Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century by Edward Dolnick

The Barnes & Noble Review

For all its psychological twists and historical turns, this nonfictional thriller poses a simple question: How could a painting that one day is worth millions of dollars, the next day be worth almost nothing? The easy answer: the painting is revealed to be a forgery. Of course, in this complex case, layers of deception and intrigue underlie what appeared to be a straightforward scam, one of the most notorious hoaxes in the history of art. In the early 20th century, Han van Meegeren, a mediocre Dutch painter, succeeded in convincing an astonishing group of connoisseurs and buyers that a roomful of his forgeries were in fact undiscovered Vermeers. Edward Dolnick, who previously wrote about the heist of Munch’s Scream in The Rescue Artist, here explores the full dimensions of this amazing tale by delving into all sorts of byways: the limits of connoisseurship, the craft of forgery, the mystique of Vermeer, and the Nazi plundering of European art. It’s a narrative balancing act that Dolnick handles with great skill and insight.

Three days after V-E Day in 1945, the Dutch resistance fighter Joop Piller knocked on the door of one of the fanciest houses in all of Amsterdam. A captain in the provisional postwar government, Piller was determined to figure out how the occupant of this house managed to live in such apparent splendor during the harsh years of Nazi occupation. The suspected collaborator, Han van Meegeren, still dapper at 55, indulged his taste for fine champagne and expensive prostitutes throughout the war years, throwing lavish parties with little concern for appearances. He was, after all, a great artist. Or so he thought. In any case, his name appeared in records of an art sale made to none other than Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Hitler’s second-in-command and, like the Fuehrer himself, voracious in his acquisition of Europe’s great art works. Coercing reluctant dealers and museums throughout the continent, and relying on government funds, the two ranking Nazis competed for the Italian and Dutch masters most of all.

Art owned by Jews was, of course, easily looted by the Germans. The vain and flamboyant Goering, for one, grabbed the entire inventory of Jacques Goudstikker, a famous dealer, who left behind over 1,000 quality works when he fled to England. (Goudstikker did not survive the journey, but his memory prevails. The Bruce Museum in Connecticut currently has on display much of the collection, now rightfully restored to his survivors.) In their passion for accumulation -- one can hardly call it appreciation, since most of the Nazi acquisitions languished uncrated -- Hitler and Goering bought up every Breughel, Rubens, and Rembrandt within their reach. But what they coveted most was work by Vermeer, the enigmatic genius whose mystique is only enhanced by his meager production -- to this day, only 30-plus paintings are accepted as genuine.

Into this void stepped van Meegeren. Like Hitler himself, van Meegeren loathed the modern art that was garnering critical acclaim throughout Europe in the early decades of the century. But unlike Hitler, van Meegeren managed a decent career painting society portraits, biblical scenes, and local landscapes. The critics, though, were brutal, mocking his wide-eyed Madonnas and kitschy farm animals. Determined to get his revenge on an unappreciative cognoscenti, van Meegeren started off his career as a forger with some simple De Hooch and Hals imitations that quickly found buyers in prewar Holland, with its nouveau-riche industrialists eager to invest in fine art. Van Meegeren surveyed the art scene -- from museum curators to the distinguished scholars and critics -- and saw a ripe opportunity: The frenzy for acquiring art was matched by a mania for uncovering hidden masterpieces.

Which brings us to the next major player in this sordid drama: Abraham Bredius, a distinguished, if arrogant, Dutch connoisseur who had chalked up a number of discoveries -- a few Rembrandts and a couple of Vermeers (since disputed). In his dotage, Bredius was still sought out by dealers, buyers, and curators for his pronouncements on given paintings. And his opinions relied on little more than his "eye," that learned but fallible device cited by so many connoisseurs, whose authority was what we would call taste, supplemented by impressionistic gushes. We’ve seen these kinds of highbrow shenanigans before in the shadier dealings of Duveen and Berenson, a relationship that enriched both dealer and the scholar who declared a work authentic.

