Delft and Master Forger Han van Meegeren

For many people the city is best known for its 'Delft Blue' Porcelein, and most of the tourists who arrive in the summer months swarm to visit the factory Royal Delft.

However, as well as boasting other unique monuments and attractions, Delft has been home to several famous historical personages:
One of these was Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, a 17th century Dutch scientist; a second was Johannes Vermeer, a 17th century artist, possibly most recently famous for his work Girl With a Pearl Earring, upon which a recent book and film were based.
A third - and certainly the most infamous - was the art faker Han van Meegeren, whom experts claim is one of the greatest art forgers in history.

Though Han van Meegeren and Vermeer lived three centuries apart, and van Meegeren was born in Deventer and died in Amsterdam, a strong link connected the two men: Both were artists of immense talent, both loved and fostered the classical school of painting and both lived in Delft. Van Meegeren was a passionate admirer of Vermeer, and in the end - imitation being the sincerest form of flattery - he took that admiration to its ultimate extreme. One of his most famous forgeries was Christ and the Adulteress, which was sold fraudulently as a genuine newly discovered Vermeer for 1.650 million gilders - a fortune at that time - to Hitler's right-hand man, Field-Marshal Hermann Goering in 1943. It was this painting that would lead to charges of treason to be brought against the artist in 1947. (The charges were later dropped when van Meegeren proved that the painting was a counterfeit; he was then lauded as a hero for having duped the Nazi art connoisseur Goering.)

Van Meegeren was complex, egocentric and neurotic, and his personal and artistic behaviour has confounded art historians (and possibly psychiatrists) up to the present. It is still not conclusive whether all of his forgeries have been accounted for. Several may well hang in galleries as original works by Johannes Vermeer, Frans Hals and Pieter de Hoogh. Van Meegeren's exquisite forgeries were a painful embarrassment to art experts at the time, as well to the directors of reputable art galleries and muse

Over the years debates have raged about Han van Meegeren. People have made movies, produced plays (e.g. Ghost In The Light and Han van Meegeren: Master Forger) and written books. Even characters in works of fiction (e.g. The Recognitions by William Gaddiss) are based on Han van Meegeren. Notably, in the past couple of years interest in this brilliant art forger has exploded, and several people on both sides of the Atlantic are now engaged in projects based on his life. I know someone who is in the process of writing a musical.

As a freelance copy editor EnglishCopyEditor, I was pleased to meet and to work together with the van Meegeren expert Fred H. Kreuger on two of his books about the artist. One was a semi-fictional 'rogue's novel', The Deception, based on Fred's extensive research. The other was a non-fictional account of van Meegeren's life. During the hours we spent discussing, analysing and structuring the material, I came to have a sense of who van Meegeren was. Though his deceptive behaviour - in his private as well as his professional life - and his general modus operandi might be considered questionable, nevertheless his driving passion for art was real. So too was his obsessive dedication to creating and perfecting the aging techniques that made him a supreme master of the craft of forgery.
For an up-to-date account of Han van Meegeren and his life and work, Fred Kreuger has created the website Meegeren.

A number of books have been published about Vermeer and Han van Meegeren. Two by Fred Kreuger include The Deception, available from the author as well as on amazon.co.uk, and the most recent work on Van Meegeren The New Vermeer.

Another book, I Was Vermeer, by Frank Wynne is well written and presented. However, experts claim it suffers from factual errors and relies heavily on unacknowledged material collated from previous researchers. These include the late Lord Kilbracken, who wrote about Van Meegeren in 1951 (The Master Forger) and 1967 (Van Meegeren), and Fred Kreuger, whose painstaking research over the past five years has uncovered many hitherto unknown details about the artist. Fred has even unearthed old photographs and paintings as well as discovered new information about Cootje, the last woman in van Meegeren's life. Fred's website has also begun to generate interest; he was recently contacted by a Dutch ex-pat living in Mexico, who owns an original van Meegeren painting.

The Price Of Forgery

Henricus Antonius van Meegeren (1889-1947)

Strokes Of Genius