He has every virtue except originality
My triumph as a counterfeiter was my defeat as a creative artist.
“Jesus Among the Doctors” returned to a familiar theme. The New Testament – and Christ’s brief life, in particular – permeated his work. It was a perfect bookend to a career that began with “The Supper at Emmaus,” a depiction of a sullen-faced messiah sat at a table, surrounded by a trio of disciples as he clutches a piece of bread. The most famous painting of the same name arrived at the dawn of the 17th century from Baroque master, Caravaggio.
The new painting had its own more famous predecessor, in the form of the similarly titled, “Christ Among the Doctors.” The piece was painted almost exactly a century prior to Caravaggio’s. Both it and “Jesus Among the Doctors” depict the Finding of the Temple, in which a 12-year-old Jesus falls behind Mary and Joseph on a Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
Missing for three days, he finds respite among a group of learned elders, who are impressed by the adolescent’s breadth of knowledge. Much like his “The Supper at Emmaus,” “Jesus Among the Doctors” is a simple painting. A young, almost feminine Christ stands in the middle, looking up from a large book. He is flanked by six men in robes and headwear, listening on with rapt attention.
The artist was in custody when he executed the painting, a court-appointment witness looking on the entire time to assure he’d complete the work without outside influence. Han van Meegeren painted the piece with great focus and the intention of convincing the Amsterdam court that he had committed a crime several times over. van Meegeren insisted that he was actually one of history’s greatest art forgers.
The work achieved its intended effect: the artist was sentenced to a year. It also saved his life, as he escaped a possible death sentence. On the final day of a potential appeal, he suffered a heart attack. A month later, he died after suffering a second while in the hospital.
van Meegeren’s legacy is, at best, complicated. A talented painter, who was generous with friends and family, he also purchased several houses at discounts after the Jewish families who owned them were killed. He had signed copy of his art book to another failed painter whom he greatly admired, writing, "To my beloved Führer in grateful tribute, from H. van Meegeren, Laren, North Holland, 1942."
It was the sale of a painting to Hermann Goering the same year found him fighting for his life in court. The Nazi Reichsmarschall traded Alois Miedl 137 looted paintings for Johannes Vermeer’s “Christ with the Adulteress,” as there were impossibly few surviving paintings from the Dutch Master. Goering coveted the work, storing it in a salt mine along with 6,750 other works stolen by German forces. The Allies would stumble on the stash two years later, questioning Miedl about the origin of the previously unknown Vermeer. The Nazi banker confessed that he had purchased it from van Meegeren.
The painter was soon charged with aiding and abetting the Nazis. van Meegeren protested that he had not sold a Vermeer to the officer, because “Christ with the Adulteress” wasn’t actually a Vermeer. "The painting in Goering’s hands is not, as you assume, a Vermeer of Delft, but a Van Meegeren,” he told the allies. “I painted the picture.”
Even as his health and skills declined amid alcoholism and morphine addiction, van Meegeren’s hand was deft enough to fool Axis and Ally alike. For more than a decade, he produced convincing forgeries. Fourteen were ultimately attributed to van Meegeren – while today only 34 Vermeers are known to exist. van Meegeren’s second career began in earnest after he failed to gain the art world’s acceptance on his own merits. “A gifted technician who has made a sort of composite facsimile of the Renaissance school,” a contemporary critic wrote of his self-attributed works, “he has every virtue except originality.”
van Meegeren fired back against critics and bile-fueled assaults of racism and antisemitism. He soon immersed himself in the works of the Dutch Masters, believing he possessed the skills to rival a Rembrandt or Vermeer. “I was spurred by the disappointment of receiving no acknowledgments from artists and critics,” he would later write of the period. “I determined to prove my worth as a painter by making a perfect seventeenth-century canvas.”
Work on “The Supper at Emmaus” began in 1937. Adding Bakelite to the mix caused the paint to crack when placed in an oven. A vase of lilacs were a constant feature in his work space — a cover for the lilac oil used to preserve the mixture’s colors during the aging process. The experiment proved a success when the Rembrandt Society purchased it for a massive sum.
van Meegeren had found the approval of the art world he’d sought for so long. But painting such works in anonymity came at its own price. “My triumph as a counterfeiter was my defeat as a creative artist,” he said after outing himself as a forger. He did, however, somewhat salvage his legacy in court, charming those in attendance. Asked if he had sold his forgeries for exorbitant sums, he quipped, “I could hardly have done otherwise. Had I sold them for low prices, it would have been obvious they were fake.”
It was enough to convince cheering fans that he’d sold “Christ with the Adulteress” for the sole purpose of exacting revenge on the high ranking Nazi. “I didn’t do it for the money,” he claimed, “which brought me nothing but trouble and unhappiness.”
Sources:
Han van Meegeren's Fake Vermeers http://www.essentialvermeer.com/misc/van_meegeren.html
Dutch Master https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/10/27/dutch-master
Vermeer’s Fakes https://arthive.com/publications/51~Vermeers_fakes