Henricus Antonius "Han" van Meegeren (Dutch: [ɦɛnˈrikʏs ɑnˈtoːnijəs ˈɦɑɱ‿vɑ‿ˈmeːɣərə(n)]; 10 October 1889 – 30 December 1947) was a Dutch painter and portraitist, considered one of the most ingenious art forgers of the 20th century. Van Meegeren became a national hero after World War II when it was revealed that he had sold a forged painting to Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
Van Meegeren attempted to make a career as an artist, but art critics dismissed his work. He decided to prove his talent by forging paintings from the Dutch Golden Age. Leading experts of the time accepted his paintings as genuine 17th-century works, including art collector Abraham Bredius.
During World War II, Göring purchased one of Van Meegeren's "Vermeers", which became one of his most prized possessions. Following the war, Van Meegeren was arrested on a charge of selling cultural property to the Nazis. Facing a possible death penalty, he confessed that the painting was a forgery, and was subsequently convicted and sentenced to one year in prison. However, he died less than two months later after suffering two heart attacks. A biography in 1967 estimated that Van Meegeren duped buyers out of more than US$30 million; his victims included the Dutch government.
Han (diminutive for Henri or Henricus) van Meegeren was born 10 October 1889, the third of five children of Augusta Louisa Henrietta Camps and Hendrikus Johannes van Meegeren, a French and history teacher at the Kweekschool (training college for schoolteachers) in the provincial city of Deventer.
While attending the Higher Burger School, Han met teacher and painter Bartus Korteling (1853–1930) who became his mentor. Korteling had been inspired by Johannes Vermeer and taught Van Meegeren Vermeer's techniques. Korteling had rejected the Impressionist movement and other modern trends as decadent, degenerate art, and his strong personal influence may have led Van Meegeren to do likewise.
Van Meegeren's father did not share his son's love of art; he often forced Han to write a hundred times, "I know nothing, I am nothing, I am capable of nothing." Instead, Han's father compelled him to study architecture at the Delft University of Technology in 1907. He received drawing and painting lessons, as well. He easily passed his preliminary examinations but never took the Ingenieurs (final) examination because he did not want to become an architect. He nevertheless proved to be an apt architect and designed the clubhouse for his rowing club in Delft, which still exists (see image).
In 1913, Van Meegeren gave up his architecture studies and concentrated on drawing and painting at the art school in The Hague. On 8 January 1913, he received the prestigious Gold Medal from the Technical University in Delft for his Study of the Interior of the Church of Saint Lawrence (Laurenskerk) in Rotterdam. The award was given every five years to an art student who created the best work, and was accompanied by a gold medal.
On 18 April 1912, Van Meegeren married fellow art student Anna de Voogt, who was pregnant with their first child. The couple initially lived with de Voogt's grandmother in Rijswijk, and their son Jacques Henri Emil van Meegeren was born there on 26 August 1912.
Career as a legitimate painter
In 1914, Van Meegeren moved his family to Scheveningen and completed the diploma examination at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, which allowed him to teach. He took a position as the assistant to the Professor of Drawing and Art History. In March 1915, his daughter Pauline was born, later called Inez. To supplement his small salary of 75 guldens per month, Han sketched posters and painted pictures for Christmas cards, still-life, landscapes, and portraits for the commercial art trade. Many of these paintings are quite valuable today.
Van Meegeren's first exhibition was held from April to May 1917 at the Kunstzaal Pictura in the Hague. In December 1919, he was accepted as a member by the Haagse Kunstkring, an exclusive society of writers and painters who met weekly on the premises of the Ridderzaal. Although he had been accepted, he was ultimately denied the position of chairman. He painted the tame roe deer belonging to Princess Juliana. The painting, Hertje (The Fawn or The Deer), was completed in 1921, and became popular in the Netherlands. He undertook numerous journeys to Belgium, France, Italy, and England, and acquired a name for himself as a portraitist, earning commissions from English and American socialites who spent their winter vacations on the Côte d'Azur. His clients were impressed by his understanding of the 17th-century techniques of the Dutch masters. Throughout his life, Van Meegeren signed his own paintings with his own signature.
After years of unhappiness, Van Meegeren's marriage to Anna de Voogt ended in divorce on 19 July 1923.. de Voogt moved to Paris, where Van Meegeren visited his children from time to time. He dedicated himself to portraiture and began producing forgeries to increase his income.
He married actress Johanna Theresia Oerlemans, with whom he had been living for the previous three years, in Woerden in 1928. Johanna's stage name was Jo van Walraven. She had previously been married to art critic and journalist Dr. C H. de Boer (Carel de Boer). She brought their daughter Viola into the Van Meegeren household.
Van Meegeren had become a well-known painter in the Netherlands with the success of Hertje (1921) and Straatzangers (1928). His first legitimate copies were painted in 1923, his Laughing Cavalier and Happy Smoker, both in the style of Frans Hals. By 1928, the similarity of Van Meegeren's paintings to those of the Old Masters began to draw the reproach of Dutch art critics, who said that his talent was limited outside of copying other artists' work.
One critic wrote that he was "a gifted technician who has made a sort of composite facsimile of the Renaissance school, he has every virtue except originality". Van Meegeren responded in a series of aggressive articles in De Kemphaan ("The Ruff"), a monthly periodical published by Van Meegeren and journalist Jan Ubink from April 1928 until March 1930. Jonathan Lopez writes that Van Meegeren "denounced modern painting as 'art-Bolshevism' in the articles, described its proponents as a 'slimy bunch of woman-haters and negro-lovers,' and invoked the image of 'a Jew with a handcart' as a symbol for the international art market".
Van Meegeren set out to prove to the art critics that he could more than copy the Dutch Masters; he would produce a work to rival theirs.
In 1932, Van Meegeren moved to the southern French village of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin with his wife. There he rented a furnished mansion called "Primavera" and set out to define the chemical and technical procedures that would be necessary to create his perfect forgeries. He bought authentic 17th-century canvases and mixed his own paints from raw materials (such as lapis lazuli, white lead, indigo, and cinnabar) using old formulas to ensure that they could pass as authentic. He made badger-hair paintbrushes similar to those that Vermeer was known to have used.
He came up with a way to use phenol formaldehyde (Bakelite) to make paints harden after application, making paintings appear 300 years old. Van Meegeren would first mix his paints with lilac oil, to stop the colours from fading or yellowing in heat. (This caused his studio to smell so strongly of lilacs that he kept a vase of fresh lilacs nearby so that visitors would not be suspicious.) Then, after completing a painting, he would bake it at 100 °C (212 °F) to 120 °C (248 °F) to harden the paint, and then roll a cylinder over it to increase cracking. Later, he would wash the painting in India ink which filled the cracks in black.