It is supposed now that he was bi-polar. Bit of course there was no help of real value for him.
And then a very interesting programme on the works of Van Meegeren. What a very clever man.
Fake or Fortune
The art world can prove a bear pit, with a myriad of tricksters at work. Experts estimate that anything between 20%-40% of works of art on the market are faked. And they can turn up in the most unexpected places.
The ProcuressHanging in one of the most prestigious and respected art institutes in London is a picture Philip has heard of, which may hold the key to unlocking the story of the most audacious forger of all time. A man who dared to fake the work of Old Masters and made millions from his deception, until he was caught in 1945: Han Van Meegeren.
But a mystery remains to this day, as Van Meegeren died before a complete record of his fakes was made. How did he pull off faking Old Master paintings, duping important art galleries in to making purchases of works apparently by Vermeer, even foxing Goering in to buying one of his works during the war?
Philip and Fiona get to work on the London picture which, legend has it, hung in Van Meegeren's studio on the day he was arrested. Was it his last work? And by testing it, can we prove how he out-foxed some of the most eminent minds in the art world?
The Telegraph -
Master forgery: '17th century work exposed as a fake'
A Dutch Golden Age painting in one of Britain's foremost art collections is actually a fake painted by a notorious forger, it has emerged.
5:25PM BST 02 Jul 2011
After tests for a BBC One show, Fake of Fortune?, it is now accepted that the work is a forgery by Han van Meegeren, a Dutch forger who died in 1947.
As recently as 2009, the respected Art Newspaper revealed that curators at the Courtauld and the National Gallery (NG) believed the painting had “every appearance of being of 17th-century origin”, as the latter put it.
Now, scientific tests commissioned for the BBC programme detected a synthetic resin similar to Bakelite mixed into the paints to mimic age.
Research was supervised by Philip Mould, an Old Masters dealer with a track record of discovering genuine works.
He said: “Some of the most prominent specialists … have speculated that it is a 17th-century picture – but … Bakelite was [Van Meegeren’s] unique fingerprint.”
At the outset, Mould doubted the 17th century attribution. “To my eyes, it was a Van Meegeren”, he said.
Ironically, that was also the opinion of Geoffrey Webb, the man who donated it to the Courtauld in 1960 for study purposes. Webb, as a British officer responsible for the restitution of looted Nazi art – Goering was among those duped by Van Meegeren – considered it a fake, partly because it was recovered in 1945 from Van Meegeren’s own villa.
However, the master-forger also possessed genuine paintings and, in the late 1970s, historians began to reconsider the picture as genuine 17th-century.
Van Meegeren swindled his buyers out of some £65m in today’s money, driven by the bitterness of his own paintings being dismissed as derivative. His forgeries fooled leading art galleries, including the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which paid a record figure, today’s equivalent of £12m, for one work – now a fake in its storeroom.
He was arrested in 1945, not for selling a fake, but for selling to Goering what the Dutch thought was a real Vermeer, a treasure of Holland’s heritage.
This laid him open to the charge of collaboration, and execution as a traitor. His only way out was to admit to selling his own fake. During his 1947 trial he confessed to forging seven old masters, but 21 have since been identified and there may be more.
Documents relating to Van Meegeren’s trial mention the Courtauld’s picture, the forger insisting that his former wife bought it in 1938 in an antique shop. But Mould said: “I don’t believe it … He lied in paint … and he twisted the truth.”
Part of the technical research for the BBC was undertaken by Aviva Burnstock, the Courtauld’s conservation head. With a Dutch expert, and the latest forensic tests, she studied materials seized from Van Meegeren’s studio in 1945.
They included his paint pigments – one, crucially, labelled “artificial resin”. Analysis confirmed that it was phenol formaldehyde, better known as Bakelite, only invented in the 20th century, but which Van Meegeren mixed into his paints to harden them like an old painting.
“Paint almost acts like blood at a crime scene,” Mould said. The Rijksmuseum also allowed minuscule flecks of paint to be taken from its own genuine version of The Procuress and its Van Meegeren fake, to be compared with the Courtauld picture.
Burnstock told the BBC: “It’s gone back and forward between being a fake by Van Meegeren or a genuine 17th century painting.” After seeing the evidence, she adds: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an unequivocal result. This is absolutely … Van Meegeren.”
A National Galleries spokeswoman said: "Attributions of paintings can – and will inevitably – change as more is known about them. This can be based on new art-historical information or technical results."
The Courtauld said it did not display the picture as a 17th century work.
At the outset, Mould doubted the 17th century attribution. “To my eyes, it was a Van Meegeren”, he said.
Ironically, that was also the opinion of Geoffrey Webb, the man who donated it to the Courtauld in 1960 for study purposes. Webb, as a British officer responsible for the restitution of looted Nazi art – Goering was among those duped by Van Meegeren – considered it a fake, partly because it was recovered in 1945 from Van Meegeren’s own villa.
However, the master-forger also possessed genuine paintings and, in the late 1970s, historians began to reconsider the picture as genuine 17th-century.
Van Meegeren swindled his buyers out of some £65m in today’s money, driven by the bitterness of his own paintings being dismissed as derivative. His forgeries fooled leading art galleries, including the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which paid a record figure, today’s equivalent of £12m, for one work – now a fake in its storeroom.
He was arrested in 1945, not for selling a fake, but for selling to Goering what the Dutch thought was a real Vermeer, a treasure of Holland’s heritage.
This laid him open to the charge of collaboration, and execution as a traitor. His only way out was to admit to selling his own fake. During his 1947 trial he confessed to forging seven old masters, but 21 have since been identified and there may be more.
Documents relating to Van Meegeren’s trial mention the Courtauld’s picture, the forger insisting that his former wife bought it in 1938 in an antique shop. But Mould said: “I don’t believe it … He lied in paint … and he twisted the truth.”
Part of the technical research for the BBC was undertaken by Aviva Burnstock, the Courtauld’s conservation head. With a Dutch expert, and the latest forensic tests, she studied materials seized from Van Meegeren’s studio in 1945.
They included his paint pigments – one, crucially, labelled “artificial resin”. Analysis confirmed that it was phenol formaldehyde, better known as Bakelite, only invented in the 20th century, but which Van Meegeren mixed into his paints to harden them like an old painting.
“Paint almost acts like blood at a crime scene,” Mould said. The Rijksmuseum also allowed minuscule flecks of paint to be taken from its own genuine version of The Procuress and its Van Meegeren fake, to be compared with the Courtauld picture.
Burnstock told the BBC: “It’s gone back and forward between being a fake by Van Meegeren or a genuine 17th century painting.” After seeing the evidence, she adds: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an unequivocal result. This is absolutely … Van Meegeren.”
A National Galleries spokeswoman said: "Attributions of paintings can – and will inevitably – change as more is known about them. This can be based on new art-historical information or technical results."
The Courtauld said it did not display the picture as a 17th century work.
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