by Frank Wynne
The Milkmaid, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
City View,** Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (now attributed to Jacobus Vrel)
The Little Street,** whereabouts unknown (now attributed to Derk van der Laan)
The Little Street, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
The Love Letter, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Girl with a Pearl Earring, Mauritshuis, The Hague
The View of Delft, Mauritshuis, The Hague
Diana and her Companions, Mauritshuis, The Hague
United Kingdom
Christ in the House of Martha and Mary,* National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
The Music Lesson, The Royal Collection, Windsor Castle
A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal, National Gallery, London
A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal, National Gallery, London
The Guitar Player, Kenwood House, London
United States
The Concert (stolen from the Isabella Gardner Museum, Boston. A blank space is left on the wall where the painting used to hang.)
Officer and Laughing Girl, Frick Collection, New York
Mistress and Maid, Frick Collection, New York
Girl Interrupted at her Music,* Frick Collection, New York
Study of a Young Woman, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Allegory of Faith, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Woman with a Lute,** Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
A Maid Asleep, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
A Young Woman Reading, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Girl with the Blue Bow,** Glenn Falls, New York
Saint Praxedis,* The Johnson Collection, Philadelphia
A Woman Weighing Pearls,** Joseph E. Widener, Philadelphia
Woman Holding a Balance, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
A Lady Writing, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Young Girl with a Flute,** National Gallery of Art, Washington (Jacques van Meegeren claimed this had been painted by his father)
The Lacemaker,*** National Gallery of Art, Washington (now thought to be a forgery by Theo van Wijngaarden)
Laughing Girl,*** National Gallery of Art, Washington (now thought to be a forgery by Theo van Wijngaarden)
Girl with a Red Hat,* National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal,* Collection of Steve Wynn, Las Vegas
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to offer my heartfelt thanks to: my agent, the incomparable David Miller, for his friendship and his unshakeable faith; Rosemary Davidson, Amanda Katz and Bill Swainson for their help and support on this book; Machiel Brautigam for introducing me to Geert Jan Jansen, who offered me a first-hand insight into the mind of the forger, Roland Burke for his help when my rudimentary German failed me; and to my friend and Dutch uncle Ravi Mirchandani.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aldrich, Virgil C.: Philosophy of Art, Prentice-Hall, 1963
Altabe, Joan: ‘Airing “Stuffy” Art World’s Dirty Laundry’, Sarasota Herald Tribune, 4 February 2001
Arnau, Frank: The Art of The Faker - 3,000 Years of Deception, Little Brown & Company, Boston, 1959
Baesjou, Jan: De Alchimist van Roquebrune, Vink, Antwerpen/Tilburg, 1954
Banfield, Edward C.: The Democratic Muse: Visual Arts and the Public Interest, Basic Books, New York, 1984
Benjamin, Walter: ‘Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in Illuminations, Fontana, London, 1973
Berger, John: Ways of Seeing BBC/Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1972
Brandhof, Marijke van den: Het geval-Van Meegeren, in Knoeien met het verleden, Utrecht, 1984
Braum, Martin: ‘The Van Meegeren Art Forgeries’, Applied Mathematical Sciences, Vol. 15, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1975
Bredius, Abraham: ‘An Unpublished Vermeer’, Burlington magazine 61 (October 1932), pp. 144–5
Bredius, Abraham: ‘A New Vermeer: Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus’, Burlington Magazine 71 (November 1937), pp. 210–11
