From 12 May to 22 August 2010 there will be an exhibition of Han van Meegeren’s fake Vermeers in the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam.
The inevitable highlight of the exhibition is the painting Supper at Emmaus (picture), which was purchased in 1937 by the then director, Dirk Hannema, for a hefty sum of money.
It was generally considered to be an early masterpiece by Johannes Vermeer, but later it turned out to have been painted by the master forger and frustrated artist Han van Meegeren (1889-1947).
He painted Supper at Emmaus on a seventeenth-century canvas, based the colours on old recipes and even thought up a method that would allow the paint to harden.
Other fakes
Later he was to manufacture six other Vermeers, a list of which can be seen here, as well as fakes of Frans Hals, Terborgh and Pieter de Hooch.
He was caught out after the war when a so-called Vermeer was discovered in Hermann Göring’s collection that came from Van Meegeren. In order to ward off accusations that he had collaborated with the Germans, he admitted to having produced the painting himself.
A controversial trial ensued and in November 1947 he was sentenced to a year in prison. He died a month later.
Rotterdam
Ten fakes are on display at the exhibition in the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum. Objects from Van Meegeren’s studio plus a variety of documents give an idea of how he went about his work. Even his exposure is shown.
The Hague
How Vermeer really painted in his early years can be seen now at The Mauritshuis in The Hague. Three of Vermeer’s early works are on display there – a mythological depiction, a bible story and a scene from a brothel. They will be shown later in Edinburgh and Dresden.
Van Meegeren in TLC
Here, you can read an essay about Van Meegeren that was originally published in The Low Countries Yearbook in 1999.
Illustration: Han van Meegeren, Supper at Emmaus, Canvas 118 x 130.5 cm, Boijmans Van Beuningen Collection
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