Sensing the frenzy for Vermeers, van Meegeren got to work, experimenting with materials in his effort to manufacture 17th-century paintings that could pass as real. Dolnick explores this technical side with a detective’s interest in detail, and it’s fascinating. But the most important problem was solved by a very contemporary product: Leo Baekeland’s invention of plastic. Having mastered the scientific side of forgery, van Meegeren had to decide on his subjects, and in this he was quite shrewd, not simply imitating the known Vermeers but exploiting a crucial gap in the painter's career. Though little is certain about Vermeer’s creative chronology, his work falls into two distinct stylistic periods, with an apparent gap in between. Van Meegeren saw his opening: paintings that would reflect a turn toward religious subjects by Vermeer.

With a reputable intermediary, the devious van Meegeren reached out to the pompous Bredius, who declared in art journals these newly discovered Vermeers and explained how they fit perfectly into the course of his career. Between 1937 and 1943, van Meegeren produced six "Vermeers" that sold for increasingly higher amounts, the equivalent of millions in current values. Not only that, each fake was measured against a previous fake, creating a small universe of forgeries that fooled many of the smartest critics, scholars, and curators.

In retrospect, what’s really astounding is how little the paintings in question look like Vermeers. In fact, as Dolnick demonstrates, they resemble the sentimental figurative art of their time. With their New Testament themes, these sickly looking Christs resemble Vermeer by way of shlock artist Walter Keane, not Caravaggio, as van Meegeren’s willing dupes argued. It was only a matter of time before the "amiable psychopath" Goering managed to buy one of the new Vermeers, Christ at Emmaus, the painting that would lead to the unraveling of Van Meegeren’s grand deception.

Few believed van Meegeren when he revealed his handiwork -- his forgeries were already appearing in scholarly books on Vermeer. But he had a selfish motive. It was a worse crime to have sold a genuine Vermeer to the Nazis than to have committed fraud, and van Meegeren painted his way to the truth, creating yet another forgery under the postwar court’s scrutiny. In an irony hard to appreciate, he was celebrated by his countrymen for having deceived the evil occupiers and was sentenced to a single year, though he died before serving it out.

Dolnick interviews modern forgers and samples the literature of magic and con artists to help explain a story that’s not a whodunit but a howdunit. How did a greedy third-rate painter, bent on revenge against his critics, deceive the best eyes in Europe (not to mention a few evil Nazis)? Dolnick resorts to the simplest bromide: we see what we look for. And in this wild and revealing case, he’s clearly right. --Thomas DePietro

Thomas DePietro, a former contributing editor of Kirkus Reviews, has also published in Commonweal, The Nation, and The New York Times Book Review. He has also edited Conversations with Don DeLillo, and his book on Kingsley Amis is forthcoming in 2008.

From the Publisher

As riveting as a World War II thriller, The Forger's Spell is the true story of Johannes Vermeer and the small-time Dutch painter who dared to impersonate him centuries later. The con man's mark was Hermann Goering, one of the most reviled leaders of Nazi Germany and a fanatic collector of art.

It was an almost perfect crime. For seven years a no-account painter named Han van Meegeren managed to pass off his paintings as those of one of the most beloved and admired artists who ever lived. But, as Edward Dolnick reveals, the reason for the forger's success was not his artistic skill. Van Meegeren was a mediocre artist. His true genius lay in psychological manipulation, and he came within inches of fooling both the Nazis and the world. Instead, he landed in an Amsterdam court on trial for his life.

ARTnews called Dolnick's previous book, the Edgar Award-winning The Rescue Artist, "the best book ever written on art crime." In The Forger's Spell, the stage is bigger, the stakes are higher, and the villains are blacker.

The New York Times - Anthony Julius

Dolnick…tells his story engagingly and with a light touch. He has a novelist's talent for characterization, and he raises fascinating questions. How, for instance, could the forgeries have fooled anyone? (Dolnick says that van Meegeren was "perhaps the only forger whose most famous works a layman would immediately identify as fake.") How do forgers set about doing their work? One chapter is titled "Forgery 101"; it contains instructions from which any prospective forger would benefit. And why does our estimation of a work of art change when we discover it is a fake? Forgery is interesting in part because it demands great, if imitative, skill, and in part because copying itself has become a significant aspect of contemporary art-making. It is an art-crime that encourages reflections on the nature of art itself. This book is an aid to such reflections.

