by Frank Wynne
De Boer did not doubt for a moment that it was a Vermeer and wanted to ensure it was bought by the Dutch state as a national treasure, but before the state was prepared to make an offer for the painting a government committee was convened to examine and appraise the work. It numbered seven highly regarded experts: Dirk Hannema, the director of Boijmans Gallery, three representatives of the Rijksmuseum – the director general, the curator and the acting director – two distinguised professors and H.G. Luitweiler, the restorer who had refurbished The Supper at Emmaus. Six of the committee never doubted the painting’s authenticity for a moment. Only J.Q. van Regteren-Altena a professor at the University of Amsterdam, suggested it was a forgery. Schendel, the acting director of the Rijksmuseum, later admitted: ‘I thought it ugly, but none the less a genuine Vermeer.’ Dirk Hannema would justify their decision, stating, ‘None of us like it, but we were afraid the Nazis would get hold of it.’ De Boer, concerned to rescue this ‘work of national significance’ for the Dutch state, selflessly offered to accept half his usual commission. Despite their reservations, the committee unanimously agreed that the painting was authentic and recommended that the state acquire it for the Rijksmuseum for 1.3 million guilders.
When Han had embarked on his career as a forger a decade earlier, his avowed aim was to expose the hypocrisy and venality of the art world. His towering achievement came not from proving himself the equal of the masters of the Golden Age in painting a masterpiece which deceived the experts, but in proving that regardless of how incompetent the painting, how crude his anatomy, how uncertain the provenance, the most erudite Vermeer critics were prepared to sanctify the monstrous daub.
ACCIDENTAL HERO
17
THE LINE OF LEAST RELUCTANCE
There are terrible temptations which
it requires strength, strength and
courage to yield to. To stake all
one’s life on a single moment, to risk
everything on one throw, whether
the stake be power or pleasure.
Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband
Han was unjustifiably surprised and shocked when Joanna informed him that she wanted a divorce. There can be no doubt that she still loved Han. Her petition was the inevitable consequence of endless weary years watching Han drink and cheat and squander his talent. If Han relished the thought of the freedom he might lavish on younger, prettier girls, in his desultory way, he still loved his wife of almost twenty years. He had come to depend on her, she was his muse, his rock, his nurse, his confidante. He made a surprising proposal: he suggested to Jo that they rent the villa in Laren and move to Amsterdam, to a house on the Keizersgracht he had acquired some years before. He would not contest the divorce, he assured her – in fact, he was prepared to be extravagantly generous, putting the deeds to the Keizersgracht house in her name and agreeing to a settlement of almost a million guilders. But if they were no longer lovers, he implored, they were friends, so he asked if Jo would continue to live with him as his friend, his partner in their new house on the western canal belt. It is a testament to Han’s charm that she agreed.
It took Han only a few short months to find the third woman who would share his life. Her name was Jacoba Henning, though everyone knew her as Cootje. More than twenty years his junior, she had radiant pale skin, auburn hair which spilled down her long, slender neck, a small, sensuous mouth daubed with a slash of red. She was perfect. Like his wife, his new mistress was a trophy. What had first drawn Han to Joanna was the fact that she was the wife of Karel de Boer, one of the most eminent art critics in The Hague. What in part drew him to Cootje was the fact that she was the wife of a celebrated young artist who had a garret on the Oudezijds Burgwal. It was here in her husband’s studio that Han liked to make love to her.
Cootje was utterly unlike Jo and Anna before her. Han’s wives had both been independent, intelligent women ever-ready to offer an opinion on art; in contrast Cootje deferred to Han and allowed him to live his life as he pleased. And in spite of the war, it was a perfect life. At home, he had Jo to support him, and Amsterdam offered him all the delights the fusty suburb of Laren lacked. Now he had found Cootje, a beautiful compliant mistress who was happy even to entertain the working girls Han brought back to her husband’s atelier.