Bredius, Abraham: ‘Nog een woord over Vermeer’s Emmausgängers’, Oude Holland 55 (1938), pp. 97–9
Broos, B.: Vermeer, Malice and Misconception, Vermeer Studies, 1998
Carr Howe, Thomas: Salt Mines and Castles: The Discovery and Restitution of Looted European Art, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1946
Cassou, Jean, Emil Langui and Nikolaus Pevsner: Gateway to the Twentieth Century: Art and Culture in a Changing World, McGraw-Hill, 1962
Cole, Herbert M.: A Crisis in Connoisseurship?, African Arts, Vol. 36, Issue 1, 2003
Conklin, John E.: Art Crime, Praeger Publishers, 1994
Coremans, P.B.: Van Meegeren’s Faked Vermeers and de Hooghs, Cassell, 1949
Cullity, Garrett and Berys Gaut: Ethics and Practical Reason, Oxford University Presss, 1997
Danto, Arthur C.: ‘Age of Innocence’, The Nation, Vol. 274, 7 January 2002
Decoen, Jean: Back to the Truth: Vermeer/Van Meegeren, Donker, 1951
De Groot, C.H.: Jan Vermeer von Delft und Carel Fabritius, 1906
de Vries, A.B.: Jan Vermeer van Delft, London and New York, 1948
Doudart de la Grée, Marie-Louise: Emmaüs
Doudart de la Grée, Marie-Louise: Het fenomeen: Gedramatiseerde documentaire over het leven van de kunstschilder Han van Meegeren, Omniboek, 1946
Dutton, Denis (ed.): The Forger’s Art: Forgery and the Philosophy of Art, University of California Press, 1983
Feliciano, Hector: The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World’s Greatest Works of Art, Basic Books, 1997
Ford, Charles V.: Lies!, Lies!!, Lies!!!: The Psychology of Deceit, American Psychiatric Press, 1996
Froentjes, W. and A.M. de Wild: ‘De natuurwetenschappelijke bewijsvoering in het proces van Meegeren’, Chemisch Weekblad 45 (1949), 269–78
Gardner, Howard: Art, Mind, and Brain: A Cognitive Approach to Creativity, Basic Books, 1982
Godley, John (Lord Kilbracken): Van Meegeren, Master Forger, Nelson, 1967
Gombrich, E.H.: Art and Illusion, Princeton University Press, 1962
Goodman, Nelson: The Languages of Art, 1976
Goodrich, David L: Art Fakes in America, New York, The Viking Press, 1973
Groom, Nick: The Forger’s Shadow: How Forgery Changed the Course of Literature, Picador, 2002
Guarnieri, Luigi: La doppia vita di Vermeer, Mondadori, Mailand, 2004
Haney, George W., Leonard Keeler, John A. Larson and August Vollmer: Lying and Its Detection: A Study of Deception and Deception Tests, University of Chicago Press, 1932
Hebborn, Eric: Drawn to Trouble: Confessions of a Master Forger, Mainstream, 1991
Hjort, Mette and Sue Laver: Emotion and the Arts, Oxford University Press, 1997
Hoving, Thomas: False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-Time Art Fakes, Touchstone, 1997
Howells, John G.: A Reference Companion to the History of Abnormal Psychology Vol. 2, M. Livia Osborn; Greenwood Press, 1984
Jansen, Geert Jan: Magenta: Avonturen van een meestervervalser, Prometheus, 1998
Kasof, Joseph: Clarification, Refinement, and Extension of the Attributional Approach to Creativity, 1995
Keck, C.K. and R.S. Eisendrath: How to Take Care of Your Pictures, Museum of Modern Art & the Brooklyn Museum, 1954
Kostelanetz, Richard: Esthetics Contemporary, Prometheus Books, 1978
Kreuger, Frederik: Han van Meegeren, Meestervervalser, Veen Magazines, Diemen, 2004
Leigh, David and Elena Borissova: ‘How forgery turned £5,000 painting into £700,000 work of art’, Guardian, Saturday 10 July 2004
Moiseiwitsch, Maurice: The Van Meegeren Mystery, Arthur Barker, 1964
Montias, John Michael: Vermeer and His Milieu, Princeton University Press, 1989
Moulyn, Adrian C.: The Meaning of Suffering: An In
terpretation of Human Existence from the Viewpoint of Time, Greenwood Press, 1982
Murphy, Cullen: ‘Knock It Off: The Art of the Unreal’, The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 294, Issue 5, December 2004
Nash, John: Vermeer, Scala, 2002
Petropoulos, Jonathan: Art as Politics in the Third Reich, University of North Carolina Press, 1996
