Han van Meegeren (nonfiction)

Han van Meegeren in 1945, painting Jesus Among the Doctors before an expert panel, two years before his criminal trial.

Henricus Antonius "Han" van Meegeren (Dutch pronunciation: [ɦɛnˈrikɵs ɑnˈtoːniɵs ˈɦɑn vɑn ˈmeːɣərə(n)]; 10 October 1889 – 30 December 1947) was a Dutch painter and portraitist and is considered to be one of the most ingenious art forgers of the 20th century.

As a child, van Meegeren developed an enthusiasm for the paintings of the Dutch Golden Age, and later set out to become an artist himself. Art critics, however, decried his work as tired and derivative, and van Meegeren felt that they had destroyed his career. He decided to prove his talent to the critics by forging paintings of some of the world's most famous artists, including Frans Hals, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch, and Johannes Vermeer. He so well replicated the styles and colors of the artists that the best art critics and experts of the time regarded his paintings as genuine and sometimes exquisite.

His most successful forgery was Supper at Emmaus, created in 1937 while living in the south of France. This painting was hailed as a real Vermeer by famous art experts such as Abraham Bredius. Bredius acclaimed it as "the masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer of Delft" and wrote of the "wonderful moment" of being "confronted with a hitherto unknown painting by a great master".

During World War II, wealthy Dutchmen wanted to prevent a sellout of Dutch art to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, and they avidly bought van Meegeren's forgeries, thinking them the work of the masters. Nevertheless, a falsified "Vermeer" ended up in the possession of Göring, who had traded 137 other paintings for it, and it became one of his most prized possessions.

Following the war, the forgery was discovered in Göring's possession, and van Meegeren was arrested on 29 May 1945 as a collaborator, as officials believed that he had sold real Dutch cultural property to the Nazis. This would have been an act of treason, the punishment for which was death, so van Meegeren confessed to the less serious charge of forgery instead. He was convicted on falsification and fraud charges on 12 November 1947, after a brief but highly publicized trial, and was sentenced to a modest punishment of one year in prison.

A Dutch opinion poll conducted in October 1947 placed Han van Meegeren’s popularity second in the nation, behind only the Prime Minister's and slightly ahead of Prince Berhard, the husband of Princess Juliana. The Dutch people viewed Van Meegeren as a cunning trickster who had successfully fooled the Dutch art experts and, more importantly, Hermann Göring himself. In fact, according to a contemporary account, Göring was informed that his "Vermeer" was actually a forgery and "[Göring] looked as if for the first time he had discovered there was evil in the world".

van Meegeren died 30 December 1947, in the Valerius Clinic in Amsterdam, after two heart attacks.

Fiction cross-reference

• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles

Nonfiction cross-reference

• Art (nonfiction)

External links:

• Han van Meegeren @ Wikipedia