Erroneously Attributed Vermeer's and Fakes
(part two)
Hans van Meegeren at his trial "The most notorious and celebrated forger of the twentieth century, Han van Meegeren (1889-1947), was born in the Dutch town of Deventer. He was fascinated by drawing as a child, and pursued it despite his father’s disapproval, sometimes spending all his pocket money on art supplies. In high school he was able finally to receive professional instruction, and went on to study architecture, according to his father’s wishes."1 However, Van Meegeren pursued his calling but after an initial success, art critics decried his work as tired and derivative. Van Meegeren felt that the critics had attacked him and had destroyed his career. Thereupon, he decided to prove his talent to the critics by forging paintings of some of the world's most famous artists. Van Meegeren spent six years researching techniques, finally producing perfect forgeries of paintings attributed to Frans Hals, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch and Johannes Vermeer. He had masterfully replicated the styles and colors of the artists he copied, even the best art critics and experts of the time regarded his paintings as genuine, and sometimes exquisite, and the techniques he used could not be detected using authentication methods of the time.
During World War II, wealthy Dutchmen, wanting to prevent a sellout of Dutch art to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, avidly bought Van Meegeren's forgeries. Nevertheless a falsified "Vermeer" ended up in the possession of Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering. Following the war, the forgery was discovered in Goering's possession, and Han van Meegeren was arrested as a German Collaborator, as the officials believed that he had sold Dutch cultural property to the Nazis. These crimes threatened the death penalty; and so Van Meegeren fearfully confessed to the forgery, he then sought to exonerate himself by painting another “Vermeer” from his jail cell. On 12 November 1947 van Meegeren was convicted of falsification and fraud charges, and was sentenced to the legal minimum punishment of one year in prison. He never served his sentence; before he could be incarcerated van Meegeren suffered a heart attack and died on 30 December 1947. It is estimated that Van Meegeren duped buyers out of an estimated $25 to $30 million dollars.
This intriguing case received international attention and its outcome served as a profound admonition towards unscrupulous art dealers and the superficiality of overly-protagonistic experts. This long needed reckoning pruned Vermeer's oeuvre considerably.
There are now 35 generally accepted Vermeer's. The Girl with a Red Hat, once doubted, is now solidly admitted as part of the the artist tiny oeuvre. Girl with a Flute is considered as begun by Vermeer but finished by another hand at a later date. The recent discovery of the supposed early work St. Praxedis by Arthur Wheelock is now refused amid strong criticism by many other historians.
Ben Broos' "Vermeer: Malice and Misconception" and Francis Suzman Jowell's "Vermeer and Thorè-Burger: Rediscoveries of Reputation" (both contained in Vermeer Studies 1998) should be consulted for more detailed information regarding Thorè-Burger and the question of uncertain Vermeer paintings.
- Denis Dutton, Hans van Meegeren,< http://denisdutton.com/van_meegeren.htm>
← The Metropolitan Museum of Art website affords a rather interesting comparison on a page where a an uninspired imitation, A Young Woman Reading can be viewed along side with five authentic Vermeer's. Curator John Walsh changed the attribution to imitation (early 20th c.) in 1974 although the painting was known to be fake much earlier as all the literature reflects The painting features a marine-scape in an ebony frame identical to the landscape which hangs in the background of the authentic Love Letter in the Rijksmuseum.
← During the second world war Hans van Meegeren painted Christ and Disciples at Emmaus which he purported to be an early Vermeer. Since some scholars had come to believe that Vermeer had visited Italy in his formative years, Van Meegeren cunningly provided ”proof" in the way of this forgery. The composition is strongly reminiscent of work by Caravaggio but both the blue-yellow color harmonies and the jug which are characteristic of Vermeer's genuine paintings seemed to bridge the gap between earlier and later works. Despite some doubts whether it was a genuine Vermeer, the painting was purchased by shipowner Daniel George van Beuningen for 550,000 guilders ($300,000 or about $4 million today. In 1938, the piece was highlighted in a special exhibition at the Rotterdam museum along with 450 Dutch masterpieces dating from 1400-1800. In the "Magazine for [the] History of Art", A. Feulner wrote that: “In the rather isolated area, in which the Vermeer picture hung, it was as quiet as in a chapel. The feeling of the consecration overflows on the visitors, although the picture has no ties to ritual or church." The emotional effect of the picture as religious experience was so profound that many art critics no longer questioned the authenticity of the piece.
← Lady and Gentleman at the Spinet by Van Meegeren, seems to be little more than a "a weak collection of Vermeer quotations." The standing man is similar in pose to the standing man in Vermeer's authentic Music Lesson whereas the seated woman seems to have been drawn from other female genre figures of Gabriel Metsu or Nicolas Maes. The curtain and ebony-framed landscape in the background are take literally from other compositions by Vermeer. This forgery was once announced as a "masterpiece of the Great Man of Delft" by Abraham Bredius, one of the world's most important Vermeer scholars.
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← This is one of Van Meegeren's "traditional" Vermeer's. As can be plainly seen, it was partly cribbed from the authentic Woman in Blue in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam and A Lady Writing in the national Gallery of Washington. This, like the Woman Playing Music, this picture remained unsold and found in Van Meegeren's Nice studio a decade after they were both painted. It has been suggested that they were never sold because Van Meegeren felt that they were too like real Vermeers as far as subject matter was concerned and thus exactly what a forger would be expected to produce.
← During the initial decades following its first publication in 1904, the picture was universally accepted and published as an autograph work by Vermeer. Then, following the dramatic events of the affair of the Van Meegeren forgeries of Vermeer, De Vries, the Director of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and the recognized leading scholar on Vermeer, expressed doubts about the authenticity of the picture. Walter Liedtke, who curated the comprehensive Vermeer and the Delft School special exhibition in New York and London in 2001, decided at the very last minute to include in that exhibition although it was not included in the catalogue.
Only during the last decade, since the picture was brought back into contact with the scholarly community, has it been examined seriously. Now, after more than 10 years of extensive research by a team of leading scholars, the painting has now been proposed as a secure addition to Vermeer's limited oeuvre. Not all scholars, however, are in agreement.
← The recent "discovery" of Saint Praxedis has been staunchly defended by the chief curator of Northern European painting of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Arthur Wheelock. In strong contrast, Ben Broos, in his article entitled "Vermeer: Malice and Misconception"* states bluntly: "In my opinion, Saint Praxedis is the latest wrongly attributed Vermeer of the caliber of Van der Laan and Vrel." The work is a virtual duplicate of an original 1645 painting of the same name by the Florentine painter, Felice Ficherelli, whose nickname was "il Riposo." St. Praxedis was a 2nd-century Roman Christian who, along with her sister, Pudentiana, cared for the often-severed bodies of those martyred for their faith. By the late 16th century she was especially revered by the Jesuits, an order which lived next door to Vermeer’s mother-in-law, Maria Thins, along the Oude Langendijk in Delft. See the article St. Praxedis: Missing the Mark for further information.
* Ben Broos, "Vermeer: Malice and Misconception," in Vermeer Studies, edited by Ivan Gaskell, New York, 2001
← This drawing bears a rather large monogram on the foot warmer under the young girl's foot that at first appearance seems similar to those of Vermeer (there exist no drawings securely attributed to the Delft artist). However, it seems to be drawn with a different colored chalk from the rest of the drawing. It is more likely that it is a work of Cornelis Bega or one of his Harlem contemporaries
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