Excerpt from Van Meegeren’s Vermeers: The Connoiseeur’s Eye and the Forgers Art
By Friso Lammerste, curator of Old Master paintings, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Henricus Antonius van Meegeren was born in Deventer on 10 October 1889. In high school he took drawing lessons from the artist Bartus Korteling, who gave him his first artistic training. Korteling taught his pupils to study and appreciate the seventeenth-century Dutch artists. After his final exams, at his father’s insistence Van Meegeren went on to study architecture in Delft. When he won a prize for a drawing of the interior of St Laurenskerk in Rotterdam in 1913, he saw this as a confirmation of his talent and devoted himself wholly to a career as an artist.
To begin with he lived in Rijswijk and Scheveningen, but in 1917 he moved to The Hague, where he lived until 1932. From 1915 onwards Van Meegeren frequently exhibited his works, mainly in The Hague, but also in Scheveningen and Rotterdam. His first solo exhibition was staged in the Pictura Art Gallery in The Hague from 24 April to 22 May 1917. He showed forty-three drawings, watercolours and paintings, almost all of which were sold.
The reactions to Van Meegeren’s work varied. Many people saw him as a traditionalist, an artist who was not influenced by modern trends in art like Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism and De Stijl, but who continued to paint in the styles of the Hague and Amsterdam schools. Some people felt this was a good thing; others, though, disagreed.
In May 1922 Van Meegeren had another one-man show, this time featuring a series of Bible scenes. As with his first solo exhibition, the reviews were mixed. The journalist Frits Lapidoth, for example, wrote, ‘Van Meegeren’s Bible illustrations are some of the most important we have seen in recent years…’ When he went on to describe the painting of The Young Christ Teaching in the Temple, he waxed lyrical. ‘And look at the masterly rendering of the action, what perfect dramatic grouping!’ The art critic A. Plasschaert was less enthusiastic. ‘There is something to praise here and there – but the whole thing too readily approaches illustration (in the weak sense of the word): it is too slick, it has too little inner being, too little psychology, too little respect, no religious sentiment – nor is there that exuberant pagan heroism with which Rubens wanted and dared to realize such a subject.’ Notwithstanding some bad reviews this exhibition too was almost sold out by the time it closed.
Van Meegeren was much in demand as a portrait painter. He made portraits of his friends in the Haagse Kunstkring and also of figures from higher social circles such as M.A.M. Waszink, former Minister of Education, Arts and Sciences and Evert Walraven, Baron van Heeckeren van Molecaten. During his time in France, where he lived from 1932 onwards, he also earned good money from painting portraits. What’s more he regularly received commissions from the world of advertising to make posters, illustrations for books, magazines and folders. Van Meegeren achieved considerable fame with his Deer. This drawing of the then ten-year-old Princess Juliana’s pet roe deer was reproduced by a publisher countless times. At least one in every five Dutch homes had a copy of this work at the time. The art critic Frans Hannema wrote in his article on Van Meegeren that thanks to The Deer Van Meegeren’s talent as a painter was overshadowed by his drawings.
The Start of a Career: The Laughing Cavalier
In The Hague, Han van Meegeren met Theo van Wijngaarden, a restorer with a reputation for playing fast and loose with the ethics of restoration. He often bought old canvases from dealers and did them up such that they could be sold on for a considerable profit. Van Wijngaarden was also not averse to adding a signature or overpainting an entire picture. Han van Meegeren learned the art of restoring in Van Wijngaarden’s workshop and probably the forger’s art, too.
In 1939 Han van Meegeren must have read the recently published book on Vermeer by the German art historian Eduard Plietzsch with deep satisfaction. There were illustrations of all the Delft artist’s paintings in it, but the only work accompanied by details was the Supper at Emmaus. The forger underlined the passage in which the author described the still life as the finest ever painted. However, he would no longer have been surprised by the accolade. Since 1937, when Bredius had written an article describing the work as ‘the masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer of Delft’, there had been a never-ending stream of praise. During one of his interrogations, Van Meegeren referred to the comparison that had been made to one of ‘Beethoven’s best symphonies, descended straight from heaven’. The general adulation explains why in 1945 the initial reaction when the artist claimed to have made the painting was one of disbelief. Nowadays, there is unanimous amazement as to how almost everyone was fooled. To today’s observer, the figures in the Supper at Emmaus and the other forgeries appear to have stepped straight out of some sentimental 1930s film. Everyone who sees Van Meegeren’s own work is staggered by the likeness to the fake Vermeers. It is as if the artist was only able to paint one type of face; the heavy eyelids were as good as a second signature. When he painted the Supper at Emmaus, Van Meegeren was deliberately capitalizing on the interest in Vermeer’s early oeuvre that existed at the time.