The two years Han spent in Amsterdam were perhaps the happiest of his life. His daughter Inez lived nearby, and for the first time in a decade he could spend time with her. Jacques, who still lived in Paris, somehow managed to visit his father in Amsterdam from time to time. He had all but given up painting, but there were regular exhibitions of his work in the Netherlands, in Belgium, in Germany, as far afield as Poland. He alternated his time with Cootje and his occasional carousing with a quiet life on the Keizersgracht with his devoted ex-wife, surrounded by his old masters. Even through the murderous ‘Hunger Winter’ which preceded the Allied liberation, Han and Jo suffered none of the privations of their countrymen. Han single-handedly supported a burgeoning black market in champagne and caviar, foie gras and fine wine which he served to the friends, followers and fawning sycophants who attended their frequent formal suppers.
He must have joined the solemn commemoration with his compatriots when on 5 May 1945 the Dutch prime minister, Pieter S. Gerbrandy, announced on Radio Orange, ‘People of the Netherlands – you are free.’ Amsterdam was finally liberated. Looking out of his studio window on Sunday morning, over the canal to the spire of Westerkerk, he would have heard the bells peal. He may have heard gunfire from Dam Square where a tragic gun battle was fought between former Dutch Resistance fighters and a pocket of German soldiers, which killed twenty-two of those who had gathered to celebrate the liberation. Even so, a semblance of normality was returning to the city and Han must have joined in the collective sigh of relief. The first legal edition of the Dutch underground newspaper Het Parool on 8 May described life returning to the city: ‘Houses of worship are filled to the brim, there is an air of excitement among the thousands who follow the religious services. Elsewhere people are feverishly at work, in the museums, preparing for new exhibitions and bringing the art treasures out of hiding . . .’ One such art treasure, brought from its hiding place in the salt mines of Austria, would lead two officers of the Dutch Field Service to appear on his doorstep barely three weeks later.
Now, six weeks after his arrest, Han still skulked in the darkness of his prison cell, eking out the few cigarettes he managed to cadge from the warders, drawing in the sketchpad he had bribed the guards to allow Inez to bring him. It was here that Han drew his last self-portrait: the haggard face of the artist stares mournfully at the viewer, framed by the crude black lines of prison bars, and in a flash of self-pity bordering on cliché, the wall behind him is carved with notches counting off the days of his incarceration.
Joop Piller, the senior Dutch Field Officer who had arrested Han, was fascinated by his prisoner. Here was a respectable, perversely honourable man of considerable intellect and compassion. Piller was determined to discover what had motivated such a man to collaborate with the Nazis. Joop began to visit Han in his cell, admiring the biblical sketch de Zalving. Over the weeks, Han came to trust Piller. Here was a young Jewish man who, rather than go into hiding with his wife and young son who were harboured by onderduikers (passive resisters), had joined the Dutch Resistance. A section of British Military Intelligence, MI-9, was set up specifically to draw on such Resistance movements. In 1943, when Dick Kragt, an MI-9 agent, parachuted into the hinterland of the small town of Emst losing his equipment and his radio in the jump, it was Piller who discovered him and together the two men established a network which was to hide and protect downed airmen and successfully smuggled many Allied soldiers out of the Netherlands.
Piller tried to probe Han about his motives, his beliefs. At first, Han would only guardedly repeat the story he had told a hundred times: an old Dutch family, a Fascist threat, a solemn promise of secrecy. He had never met Alois Miedl, he said, and had never hear
d of Walter Hofer. It was impossible to disprove Han’s version of events since, after the liberation, Alois Miedl,* Walter Hofer and Rienstra van Strijvesande had fled. Piller could not understand why Han was so reticent. It was clear from the documents that van Strijvesande rather than Han had brought the Vermeer to the attention of Alois Miedl, so there was little reason to suspect him of treason. If Han truly had represented a Dutch family, they would surely vouch for his integrity. Why did he refuse to disclose the identity of the woman he called Mavroeke? Italy had been liberated, so she was no longer in any danger from the fascisti. Her identity, in any case, need not be made public – but his refusal made it impossible for the Allied Art Commission to return the painting to its rightful owner and made Han’s role in the affair seem increasingly suspect.
