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Some true stories are so improbable, they wouldn't make believable fiction. Topping that list is the tale of Henricus Antonius van Meegeren, a World War II-era C-list painter who reinvented himself as history's most audacious art forger. I say 'known' because his real legacy, as his biographer Frank Wynne gleefully pointed out, is the jolt of doubt that he sent through the art establishment when he finally revealed his forgeries as such. Wynne is best known as the translator of Michel Houellebecq's cult novel ELEMENTARY PARTICLES, but he shines also as a crime biographer. His informative yet accessible I WAS VERMEER: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY'S GREATEST ART FORGER exposes the secrets of van Meegeren's workshop, paints a compelling psychological portrait, and shows why, half a century later, we should care what he did. The basic facts are these. Van Meegeren was born in the Dutch town of Deventer late in the 19th century. After battling his autocratic, theologically doctrinaire father to be allowed to study art, van Meegeren had a checkered early career. He succeeded in art school only when he conspicuously rebelled against the academic system, won a prize primarily for claiming, not entirely accurately, that the deer he painted was a personal favourite of the queen, and had some modest professional successes -- and dreadful reviews. He hated modernism, and was born too late to join the schools and movements that he truly admired. Seducing the actress wife of a prominent art critic, and then marrying her after they both divorced their spouses didn't help him either. In the 1930s, van Meegeren gave up on painting van Meegerens and began creating 'Vermeers', via a painstaking process that included grinding his own pigments from rare, anachronistic substances, mixing them with liquid Bakelite, painting on actual 17th century canvases stripped of their valuable compositions, and cooking the results in a giant metal oven that he built himself. He made pots of money, saw his 'Vermeers' hang in the most prestigious national museums, and blew a small part of his plunder on morphine, houses in France and the Netherlands, extra-expensive wartime caviar, and prostitutes. He succumbed to the temptations of Nazi rhetoric, yet also swindled the Nazis by selling one of his 'Vermeers' to Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Hitler's number two goon, as a Dutch national treasure. That was his greatest feat and also the catalyst of his downfall -- because, after the liberation of the Netherlands, to sell a 'national treasure' to the enemy was an act of 'collaboration' punishable with death. This is not the first biography of van Meegeren to be published in English, but it is the most thorough. Wynne's sources include some documents newly translated from the Dutch. Usefully appendixed are a bibliography of further reading, relevant internet sites, and a chart showing 'How to Find Your Nearest Vermeer—assuming it is still genuine.' An epilogue concerning the 2004 auction of a painting controversially attributed to Vermeer underscores Wynne's teasing qualifier. One of van Meegeren's Vermeers is reproduced in color on the cover, and, in the photographic plates section, readers can compare color photos of van Meegeren 'Vermeers' with (allegedly) authentic ones. Wynne peppers his factual study with reconstructed dialogue that was almost certainly not observed and transcribed by anyone still living. I wondered whether these were transcription, conjecture, or neither. Van Meegeren's story lives in its details, which Wynne plentifully provides and contextualizes, so I am not convinced that the dialogue passages are necessary. On the other hand, the insertion of some fiction into a non-fiction work is just the kind of aesthetic decision that van Meegeren would have appreciated. It's just his style.
Reviewed by Rebecca Nesvet, November 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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