Van Meegeren
The Master Forger : The Story of Han Van Meegeren. By Joh Godley. (Home and van Thal. 9s. 6d.) Van Meegeren's Faked Vermeers and De Hooghs. By Dr. I Coremans. (Cassell. 20.) I HAVE read these books very carefully, with the greatest attentioi and received great entertainment. The first book tells the extra ordinary story of Han Van Meegeren, a young man with tawdr faults ; he was lazy, he talked more than he painted, he drank, was promiscuous. Contemporary critics refused to admire his wor (which was not good) and this exasperated him—he was intoleran of anything but praise. Yet his career had not been unsuccessful, had had two " one man shows " which, by our standards in Englani were very successful: he sold all his pictures—and what more coul a painter want ? In 1942 he published a folio album which sole well and contained two or three fine drawings in the style of th t seventeenth century and two or three figures very like the subsequen s Vermeer forgeries. But he itched for fame, and he was gradual! possessed with rage against the official world of art historians, critic ti and connoisseurs. So he methodically set about producing the grey t booby-trap into which every expert was to fall. What is' so sir f prising is that this man, unstable as water, should have excelled that he should have elected to forge a Vermeer, and should thav been so extraordinarily intelligent about it. He had read that the a' historians postulated the existence of a set of religious pictures, non of which had apparently survived : so he decided to make one. An what he made was very fine. Hate inspired this commonplac painter to produce a solemn, lovely, dignified picture. -Vermeer c pictures possess to an extraordinary degree a rhythmical build-up o c volumes and spaces. One feels the " ground plan " and the " dew s tion " in all his pictures. Van Meegeren designed " The Disciple c at Emmaus " without very much recession ; there does not seer room for the volume of The man in yellow on the right, one wonder where his right shoulder and arm could fit in ; nor does there seer s space for the volume of the Christ ; but perhaps it is easier to feel c this now, although I never did like the woman at the back. Han Van Meegeren's plan divides into four parts: (1) to produce I just such a picture as the art historians had postulated ; (2) to paint r it (and it is a beautiful painting) ; (3) to treat it by a secret process which enabled the paint to dry at once and to appear old ; and 1 (4) to market it. In each section he triumphed. Between 1935 and 1 1936 he painted four forgeries which he did not attempt to sell. He then concentrated on "The Disciples at Emmaus" which was sold for £75,000. From 1940 to 1943 he produced five more Vermeers I including "The Woman Taken in Adultery," which was ultimately sold to Goering for £165,000. With each new forgery he took less and less trouble, and really they seem poor, but, notwithstanding; every orte was accepted by the " experts " because they had accepte the first one.
When the Allies were examining Goering's collection they foun a picture said to be by Vermeer and they traced it to Van Meegeren. His explanations were unsatisfactory, and they arrested him. I think
he could have got away with it if he had not become a drug addict and his arrest automatically cut him off from what was now a necessity to him, and the torture thus inflicted drove him to confess. We are told how the authorities refused to accept his story until, in desperate explanation, he offered to do another picture before them to prove that he could do what he had claimed so unreasonably to have done ; and he did in fact paint another picture, not very good, but which was obviously by the same hand. Dr. Coremans's book gives a very interesting and very careful descrip- tion of how the experts followed Van Meegeren's indications and were able to accept his claim. And here is how it ended. Van 1V1,fegeren was by now an extremely ill man, worn out. His only pleasure was helping the Government enquiry to prove how he had bamboozled the hated connoisseurs I A self-confessed forger, the Government proceeded against him. The total paid for the eight forgeries by their final Purchasers 'amounted to £763,000, of which naturally a percentage had been taken by intermediaries. But Han must have received onwards of £550,000 (a sum no other painter has ever earned with his brushes !). On this he had paid no income tax. Their law enabled the Dutch Government to condemn' him in sums far greater tactually more than double) than the total amounts he had. in fact received. (I do not see why the fools who greedily bought the Paintings because, forsooth, "experts" had accepted them as yermeers, should be allowed to claim reimbursement.) So justice has been done ! Van Meegeren is dead, his children ruined. But the great trap did close upon those he despised and hated. Did he not revenge himself ? Was he successful ? I do not know. But
am very glad that I am a painter and not an art critic.
GERALD KELLY.
Previous page