In 1935, when the exhibition he had organized about the artist opened, Dirk Hannema had written that Vermeer’s early work was an enigma. There were only two known paintings from the artist’s early career, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary in Edinburgh and Diana and her Nymphs in The Hague, which differed remarkably in style. People thought they could detect the influence of Caravaggio and his Utrecht followers in the paintings. It was also assumed that Vermeer had painted more pictures in his youth than were known about at that time. Consciously or not, people were looking out for these missing works that would solve the mystery. As so much was unclear, no one knew what to expect. When the Supper at Emmaus surfaced, it chimed perfectly with the image people had of the young Vermeer in many respects: it was a history painting, it was large and it was only too obviously influenced by Caravaggio. That the work was atypical in other ways was accepted, because people were aware that so little was known about the Delft artist. This may explain why Van Meegeren did not try In Conclusion Van Meegeren’s Vermeers 102 to sell the Woman Reading Music and the Woman Playing a Cittern, which he had painted as trial runs before the Supper at Emmaus. These genre works, no matter how well they had been painted technically, would not have been able to withstand a direct confrontation with Vermeer’s genuine genre paintings.4 The anomalies in the history paintings were accepted because there was nothing with which to compare them. They were swallowed whole as a previously unknown dimension of Vermeer’s artistic genius. It was above all the portrayal of human emotions in the Supper at Emmaus that evoked both surprise and profound admiration in art historians. The work was unanimously praised for its intensely-felt sentiment.
Until the discovery of the Supper at Emmaus, A.B. de Vries, for example, regarded Vermeer as opposite in nature to Rembrandt, who always depicted ‘deep human tension’, but the new work revealed that the Delft artist was also an interpreter ‘of moving events’. For Bredius the painting was evidence of the artist’s previously unsuspected drama. ‘How dreadful it is that, for money, and in imitation of Dou and Mieris, who earned a lot of money, the man who COULD make something like this confined himself to miracles of light and colour but without any “spiritual” content – and that this is the man who could paint such a Christ.’6
In 1937 Vermeer was not yet established as the great artist he is seen as today. Frederik Schmidt-Degener, for example, considered him no more than the best of the ‘minor artists’ because he showed ‘no inner struggle, no wrestling with his subject’.7 The Amsterdam museum director saw no evidence of ‘tragedy’ – the essence of the greats like Rembrandt, Goya and El Greco. In his genre works, moreover, the Delft painter was not a visionary who transcended his time – another key characteristic of the great masters. But with the discovery of the Supper at Emmaus Vermeer, too, proved to be a member of this select company. The later forgeries, such as The Last Supper and The Washing of the Feet, (figs. 16 and 20) were compared with the work of Kathe Kollwitz, Picasso and the German Expressionists, so that Vermeer could now also be looked upon as one of the forerunners of modern art.
