A Forger’s Choice Between Death for Treason, or Prison for Fake Masterpieces
Shortly after WWII ended in Europe, Han van Meegeren, a second-rate Dutch artist in recently-liberated Amsterdam, was accused of helping the Nazis plunder the Netherlands’ cultural heritage. He was charged with the procurement of valuable paintings by Dutch artists such as Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch for Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering. Most notable was a previously unknown Vermeer, Christ With the Adulteress, that had been Goering’s pride and joy. The charges amounted to treason, and were punishable by death. He weighed his options, figured that imprisonment for forgery was better than death for treason, and came clean: each and every masterpiece he had sold to Goering was a fake. Van Meegeren exclaimed: “The painting in Goering’s hand is not, as you assume, a Vermeer of Delft, but a Van Meegeren! I painted the picture!” To save his life, van Meegeren set out to prove that he was a forger.
Van Meegeren had graduated from art school in 1914, and worked as an assistant art professor. He supplemented his income with portraits, landscapes Christmas cards, and commercial paintings for advertisements. In the 1920s, he became relatively popular with paintings of a Dutch princess’s tame deer, that became popular with the masses. By the late 1920s, however, van Meegeren’s old school tastes had grown old. Critics, who had gravitated to modern art forms like Cubism and Surrealism, derided his work as derivative. To them, he was an unoriginal hack, who imitated the works of other artists. In response, he got into flame wars with his critics, and heatedly attacked them in art publications. By the time the dust settled in 1930, van Meegeren was an art world pariah.
