The man who made Vermeers : unvarnishing the legend of master forger Han van Meegeren

Jonathan Lopez has drawn on never-before-seen documents from dozens of archives to write a revelatory new biography of the world's most famous forger. Neither unappreciated artist nor antifascist hero, Van Meegeren emerges as an ingenious, dyed-in-the-wool crook who plied the forger's trade far longer than he ever admitted--a talented Mr. Ripley armed with a paintbrush. Lopez also explores a network of illicit commerce that operated across Europe.

User reviews

LibraryThing member bruchu

A Real Talented Mr. Ripley

This is the story of Han van Meegeren, a Dutch artist who made a living producing art as forgeries in the name of Vermeer during the interwar and World War II period. Writing this popular history is Jonathan Lopez, an art historian and writer by trade.

I never heard of van

Meegeren before I picked up this book. The story seems so fantastical, about an obscure Dutch painter passing off his forgeries as Vermeer and fooling everyone doing it. Though mostly a biographical recount, the book is revisionist. Lopez dispels the myth that van Meegeren was a simple man who forged Vermeer as a way to avenge the critics who looked down on his own work and that he was not a Nazi collaborator because he tried to swindle one. Lopez argues rather that van Meegeren was a mastermind who made an elaborate career out of forgery and his Nazi connections went beyond simple collaboration including painting Nazi literature.

A couple of other interesting points that Lopez makes is that forgeries succeed not merely on their technical merits but on the "basis of its power to sway the contemporary mind" (p. 6). And van Meegeren's evil genius to pull off the greatest deceptions was not technical prowess as a visual artist but rather his "use and misuse of history" (p. 10).

Overall, the book is well-written and extremely well-researched including 50-plus pages worth of endnotes. Lopez's narrative is very fluid, easy to read and simply a joy to read. No prior art history knowledge is required to thoroughly enjoy this great text.

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LibraryThing member ElizabethChapman

Author Jonathan Lopez tells of the story of one of the world's greatest forgers (that we know of....) Han van Meegeren. Van Meegeren produced a seemingly endless stream of faked paintings (many supposedly by Vermeer) during the period leading up to, and into, World War II.

Looking at his forgeries

now, one can't help but ask how anyone could have been fooled by his ghastly imitations of Vermeers' extraordinary work. Lopez provides an intriguing answer. The key to a great forgery is giving what people what they want to see. That changes over the years, so a forger must be unerringly attuned to his time and place.

Han van Meegeren was able to create "lost" Vermeers that gave the art world (and the Nazis) just what they wanted -- a phase of the great artist's career when he focused on religious subjects. Religious subjects that "just happened" to reinforce the Nazi's belief in a pure and superior European stock.

Forgeries don't have to stand for centuries (and usually they don't), they only need to fool people during the course of the forger's lifetime. Thanks to some nifty and determined detective work at the end of war, van Meegeren's ruse didn't last as long as that.

Lopez covers much other ground in this wonderful book, but I'll close here and refer you to bruchu's excellent LibraryThing review if you'd like to learn more.

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LibraryThing member grheault

Great portrait of an artist turned forger who gave people what they wanted to believe in -- a missing period of Vermeer. Dutch speaking author, Lopez, uses original sources, tells a well-paced story of Han van Meegeren among the art dealers in Netherlands and doing what ever it might take,

evencynically using a childhood friend, to make his millions, one fake at a time. Also an interesting story of wartime and post-war Netherlands; HvM convicted of minor crimes, died before serving a single day.

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LibraryThing member Meggo

A fascinating look at Han van Meegeren and his forgeries of "lost" Vermeers. Not content to merely forge works, van Meegeren created a whole body of work, a religious period, if you will. Seen in the cold light of day now, these forgeries look increasingly unlikely, and they set off alarm bells

even in the 1940s when first offered for sale. But, one having been accepted as a legitimate Vermeer, the rest were clearly from the same hand, which facilitated the con. A well researched book, it looks at the style, technology and psychology behind the fakes, and why people were so keen to accept them. The book also looks at van Meegeren's Nazi sympathizer history, which is an uncomfortable truth for many Dutch, even today. Not the hero he made himself out to be, van Meegeren was, at the end, merely a crook.

