I could hardly have done otherwise
I decided, one fateful day, to revenge myself on the art critics and experts
There were a lot of deer, the charcoal animals standing stoically against a white canvas. Sometimes in color, sometimes nursing a fawn. Among these, it was the simply named “Hertje” (“The Deer”) that put Han van Meegeren on the map. Inspired by a tame palace roe deer belonging to Princess Juliana, the work garnered a fair bit of excitement in the Netherlands.
By the time van Meegeren’s second exhibition rolled around two years later, his work had adopted religious overtones. The result, no doubt, of a late-19th century religious upbringing. A stark contrast to the enthusiastic reception the young artist’s work had received the first time it went up for display in The Hague, the artistic community had seemingly turned on him. His output, deeply inspired by the Dutch masters several centuries prior, had long ago fallen out of fashion.
Cubism and surrealism were de rigueur. The assistant drawing instructor, skilled in the old ways, had peaked with his deer.
Decades later, van Meegeren recounted his rejection with the smoldering passion of a supervillain origin story. “Driven into a state of anxiety and depression due to the all-too-meager appreciation of my work,” he confessed, “I decided, one fateful day, to revenge myself on the art critics and experts by doing something the likes of which the world had never seen before.”
The artist’s transformation almost certainly wasn’t as abrupt as his confessional might suggest. What is certain, however, is that van Meegeren’s decision to turn heel made him a very rich man – for a time, at least. All told, the artist netted himself in the neighborhood of $30 million in today’s money.
After trying his hand at a smattering of contemporaries, Johannes Vermeer emerged as the ideal target. While his status among the Dutch masters now ranks nearly as high as that of Rembrandt, Vermeer was a relatively unknown quantity during his lifetime – and, indeed, until roughly the period into which van Meegeren was born.
Vermeer’s teacher is unknown, and the painter is rare among the masters for seemingly having trained no pupils. The artist created works for patrons in his native Delft, largely portraying scenes of middle-class life that oft repeated the same subjects in the same or similar settings. By the time of his death in his early 40s, the painter left behind an equally modest number of works. Of them, only 35 are undisputedly acknowledged as the artist’s work. And among those, a handful are of varying quality.
All told, his known output amounted to roughly 1/10th that of Rembrandt’s, leaving long stretch of Vermeer’s life and work unaccounted for. A man of already questionable ethics, van Meegeren went to work, not only adapting to the master’s style, but pioneering decidedly clever methods for aging his own works.
Oil paints only fully harden after decades. Prior to this, the medium is still soft and easily removed with rubbing alcohol. The artist purchased a pizza oven to test his concoctions, burning off the paint in the process.
Invented shortly after the turn of the century by an American chemist, Bakelite was the earliest form of synthetic plastic. Non-conductive and heat-resistant, the compound proved the perfect addition to van Meegeren’s tool set. The plastic-infused paintings were baked in the oven and ink was used to fill in the cracks.
Imitating Vermeer, on the other hand, proved vastly more difficult. The artist’s mastery of light, colors and fabrics was simply too difficult to pin down perfectly. Worse still, van Meegeren discovered the closer he got to his desired style, the more prone discerning eyes were to pick out the differences.
Instead, the artist went in a different direction. His new Vermeers borrowed elements from the artist, while embracing the mysteries the painter had left in his wake. “Woman Reading Music” finds its subject in a pearl necklace and ruffled blue blouse seated in front of a sunny window. The work swipes major elements from Vermeer’s similarly titled 1663 work, “Woman Reading a Letter.” van Meegeren never sold the work, but the piece cemented his position as a master forger.
In 1937, van Meegeren crafted, “The Supper at Emmaus.” The painting, which centered around the biblical story of a resurrected Jesus revealing himself to his disciples, was a clear descendent of the religious scenes its creator had painted a decade prior. Vermeer, on the other hand, had created no known religious works. But critics and scholars were more than happy to fill in the gaps, confirming their suspicions that artist had studied in Italy and created his own biblically-inspired works that had thus far been lost to history.
A contemporary examination of the work pronounced it genuine, declaring the piece, “the masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer of Delft.” It was purchased by The Rembrandt Society and the following year hung in a Rotterdam museum alongside hundreds works from contemporaries. van Meegeren used the proceeds from the sale to purchase a home in Nice, only to move back in September of the following year, as the Second World War began in earnest.
Living in a hotel, the artist continued to produce Vermeers. Painted amid declining health courtesy of chain smoking, drink and morphine, “Christ with the Adulteress” was far from van Meegeren’s most convincing forgery. Sold to Nazi banker, Alois Miedl, the work wound up in the collection of Hermann Goering. With an absence of recently discovered Vermeers, the Nazi military head saw great value in the work, trading Miedl 137 looted paintings to own it.
Discovered by allied forces in an Austrian salt mine alongside thousands of stolen works at the end of the war, van Meegeren confessed to having created the work. Standing trial two years later, surrounded by his many forgeries, the judged asked the artist whether he had sold the pieces for exorbitant sums.
“I could hardly have done otherwise,” van Meegeren told the court. “Had I sold them for low prices, it would have been obvious they were fake.”
Sources:
Dutch Master https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/10/27/dutch-master
How Mediocre Dutch Artist Cast 'The Forger's Spell' https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92483237
Van Meegeren’s Famous Fake Vermeer Goes To Auction Block https://apnews.com/article/0018d6b4a45b9c10174c3584ac601fc5