The Washington Post - Daniel Stashower

…[a] gripping historical narrative…It is strangely mesmerizing to witness Van Meegeren bend to his labors, though in effect we are simply watching paint dry.

Publishers Weekly

Edgar-winner Dolnick (The Rescue Artist) delves into the extraordinary story of Han van Meegeren (1889—1947), who made a fortune in German-occupied Holland by forging paintings of the 17th-century Dutch painter Vermeer. The discovery of a "new" Vermeer was just what the beleaguered Dutch needed to lift their spirits, and van Meegeren's Christ at Emmaus had already been bought by the Boymans Museum in Rotterdam in 1937 for $2.6 million. Collectors, critics and the public were blind to the clumsiness of this work and five other "Vermeers" done by van Meegeren. Dolnick asks how everyone could have been fooled, and he answers with a fascinating analysis of the forger's technique and a perceptive discussion of van Meegeren's genius at manipulating people. Van Meegeren was unmasked in 1945 by one of his clients, Hermann Goering. Later accused of treason for collaboration, he saved himself from execution and even became a hero for having swindled Goering. Dolnick's compelling look at how a forger worked his magic leads to one sad conclusion: there will always be eager victims waiting to be duped. Illus. not seen by PW. (June 24)

Marcia Welsh - Library Journal

In 1945, just after the end of World War II in Europe, a Dutch detective looking for artwork looted by the Nazis and for Nazi collaborators questioned a high-living Dutch artist named Han van Meegeren. Had van Meegeren, the detective inquired, been involved in the sale to Hermann Göring of a priceless Vermeer painting? Upon further questioning, van Meegeren confessed that he had painted this Vermeer himself, along with other Vermeers then in the collections of several major Dutch art museums, and so began the unraveling of "the greatest art hoax of the twentieth century." While other books-including Frank Wynne's I Was Vermeer and Lord Kilbracken's Van Meegeren: Master Forger-have covered this intriguing case of forgery, greed, and detection, this account by Dolnick, author of the Edgar Award-winning The Rescue Artist, is especially strong in plot development and characterization. It also has a unique point of view: that van Meegeren was not a genius and master forger but rather his "true distinction was [that] he is perhaps the only forger whose most famous works a layman would immediately identify as fake." Recommended for public and academic library art and true-crime collections. (Illustrations not seen.)

Kirkus Reviews

Mesmerizing account of an amateur artist who made millions selling forged paintings to art-obsessed Nazis and business tycoons. Veteran science journalist Dolnick (The Rescue Artist: The True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece, 2005, etc.) brings his expertise in art theft, criminal psychology and military history to a scintillating portrait of Dutch painter Han van Meegeren (1889-1947). Humiliated by critics who dismissed his work as lackluster, Van Meegeren turned to cunningly crafting paintings that he peddled during the 1930s and '40s as the work of revered 17th-century master Johannes Vermeer. The polished, fast-paced narrative captures the surreal mood in Nazi-occupied Holland. As German forces killed more than 70 percent of the Jewish population, the highest toll in Europe, Hitler and his leading aide, Hermann Goering, pillaged museums and private homes for paintings, sculpture and jewelry. In a rivalry Dolnick likens to a perverse schoolyard competition, the men also vied for treasures from art dealers enticed by the Nazis' looted cash. Enter Van Meegeren, a disaffected artist who watched with glee as the same critics who had ridiculed his original work swooned over the technically competent but off-kilter compositions he sold for princely sums as "lost Vermeers." In compelling prose, Dolnick details the doctored canvases, phony paint and fake bills of sale Van Meegeren painstakingly created to achieve his grand deceit. In addition to Nazis and wealthy Europeans, the author notes, he also duped affluent Americans such as Andrew Mellon. After a high-profile 1947 trial during which the con artist demonstrated his techniques, the Dutch government found VanMeegeren guilty of forgery and fraud. He died less than two months later, before serving his one-year prison sentence. Energetic and authoritative.

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Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

The Forger's Spell
A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century

Chapter One

A Knock On The Door

Amsterdam
May 1945

Until almost the very end, Han van Meegeren thought he had committed the perfect crime. He had pocketed more than $3 million—the equivalent of about $30 million today—and scarcely a trace of scandal clung to his name. Why should it, when his dupes never even knew that someone had played them for fools and taken them for a fortune?

