Vermeers” showcases some of the forgeries he sold before he died in 1947 aged 58 as well as some of his ingenious methods.

There is “Woman Playing the Lute” in the style of Vermeer, torn to appear old, a wine glass van Meegeren duplicated in some paintings, and tubes of pigments found at his villa in Nice, France.

Also on display is a book of poetry he gave former Boijmans director Dirk Hannema, signed: “In admiration of his work.” Hannema had bought “The Supper at Emmaus” for the museum.

Painted by van Meegeren around 1937, it was described by the renowned art publication The Burlington Magazine as “The masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer.”

The canvas was widely accepted as a rare example of the Dutch Golden Age painter’s earlier work.

“The art world found what it was looking for,” Lammertse said. “That tends to diminish critical judgment.”

Born in 1889, van Meegeren never received the critical acclaim he sought as an artist in his own right, the museum says.

On trial for forgery in 1947, he said he had entered the craft “to put the experts, who control the art trade, to the test.”

“Like most people, he wanted ever-lasting fame,” Lammertse said. “In a way, he did become world famous though nobody knew then that it was his work. That must have given him some degree of satisfaction.”

Van Meegeren started out painting works in the style of Frans Hals, later switching to Vermeer after the success of “The Supper at Emmaus.”

He painted his fakes on original 17th century canvasses. He scraped off the old paint, used natural pigments common at the time of Vermeer, cracked the dried surfaces, and smeared Indian ink into the cracks to make the works look authentic.

He also used Bakelite, a synthetic resin developed in the first half of the 20th century — heating the finished product in an oven to harden the surface.

This allowed his canvasses to withstand the “alcohol test” of the time, which would see a drop of alcohol wiped over the paint surface to check that it does not dissolve — one way to spot a fake.

At the height of his forging career, van Meegeren was arrested in May 1945 after a “Vermeer” he had sold to Goering for 1.65 million guilders two years earlier, “Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery,” was traced back to him.

To avoid going to jail for selling Dutch cultural heritage to the Nazis, he admitted he had painted that canvas and others. Many of the items now on display were exhibits at van Meegeren’s trial, at the end of which he was sentenced to one year in jail. He died of a heart attack shortly after the verdict.

Agence France-Presse