The Van Meegeren Art Forgeries

Abstract

After the liberation of Belgium in World War II, the Dutch Field Security began its hunt for Nazi collaborators. They discovered, in the records of a firm which had sold numerous works of art to the Germans, the name of a banker who had acted as an intermediary in the sale to Goering of the painting ‘Woman Taken in Adultery’ by the famed 17th-century Dutch painter Jan Vermeer. The banker in turn revealed that he was acting on behalf of a third-rate Dutch painter H. A. Van Meegeren, and on May 29, 1945, Van Meegeren was arrested on the charge of collaborating with the enemy. On July 12, 1945, Van Meegeren startled the world by announcing from his prison cell that he had never sold Woman Taken in Adultery to Goering. Moreover, he stated that this painting and the very famous and beautiful Disciples at Emmaus, as well as four other presumed Vermeers and two de Hooghs (another 17th-century Dutch painter) were his own works. Many people, thought that Van Meegeren was lying to save himself from the charge of treason. To prove his point, Van Meegeren began, while in prison, to forge the Vermeer painting Jesus Amongst the Doctors to demonstrate to the skeptics just how good a forger of Vermeer he really was. The work was nearly completed when Van Meegeren learned that a charge of forgery had been substituted for that of collaboration.