Forger masters the old masters

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, particularly in the world of art. But what makes people pay tens of millions for one painting and only a couple of hundred for another?

If a forger makes an exact copy of an ‘old master’ – so good that one cannot tell them apart – what determines their value? Paintings have always been copied but only rarely has copying been taken to a fine art.
Han Van Meegeren was born in Holland. He had a talent for drawing and painting and by his 20s had established himself in The Hague mainly as a portrait artist. He made copies of paintings by Franz Hals that fell foul of the art critics of the day who said that, apart from copying, his talent was limited. He was dismissed as a gifted technician with every virtue except originality. He was determined to prove them wrong and began to prepare for his revenge. It took six years to perfect his technique.
He used the same materials that Vermeer was known to use, even making his own brushes from badger hair and mixing the paint using his own materials. He bought original 17th century canvasses and baked the paintings to make the paint harden and seem 300-years-old. He also rolled the canvas over a cylinder to cause the paint to crack and then washed it in black ink to make it look as if the cracks had filled over the years. He specialised in Vermeers, a painter who had only gained popularity in the early years of the 20th century and there were very few of his canvasses available. Van Meegeren amassed a fortune equal to hundreds of millions in modern currency.
His return to Holland coincided with the start of the Second World War but he continued to paint and trade in paintings. After the war, he was accused of collaborating with the Germans when it was discovered that he had sold some ‘old masters’ to Goering.
Van Meegeren was one of the major figures charged with collaboration and, if found guilty, he faced either a long term in prison or hanging. To save himself he admitted that Goerings paintings and the other old masters that he sold were all his own work.
The art experts who had condemned him in the ’20s laughed that he was incapable of such work. One said that if it were true then Van Meegeren was indeed a genius. To prove his point, Van Meegeren painted an old master-style canvas in this prison cell. None of the paintings he sold were copies but his own work in the style of the masters so he was charged not with forgery but that he sold paintings with false signatures. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one year in prison.
He became famous as the man who swindled Goering and the price of his own work rocketed. In an ironic twist to the story such was the demand for his own work that it too became the subject of forgery. Many Vermeers quietly disappeared or were removed from galleries.
Han Van Meegeren, a master painter in the style of the old masters and who was himself copied, was born on October 10 1889 – 122 years ago this week.