The vitriol in the national press condemning ‘this Dutch Nazi Artist’ had not abated in the weeks of Han’s incarceration. There were lurid tales of orgies at Han’s Keizersgracht house during the war where, it was claimed, Han entertained senior Nazi officials. One newspaper printed a reproduction of the title page of Tekening I, a book of Han’s watercolours and drawings which the journalist claimed had been discovered among Hitler’s possessions in Berchtesgaden, in which the title page was inscribed: ‘Dem geliebten Führer in dankbaren Anerkennung’ – To the beloved Führer in grateful recognition and signed Han van Meegeren. Though the signature was genuine – one of a hundred and fifty copies signed by Han in 1941 – the inscription was later proved to be in another hand.
Han fiercely denied having any links with the Nazis, Alois Miedl, Walter Hofer or any of the occupying forces, but such protestations seem to be a convenient fig-leaf for his actual sympathies. There was considerable evidence that he had fascist leanings. Han’s drawing ‘Wolenzameling’ had been commissioned by the Nazis and his symbolist watercolour The Glorification of Work had hung in the offices of the Fascist Dutch Workers Front, where it was discovered after the war. (It was sold for a carton of cigarettes to an American GI and now – aptly – hangs in a young offenders’ institution in Connecticut.) Even more tellingly, Han’s work had been widely exhibited in Germany during the war, and the artist had travelled to attend openings in Oldenburg, Stuttgart and Osnabrück. As late as 1944, while the Allies were firebombing the eastern front, Han still felt able to attend an exhibition of his work in occupied Poland – a journey he could only have made using documents and visas issued by the occupying forces.
Though Han had no direct ties to the Dutch and German Nazi parties, and in fact had often told friends that his painting was his ‘act of resistance’, Piller quickly discovered that, having been offered 1,650,000 guilders for Christ with the Woman Taken in Adultery, Han had insisted that Reichsmarschall Göring pay for the work by returning more than two hundred paintings looted and stolen from public and private collections across the Netherlands. Han admitted that once he was aware of the sale, he had forced the Nazis to return hundreds of looted paintings – it was, Han told Piller, a profoundly patriotic act – but even this was to admit he was more deeply implicated than he had claimed.
The daily routine interrogation yielded little. Han would sit stonefaced as Piller and his colleagues asked the same questions over and over.
– How did you come by the painting?
– Why did you agree to allow a Vermeer to be sold to Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring?
– What contact did you have with the Nazi agent Walter Hofer?
– How many paintings did you sell to Alois Miedl?
After the first weeks of Han’s imprisonment, Joop Piller began to take him out in his car, driving his suspect on day-trips through the countryside. It was an unusual and highly unorthodox practice for a senior officer to fraternise with a prisoner but perhaps Piller realised that prison was a special kind of torture for an artist for whom a glimpse of the outside world, a few hours of freedom, a breath of fresh air were life itself. It was on one such outing, on 12 July 1945, that the breakthrough came. Perhaps Piller admitted a sneaking admiration for Han’s doggedness in forcing the Nazis to return two hundred looted paintings. It was an act of resistance. There was something heroic in rescuing so many works of art. Han, flattered, drew on the stub of his cigarette.
‘It doesn’t seem likely anyone will give me a medal . . .’
‘It’s hardly surprising,’ Piller said abruptly. ‘You may have saved two hundred minor works, but in exchange Göring acquired one of only a handful of paintings by the great Vermeer.’
‘Fool!’ Han said almost inaudibly. His face clouded with frustration and anger. Joop glanced at the man to discover he was smiling bitterly.
‘You’re as much of a fool as the rest of them,’ Han sighed. ‘You think that I sold a Vermeer to that Nazi scum Göring. But there was no Vermeer, it was a van Meegeren. I painted it myself.’
Joop Piller stared at Han, astonished.
‘It’s easy enough to prove,’ Han went on, ‘I didn’t take much trouble with it. If you X-ray the painting you’ll find traces of an original seventeenth-century painting, Horses and Riders – I can’t remember the artist, but it certainly was not by Vermeer. I bought the canvas from a dealer in Amsterdam. I’m sure he still has the bill of sale.’
