Art Forgeries That

Fooled The World

By Dottie Evans

Very few fakes are recognized; even fewer are reported.

––Art historian Ivan MacDonald

Although his name has been excised from art catalogs and his paintings consigned to museum basements, one could argue that 20th Century Dutch artist Han Van Meegeren (1889–­­­1947) accomplished exactly what he wanted –– fame and fortune in his time.

“He was a brilliant artist and a master trickster. If museum curators could hire him today to help them sniff out any bogus masterpieces, they would do it,” said Branford resident Ivan MacDonald.

Mr MacDonald is a professional actor and audiovisual lecturer with a background in New York theater. He is also an art historian who has spent considerable time researching the life of Dutch painter Han Van Meegeren, the 20th Century master art forger, who successfully produced and sold several fakes in the style of 17th Century Dutch Master Jan Vermeer.

On the evening of September 25, Mr MacDonald enthralled a Cyrenius Booth Library audience with his hour-long dramatic presentation of the story of Han Van Meegeren, illustrating his talk with 35mm color slides.

He told how Van Meegeren worked in secret during the years just before the outbreak of World War II. How he skillfully painted a number of very believable fakes in the tradition of certain famous Flemish artists, in particular, copying the style of Jan Vermeer (1632–1675), the artist who painted “Girl With The Pearl Earring.”

Using intermediaries, Van Meegeren managed to pass his forgeries off as “lost treasures” by the revered master. When the “found” masterworks hit the art market, they were snatched up at astronomical prices and for a time, Van Meegeren was a wealthy man.

“The story is fabulous, but there aren’t many books about it. Motion pictures have never done it,” said Mr MacDonald.

“Maybe it was because there wasn’t enough sex, although Van Meegeren was a very promiscuous man,” he added.

When the Booth Library audience saw slides of Van Meegeren’s “Christ With His Disciples At Emmaus” and his “Last Supper,” compared to slides showing Jan Vermeer’s work, including portraits and religious subjects, it was clear that Van Meegeren was technically brilliant.

The delicate quality of the faces, the subdued colors, the serene yet strong compositions and the luminous interior light –– Van Meegeren and Vermeer seemed the same. No wonder the experts were fooled.

But it was not just the technique or the subject matter. There were other tricks he used to ensure the fakes would pass inspection by the most critical of museum curators. When it came to cons, Han Van Meegeren was unparalleled.

Cooking Up

Oven-Baked Fakes

First, he tackled the problem of making both the canvas and its frame look three centuries old. One method was to scrape the paint off an inferior painting of Vermeer’s time, and paint over it. Another was to remove an old canvas from its frame, insert his own painting and replace the nails in the exact same holes.

Even the paint brushes had to be doctored since curators look at brush marks. Van Meegeren painstakingly removed the badger bristles from his shaving brushes and inserted them, one by one, so if any were caught in the paint they would be made of animal hair, which Jan Vermeer would have used.

The paint itself could only contain minerals available to 17th Century artists. White must not contain zinc or lead. Blue must not contain cobalt, but rather lapis lazuli, which is very rare and an expensive mineral to obtain.

Van Meegeren persevered until he got it right. In an inspired moment, he discovered that baking the canvases in the oven after applying a coat of “Bakelite” was an excellent way to harden them. After cooking, he rolled the dried canvas up like a window shade to produce a network of surface cracks. Then he wiped India ink into the cracks. After cleaning the entire surface, he varnished it. This technique lent that essential age-darkened look.

Although he was at the height of his artistic and creative powers, Han Van Meegeren knew his name must never be linked to the works. This was because the art critics and connoisseurs already knew of him and had summarily dismissed his early works as inept and trivial.

“Although Van Meegeren was born in Holland in 1889, he had no affinity with the art of his own time, no understanding of the other emerging modernists like Mondrian and Picasso, with their Cubist abstractions,” Mr MacDonald said.

A misfit in his own time and thwarted in his efforts to succeed by legitimate means, he decided to gain attention by illegitimate means.

 “After seducing a series of women, and painting legitimate works that were ignored or belittled, he married, and immediately began scheming about how he could get back at the art world that did not appreciate him.”

Success Before The Fall

A major challenge faced by Van Meegeren was how to suddenly introduce hitherto unknown “lost Vermeers,” when Jan Vermeer had died in his 40s and completed only 35 paintings.

In a strange sense, Vermeer himself provided the solution. There was a ten-year gap in his life during which no one knew where he was or what he was doing. Some thought he had traveled to Italy to study the dramatic effects of light on religious subjects with the Italian painter Caravaggio, but no one really knew.

This gap would be the time, Van Meegeren thought, during which the “lost Vermeers” could have been painted. After moving to a villa on the French Riviera where he turned out the forgeries, he contracted dealers who would “find” them and sell them on the open market. At the same time, he fabricated elaborate stories about penniless Italian families or impoverished descendents of aristocrats who had discovered the “old” paintings in their attics or closets and needed to liquefy their estates. There was never any documentation.

His greatest coup was in 1937 when his painting “Christ And Disciples At Emmaus,” “signed” by “J. Vermeer,” was called “the art find of the year” and sold to the Dutch museum in Rotterdam for $286,000.

Ivan MacDonald’s voice dropped an octave as he whispered to his Booth Library audience.

“Imagine what Van Meegeren’s thoughts must have been: ‘Just me and my secret –– and I can share it with no one.’”

 

World War II, A Trial, And A Surprise Ending

In the late 1930s when Hitler invaded Amsterdam, he and his generals confiscated as many Old Masterworks as they could for their own personal art collections. During World War II, the Nazis’ cache of fine art was hidden away in Austria, only to be rediscovered by the Allies in 1945.

In the process of trying to return the paintings to their owners, the authorities depended upon paperwork to establish authenticity. Through diligent detective work, they were able to trace the fake Vermeers back to Han Van Meegeren, who was then living in Amsterdam.

When no documentation was produced, the possibility of forgery was realized. A trial was held in 1946 during which Van Meegeren, by then in his late 50s and hopelessly addicted to alcohol and morphine, was asked to prove his innocence. His resistance down and his frustration up, he confessed to everything.

“In a conceited fury, Van Meegeren suddenly decided to tell all,” Mr MacDonald said.

For a while, no one believed him, despite the fact that his technique had visibly deteriorated and the forgeries were no longer convincing. Eventually, Van Meegeren was convicted of forging Jan Vermeer’s signature and, though the art world vilified him, the Dutch people loved him for the fact that he had successfully swindled the Nazis. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands pardoned him and he never was imprisoned.

An ironic twist came about in 1957, some eight years after Van Meegeren had died of a heart attack.

Mr MacDonald said the critics and connoisseurs “were still haggling about his paintings.”

It seems they were having a change of heart. These were not fakes at all, they decided, but actual originals painted by the 17th Century genius Jan Vermeer.

“Today, most museums that own paintings attributed to Han Van Meegeren aren’t talking about them. At least, they are not displaying them in prominent places,” Mr MacDonald said.

Basically, they are embarrassed by the whole affair. If the paintings were given by wealthy donor and then later discovered to be forgeries, well, it is a delicate matter. Better to wait a century or so, and let the whole thing die down.

“Han Van Meegeren did prove something,” Mr MacDonald noted.

“Critics do not always look at the quality of the work –– they only look at the signature.”