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LibraryThing member rivkat

From a recommendation by saraht. Written with a light touch, this is the story of a forger who fooled people for a long time, including Goering, and ended up a folk hero for having sold a forgery to Goering even though he was a Nazi sympathizer who was just trying to screw everyone. Lopez argues

that forgery was consistent with facism because of its demonstration of a will to power over the past, and that it was also destructive of van Meegeren’s actual artistic talents. “Slowly but surely, the imitative logic of forgery condemned Van Meegeren to a state of arrested development in which artistic role playing—completely divorced from its legitimate purpose as a tool for growth—became an end in itself. The more adept Van Meegeren grew at imagining his way into the creative concerns of long-dead painters, the more his work as a ‘real’ artist in the contemporary world began to appear eccentrically derivative and shallow.” I was most interested in Lopez’s argument that the fakes looked real to people at the time, but not to us now, because they both borrowed from Vermeer but also were consistent with then current visual codes (in particular, Germanic celebrations of the volk).

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LibraryThing member abealy

A brief, concise history of the Dutch forger Han van Meegeren who made a fortune in the 20 years leading up to the Second World War by painting and selling bogus works attributed to Vermeer and Franz Hals to galleries and museums throughout Europe and America.

In hindsight it is reasonable to

declare that the paintings are not in the same league as genuine Vermeers. In fact they are often not even good paintings. Awkward compositions, imperfect modeling, it seems hard to imagine anyone accepting their attribution as works by the master.

It is easy to imagine that many of the art crimes that are portrayed in this book are still being carried out today. The rewards for dealing in forgery, false attribution and theft are just as compelling now as then. As Lopez writes, “...by the time a forgery has raised enough questions to prompt scientific analysis, it has already been bought and paid for.”

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LibraryThing member Marzia22

Fascinating account of a master forger, Nazi collaborator, and all around evil man. Yet, he captivated people with his charm and wit and was a folk hero for many years.

LibraryThing member Jammies

An intriguing story, a compelling if not particularly likeable subject, crisp writing, elegant language and an author who explains details and concepts without talking down to his reader all made this a wonderful reading experience.

LibraryThing member Irishcontessa

When we think of WWII, we think of concentration camps, Hitler, and the invasion. The war crimes that happened were so brutal, so enormous that they obscure almost everything else. This book does an amazingly good job of showing one such crime and one such criminal and how the war aided and abetted

his crimes. It was a fascinating look inside art forgery and the innovation the forgers went to in order to pass off fakes as authentic. I often find art history books to be to dry and textbook like but this one was engaging and entertaining.

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LibraryThing member CasaBooks

Another small part of history that crosses so many areas and is so unknown.
Fascinating is the best word I can use to describe these types of books.
Fascinating.
Read in 2011.

LibraryThing member etxgardener

Intersting & extremely wel-researched story of Han van Meegeren who became famous for forging Vermeers and selling them to the Nazis during World War II

LibraryThing member PattyLee

Hmmm. This turned out to be a very interesting book, especially about the immediate post-war period in Europe. My quibble is that there are many characters who appear only very briefly and various organizations (in Dutch- not my language) which are piled on in the setting of the stage at the

beginning of the book that the details overwhelm the purpose. As the story progresses, it gets more interesting and more compelling. Maybe it did not have to be told in strict chronological order. Overall, it is certainly worthwhile for both the forgery aspects and the historical aspects. I would have liked to know much more about the young Dutch grad student who uncovered the true story- the one which turned van Meegeren from forger/hero to forger/Nazi sympathizer through her diligent research. In all fairness, Lopez does give her credit, but I wanted more information.

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