When the two men returned to the prison, Piller took Han to an interview room where Han obligingly explained how he had painted the picture and the circumstances of the sale while Piller took notes. Joop Piller knew little about art, but he knew enough to realise that Han must be lying: even to the untrained eye the reproduction of The Woman Taken in Adultery was strikingly similar to Vermeer’s celebrated The Supper at Emmaus in Rotterdam.
Han lit a fresh cigarette from the smouldering untipped stub, burning his fingers as he did so. He was weighing up the situation. He could prove that The Adulteress was his work – he clearly remembered the underpainting and could sketch its precise position with an overlay of his own, something investigators could easily confirm by X-ray. He had no desire to save the painting – it was an ugly piece, hardly worthy of his talent. If it were proved a forgery and destroyed he would not regret it. He knew what Piller was thinking, but even now, he may have thought he could save the finest of his Vermeers for posterity. If he confessed to having forged The Adulteress, the curator of the Rijksmuseum might begin to look askance at The Footwashing – especially if he discovered that Jan Kok, who had acted as an agent for the painting, was a friend of Han’s. But even if both paintings were exposed as forgeries, Han had enough ready cash to compensate his ‘victims’. Without his confession it would be impossible to connect these two with The Supper at Emmaus and The Last Supper. G.A. Boon had disappeared without trace and Abraham Bredius was on his deathbed. Han could step into the limelight as the hero who had duped the Nazis and all the while his finest work might remain, admired and acclaimed by generations to come in the hushed halls of the finest galleries. After a long moment, he exhaled theatrically.
‘I painted them all,’ he said, in answer to Piller’s unspoken question. ‘Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus in the Boijmans, The Last Supper and the de Hooch Dutch Interior in van Beuningen’s collection, The Footwashing in the Rijksmuseum: I painted them all.’
Weary and shaking from lack of sleep and nauseous still from his withdrawal from morphine, Han launched into an impassioned confession lasting several hours, in which he carefully crafted a new identity for himself as a hero. Far from being a traitor who had sold a work of national importance, he declared, he was the equal of any man in the Resistance. Single-handedly, he had duped the highest echelons of the Third Reich, trading them a worthless van Meegeren in order to rescue hundreds of genuine Dutch old masters from oblivion. He reeled off dates and times, where and how he had acquired the canvases he had used. He harangued, he sermonised, he lectured – offering impromptu lessons in the art of creating seventeenth-century pigments and the chemistry of modern plastics. He explained to the baffled Piller how he aged his canvases and produced a convincing craquelure. Now and
then he would put down his cigarette, seize the pencil the officer was using to take notes and dash off a frantic sketch to illustrate the underpainting that might be found on The Adulteress or The Footwashing when they were X-rayed.
Realising they were ill-equipped to assess Han’s outlandish claim, Piller and his colleagues contacted the Allied Art Commission which had taken over the premises at Herengracht 50, the very offices Alois Miedl had occupied during the war. Two members of the commission visited Han in his prison cell. Recalling the interview some fifty years later, Pieternella van Waning Heemskerk said that they simply refused to believe him. ‘He claimed he was the maître of all those Vermeers and we couldn’t believe him, absolutely, we said no that’s impossible – and he said, “Believe me, I will give you the proof.”’
Han was at a loss. He had explained his pigments and his plastics, he had offered detailed descriptions of the paintings he had defaced in order to create his Vermeers. He suggested that they X-ray The Adulteress and submit the other paintings for chemical analysis which would identify the phenol-formaldehyde he had used as a medium.
‘We will, as you suggest, submit the paintings for examination. However, you must agree that your claim to have painted all of these masterpieces is far-fetched.’
‘Never the less, it is true. I painted all the works I have named. Surely X-ray and chemical testing can confirm what I have told you?’
‘Perhaps . . . they may confirm some of what you say. But they cannot tell us who painted these works.’
Han, frustrated and indignant, sighed and asked for another cigarette.
It seems to have been one of the officers who ingenuously proposed, ‘Mijnheer van Meegeren, if you did indeed paint The Adulteress as you say, then surely it would be a reasonable test to ask you to paint a copy from memory.’
