The Forger's Spell - Edward Dolnick [140]
an English painter named Leo Stevenson…Author interview, Nov. 7, 2005.
The particles in hand-ground…Richard Harris, “The Forgery of Art,” The New Yorker, Sept. 16, 1961, p. 140.
Until the advent…Ball, p. 180.
“a stone table”…P.T.A. Swillens, Johannes Vermeer, p. 129.
In Vermeer’s day…Ibid., p. 126.
lapis lazuli…Ball, pp. 92, 236.
Next came the grinding…Swillens, p. 122, and Ball, p. 237.
In addition to freeing…Ibid., p. 180.
“More than with any other”…Jan Veth, quoted in “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” in Arthur Wheelock, ed., Johannes Vermeer, p. 168.
Every color called…Swillens, p. 127.
Van Meegeren labored away…Van den Brandhof, p. 94.
“I saw a splendid”…Marie Doudart de la Grée, Geen standbeeld voor Han van Meegeren, p. 30. (The title means No Statue for Van Meegeren.)
“Never believe Van Meegeren!”…Kraaijpoel, personal communication, April 2, 2006.
He may have left…See Koos Levy-Van Halm, “Where Did Vermeer Buy His Painting Materials? Theory and Practice,” in Ivan Gaskell and Michiel Jonker, eds., Vermeer Studies, p. 141.
“He was the Edison”…Quoted in Harris, “The Forgery of Art,” p. 141.
Before Edison came up…Francis Arthur Jones, Thomas Alva Edison: Sixty Years of an Inventor’s
Life, Boston: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1908, p. 252.
To make a pound…“Leo Baekeland and Wallace Carothers: Maestros of Molecules,” US News and World Report, Aug. 17, 1998.
“from the time that a man”…Time, Sept. 22, 1924.
CHAPTER TEN: BARGAINING WITH VULTURES
On October 1, 1944…The Dutch resistance Museum, p. 115.
So many moving vans…Presser, pp. 364, 369.
Prices on the black market…Warmbrunn, p. 80.
When night fell…Henri van der Zee, The Hunger Winter: Occupied Holland, p. 153, and Maass, p. 209.
To rig a battery…De Jong, “Life in Occupied Holland,” p. 29.
“Dutch girls,” historian Walter Maass records…Maass, pp. 208–10.
“Beautiful old houses”…De Jong, “Life in Occupied Holland,” p. 29.
“Along the roads”…Ibid.
“endless road behind Hoorn”…Maass, p. 212.
“there was no reason to forgo”…Nicholas, p. 101.
“Art soon became”…Ibid., p. 103.
In his role as middleman…Janet Flanner, Men and Monuments, p. 230.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: VAN MEEGEREN’S TEARS
Two painters made especially…This account is based on a superb essay by Arthur Wheelock, a Vermeer scholar at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. See “The Story of Two Vermeer Forgeries,” in Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive.
Perhaps it was Wright…Arthur Wheelock says this was the suggestion of the late Vermeer scholar A. B. de Vries. Wheelock, “Two Vermeer Forgeries,” p. 274.
“a little zero”…Van den Brandhof.
Rol had the talent…Author interview, Dec. 19, 2005.
Even today, in an upstairs room…Frederik Kreuger, Han van Meegeren: Meestervervalser, p. 73.
“by chance, in an old book”…Oct. 22, 1945, Het Binnenhof.
Van Meegeren may have reasoned…Leo Stevenson, personal communication, June 26, 2006.
“On my way home”…Doudart de la Grée, p. 56.
The oils have a heavy…Doudart de la Grée, p. 48.
“Bakelite is a solid”…Diederik Kraaijpoel and Harry van Wijnen, Han van Meegeren en Zijn Meesterwerk van Vermeer, p. 40.
CHAPTER TWELVE: HERMANN GOERING
“By the liberation of Paris”…Hector Feliciano, The Lost Museum, p. 4.
Over the course of the war’s five years…Ibid., p. 16.
“This is for me alone”…Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, p. 214.
“at least a yard across”…David Irving, p. 161.
“In his personal appearance”…Schacht, Testimony at Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, May 3, 1946 (online at www.nizkor.org/hweb/imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-13/)
He favored uniforms…Nicholas, p. 35, and Joachim Fest, The Face of the Third Reich, p. 78.
He wore so many medals…Rudolph Herzog includes this joke in Heil Hitler, Das Schwein ist Tot: Lachen unter Hitler—Komik und Humor im Dritten Reich. (The book is a study of humor in the Third Reich. The title means Heil Hitler, The Pig is Dead!, which was the punch line of a joke.)
“animated flea”…David Irving, p. 172.
Goering liked jewelry…Fest, p. 328.
Germanic Robin Hood…Ibid., p. 78.
“He obviously would have loved”…Rudolf