Petropoulos, Jonathan: The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany, Oxford University Press, 2000
Reitlinger, Gerald: The Economics of Taste: The Rise and Fall of Picture Prices 1760–1960, Barrie and Rockliff, London, 1961
Sparshott, F. E.: The Structure of Aesthetics, University of Toronto Press, 1970
Spencer, Ronald D.: The Expert versus the Object: Judging Fakes and False Attributions in the Visual Arts, Oxford University Press, 2004
Swillens, P.T.A.: Johannes Vermeer: Painter of Delft 1632-1675, Utrecht, 1950
van den Brandhof, Marieke: ‘Een vroege Vermeer uit’ 1937, Het Spectrum, 1979
Wallace, Irving: ‘The Man Who Swindled Goering’, Saturday Evening Post, Vol. 219, No. 28, 1947
Watson, Peter: Sotheby’s: The Inside Story, Random House, 1997
West, Patrick: ‘Faking it big in the 21st century’, New Statesman, 2001
Wheelock, Arthur K.: The Public and the Private in the Age of Vermeer, Osaka, 2000
Websites
Jonathan Janson has created a dizzyingly comprehensive series of websites dedicated to Vermeer:
http://www.essentialvermeer.com
http://howtopaintavermeer.fws1.com/
http://newvermeers.20m.com
www.johannesvermeer.info
Other websites about Han van Meegeren
http://www.mystudios.com
http://www.tnunn.ndo.co.uk
http://www.rnw.nl/special/en/html/040122meeg.html
Websites about art forgery
http://www.invaluable.com
http://www.the-artists.org/tours/art-forgery
http://www.museum-security.org/forgeries.htm
http://www.ifar.org
http://www.artcult.com
http://yin.arts.uci.edu/-mof/index.html
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Frank Wynne is a journalist and award-winning literary translator and has written for, amongst other publications, the Irish Times, Melody Maker, Time Out and Attitude. Frank was born in Sligo and is now based in London.
Copyright © 2006 by Frank Wynne
Every reasonable effort has been made to contact copyright holders of material
quoted in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Wynne, Frank.
I was Vermeer: the rise and fall of the twentieth century’s greatest forger / Frank Wynne.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-58234-593-2 (hardcover)
1. Meegeren, Han van, 1889–1947. 2. Painters—Netherlands—Biography. 3. Art forgers—Netherlands—Biography. 4. Vermeer, Johannes, 1632–1675—Forgeries. I. Title.
ND653.M58W96 2006
759.9492—dc22
2006014090
First published by Bloomsbury USA in 2006
This e-book edition published in 2011
E-book ISBN: 978-1-60819-655-5
www.bloomsburyusa.com
* The great untranslatable Dutch concept which encompasses welcoming, cosy, friendly and good fun.
* This was their only reward. On the advice of the Metropolitan in New York and the FBI the paintings were seized by the US government as ‘enemy property’ and eventually returned to East Germany. In 1972 Leo Ernst complained, ‘Why don’t I get anything? People have called me up from all over the world about the paintings, and the newspapers have written me up. But that doesn’t give me anything. One German newspaper also wrote that I had died in 1946. What do I do with the newspaper articles? I just throw them away.’
* Where the story of the Paris linen closet comes from is impossible to say.
* Miedl was later tracked down in Bilbao with a shipment of paintings and was interrogated there. After his release, he is thought to have plied his trade in Australia and South Africa.
* Bought by the chairman of De Beers, Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, it now hangs in a church in South Africa.
* Back to the Truth – Vermeer/van Meegeren.
* See Appendix III.
* Genuine equivalence is difficult to estimate, in part because during the war there was no exchange rate for the Dutch florin. More importantly, relative values may be calculated against the Consumer Price Index or against the average unskilled wage. These figures favour the more conservative estimate, CPI; calculated against the unskilled wage, they would be almost doubled.
* Assuming it is still genuine.