Van Meegeren created a new image of Vermeer as an artist who could depict the spiritual life of man. The forger showed a similar interest in human emotion in his own work. It was primarily in his biblical works that he tried to measure up to Rembrandt. The art critics’ reactions were mixed. Alongside the glowing reviews there were others accusing him of a hollow display of technical virtuosity8 – which makes it all the more remarkable that the Supper at Emmaus was so unanimously lauded for its rendition of the story’s emotional overtones. Intentionally or not, Van Meegeren’s forgeries struck a sensitive chord with his contemporaries. The very fact that the painting had a biblical subject would have certainly afforded it greater appreciation. Before the Second World War the Christian religion was the mainstay of the existence of the majority of the Dutch population. It is revealing, for example, that in his speech during the presentation of the Supper at Emmaus in Museum Boijmans on 18 June 1938, the Minister In Conclusion 103 for Education Arts and Sciences, J.R. Slotemaker de Bruine, concentrated almost exclusively on the religious significance of the work.9
Shortly after Van Meegeren’s confession the great expert Max Friedlander, who had himself believed in the fake Vermeers, tried to place his work in a historical context. He knew that the enthusiasm with which forgeries are often received can be explained by the fact that they reflect the tastes of the time.10 Ironically enough, Vermeer’s (genuine) Allegory of Faith (fig. 28) failed to get the recognition that Van Meegeren’s view of the life of Christ enjoyed at the same time. Quite the contrary – the art historians generally regarded the painting, which had hung in both the Mauritshuis and in Museum Boymans as a long-term loan from 1899 to 1928, as Vermeer’s late and unsuccessful attempt to paint a history work at long last. This is why Hannema made no effort to acquire the painting in 1928 when it looked as though it would be going abroad. ‘Unmourned,’ wrote Friedlander, ‘it left Holland.’11
Van Meegeren’s capacity for making his contemporaries believe in a Vermeer who was able to depict man’s psychological depth is one of the most important drivers of the enthusiasm for his fakes. But he would never have succeeded in his plan had he not also shown himself to be a cunning master of the other aspects of forging. First and foremost, there was his technical execution. His detailed study of the technical properties of the materials used in seventeenth-century paintings enabled him to execute his forgeries so convincingly that not only art historians but restorers, too, had not the slightest doubt about their authenticity. Secondly, he deliberately set the asking price high in the belief that such a considerable sum would inspire confidence. The buyers, including Willem van der Vorm and D.G. van Beuningen, were prepared to make huge financial sacrifices and even to sell parts of their collections in order to acquire the works. If something was that expensive, it had to be good.
Van Meegeren also showed a keen insight into human nature when he chose his middlemen. With the exception of Rienstra, the go-betweens adhered faithfully to the instructions they were given. They were able to put across a fictitious provenance convincingly and never mentioned Van Meegeren’s name. Where Boon was concerned the forger appears to have tailored the story about the provenance to fit him. According to Van Meegeren, the Supper at Emmaus was the property of an Italian who was anti-Mussolini and needed the money to flee the country. The liberal minded Boon was a fervent anti-fascist. On 22 May 1937, for instance, he had appealed to the conductor Willem Mengelberg to conduct the Concertgebouw Orchestra in works by the Jewish composers Mahler and Mendelssohn in Germany, where the performance of their music was forbidden.12
Consequently whenever Boon told an invented story about the provenance of a picture, he was able to justify it to himself on the grounds that he was doing it for a good cause. Using middlemen, Van Meegeren was able to pile on the pressure during the sale of the paintings. In the case of the Supper at Emmaus there was the constant threat that the painting would be sent to America. Van Meegeren’s Vermeers 104 When it came to the later works, which were offered during the war, there were always hints that highly-placed Germans were interested and that the work had to be saved for the Netherlands. This ensured that the Dutch buyers felt obliged to act quickly and, above all, in secret. Time and time again it was emphasized that as few people as possible were allowed to be in the know. Given the wartime conditions, the insistence that the purchase had to be kept off the books and that payment had to be in cash was understood and acted upon without any objection. In his statements after the war Van Meegeren said that he had made his forgeries out of revenge. ‘Incessantly driven by the depression caused by the inadequate recognition of my work, one fatal day I decided to revenge myself on art historians and others who flutter around painting by bringing into the world something that they had not yet seen.’13 Be this as it may, it is abundantly clear that the Supper at Emmaus was made primarily for financial gain. The painting was offered first to the American art dealer Duveen. Vermeer was unprecedentedly popular in the United States, and collectors were prepared to hand over astronomical sums for his rare work, so it seems very likely that Van Meegeren painted the work thinking not so much about getting his own back on Dutch art critics as about fleecing wealthy American collectors.