Even now, with two uniformed strangers at his door saying something about an investigation, he thought he might get away with it. The two men seemed polite, not belligerent. No doubt they had been impressed by the grandeur of 321 Keizersgracht. Maybe they really did have only a few routine questions to sort out. Van Meegeren decided to keep his secrets to himself.

Van Meegeren was a small, dapper man of fifty-five with a tidy mustache and gray hair swept back from his forehead. His house was one of the most luxurious in Amsterdam, on one of the city’s poshest streets, a neighborhood of bankers and merchant kings. Imposing but not showy, in keeping with the Dutch style, the house rose four stories high and looked out on a postcard canal. Most impressive of all in space-starved Amsterdam, where every staircase rises as steeply as a ladder, the house was nearly as wide as it was tall. The front hall was tiled in marble, and envious rumors had it—falsely—that the hall was so big that guests at Van Meegeren’s parties raced their bicycles around it. On the other hand, the rumors about indoor skating were true.Van Meegeren had found a way to convert his basement to an ice rink so that jaded partygoers could skate in style.

Joop Piller, the lead investigator on this spring day, would not have been a guest at those parties. A Jew in Holland—and Holland lost a greater proportion of Jews in World War II than any other Western European nation—Piller had fought in the Dutch resistance from 1940 to 1945. In years to come, many would embellish their wartime credentials, but Piller was the real thing. His last mission had been to set up a network to rescue Allied pilots after the Battle of Arnhem and smuggle them to safety.

Piller had only begun to learn about Van Meegeren. Holland in 1945 was short of everything but rumors, and Piller had picked up some of the gossip swirling around Amsterdam. Van Meegeren had friends in all the worst—which was to say, pro-German—circles; he was a painter and an art collector; he was a connoisseur of old masters and young women; he had lived in France and had won that country’s national lottery.

Skeptical by nature, Piller was inclined to wave all the talk aside. Still, it was easy to see why the rumors flew. What kind of artist lived like this? Rembrandt, perhaps, but Van Meegeren was no Rembrandt. He was, according to all that Piller had heard, a middling painter of old-fashioned taste and no special distinction. He was apparently an art dealer as well, but he seemed to have made no more of a splash as a dealer than as a painter. He supposedly had a taste for hookers and high living and a reputation as a host who never let a glass stay unfilled. Other tales hinted at a kind of self-indulgent posturing. He had brought his guitar to a friend’s funeral because "it might get boring."

The bare facts of the artist’s biography, as Piller would begin to assemble them over the next few days, only deepened the mystery. Van Meegeren was a Dutchman born in the provincial town of Deventer. He had studied art and architecture in Delft, the hometown of the great Johannes Vermeer. He had won prizes for his art, but he was as out of tune with the current age as his favorite teacher, who had taught Van Meegeren to prepare his own paints like his predecessors of three centuries before. Despite the occasional triumph, Van Meegeren hardly seemed marked for greatness. In college he got his girlfriend pregnant, married her at twenty-two, and settled down uneasily near Delft. There he tried, without much success, to support his family with his art.

Van Meegeren spent the 1920s in The Hague, where life improved. He gained a reputation as a playboy and a portrait painter whose skill was perfectly adequate but whose client list was positively dazzling. In 1932 (by this time, with a new wife), he left Holland for the French Riviera. In the small town of Roquebrune, he moved into a spacious and isolated villa perched high on a cliff above the sun-dappled Mediterranean. As the Great Depression strengthened its grip, Van Meegeren somehow continued to thrive. In 1937, after five years in Roquebrune, he moved to even more imposing quarters, purchasing a mansion with a dozen bedrooms and a vineyard in Nice.

But at his first meeting with the little man in the big house, Piller knew only that Van Meegeren’s name had turned up in the paperwork of a dodgy art dealer. And so, when Piller took out his notebook and posed the question that would set the whole complicated story in motion, he had suspicions but not much more. Tell me, Mr. Van Meegeren, he asked, how did you come to be involved in selling a Vermeer?