hDutch museum directors and art dealers were not approached until later. After the success of the Supper at Emmaus, Van Meegeren knew that his forgeries could also be successful in his own country. In the case of the later forgeries, too, he was concerned primarily with the money. Van Meegeren may well have produced his first Pieter de Hooch specifically with Hannema in mind. He had learnt from the sale of the Supper at Emmaus that Hannema was receptive to the forger’s work and, as importantly, that he could raise large amounts of money quickly. It was widely known that Hannema saw the fact that his museum did not own a good Pieter de Hooch as a great lack. It is, to say the least, telling that Gerard Boon did not take the work to an art dealer, as had happened with all the other forgeries, but went straight to Hannema. In all respects Van Meegeren was a shrewd operator, but his plan could only succeed because of the art experts’ gullibility. The discovery of the Supper at Emmaus brought about nationwide euphoria that essentially left no room for criticism. Once the painting had been accepted as a masterpiece it served as a key work. In every new Vermeer with a biblical
subject, the attribution was justified by pointing to the similarity to the Rotterdam painting – no comparison was made with the rest of Vermeer’s oeuvre. The later fakes were poorer quality, but there could be no doubt that they were by the same hand. There was always a hard core of Dutch art historians and dealers ready to give their approval – initially Bredius and Hannema, followed later by Martin, Van Schendel, Van Gelder, A.B. de Vries, Roell and Hoogendijk. In response to the discoveries this influential group created an image of Vermeer as a history painter. Each new painting that turned up was a confirmation and even a reinforcement In Conclusion 105
of that image. Once they had endorsed Isaac Blessing Jacob (fig. 19), stylistically there was no reason whatsoever to reject The Washing of the Feet or Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery (figs. 20 and 21). As a result it became more and more difficult for the people in the group to look at the works with a detached, critical eye. They were so convinced by the image they had collectively created that they were not able to take any dissenting views seriously. When the Rijksmuseum was considering acquiring the Washing of the Feet, the purchase was carefully prepared. Several people were approached for their opinions about the work and a paint sample was taken especially to determine the pigment of the blue. In the end, a large meeting attended by various people from the Rijksmuseum, consultants from other museums and three restorers took a decision. It would have been an almost exemplary way of arriving at a balanced judgement, were it not that the only people who had been invited were those who believed in the picture. J.Q. van Regteren Altena, who had spoken out critically about the work, was not asked. The fact that a succession of unknown Vermeers had surfaced in a short space of time did not arouse any suspicion. David Roell, the director of the Stedelijk Museum, explained the flow of Vermeers with the hypothesis that the paintings had belonged to a series painted for a clandestine church or a consistory court. Van Beuningen recalled after the war that when the Supper at Emmaus and the Head of Christ (figs. 1 and 15) turned up he had a feeling that ‘even more paintings in the same genre would emerge, because it is my belief that creations like these cannot stand alone…’14 It took a comparative outsider like Willy Auping to note in his diary that it was surely impossible that one Vermeer after another should turn up all of a sudden after sixty years of intensive searching. There was a remarkable lack of interest in the provenance of the paintings. When Gerard Boon went to Bredius with the Supper at Emmaus he said that the work had come from a Franco-Dutch family who lived in Paris. Bredius was satisfied with the vague description. As he later wrote to Hannema, ‘Boon never told me the names of the heirs and I am not curious and did not ask about them.’15 Boon’s story about the provenance was quite detailed by comparison to the tales Strijbis told about where the paintings had come from. He was willing to say no more than that they came from an old family in The Hague, who had an important collection. The art dealers, museum directors and collectors were all satisfied with that. There was a war on and there was no interest in pressing for precise information about provenance. The war situation transformed the purchases into symbols of patriotism. The art dealer Hoogendijk urged his clients like Van der Vorm and Van Beuningen to buy the paintings because they would otherwise almost certainly go to Germany. The first point in the contract of sale for Isaac Blessing Jacob (fig. 19) stated that the work was being acquired to preserve it for the Netherlands. In his statements after the war Van Beuningen also emphasized that people had implored him to buy the paintings for the sake of the national interest.16 Van Meegeren’s Vermeers 106 Van Meegeren’s revelation had long-lasting repercussions in the Dutch art-historical world. The Dutch experts – museum directors, curators and other art historians – had been found wanting. The court case exposed just how fragile knowledge based on intuition really was. The scientists, on the other hand, whose hard evidence demonstrated that the paintings could not have been created in the seventeenth century, made an impression. The most prominent of them, P. Coremans, became a celebrity. Since then scientific research has continued to play an ever more important role in Dutch art history. The Rembrandt Research Project, set up in 1968, uses technical analysis of materials as the basis for research into the authenticity of Rembrandt’s paintings.17 Van Meegeren made traditional expertise unreliable and ridiculous. Aesthetic and lyrical art descriptions like those written in great numbers after the discovery of the Supper at Emmaus, were things of the past. The respect for connoisseurs who determined what was and was not good at a fleeting glance, disappeared and was replaced by distrust and scepticism.