The Forger's Spell - Edward Dolnick [143]
“It is important for both”…Colin Simpson, Artful Partners: Bernard Berenson and Joseph Duveen, p. 87.
“He did not object to my mentioning”…Jean Strouse, Morgan, p. 562.
“This bronze bust is in”…Blom, p. 126.
Morgan had evidently paid…Ben Broos, “Un celebre Peijntre nommé Vermeer,” in Wheelock, ed. Johannes Vermeer, pp. 159–61.
“The rare and incomparable”…Wheelock and Glass, “Appreciation,” p. 167.
Vermeer was “the greatest”…Ibid., p. 170. The other superlatives can be found in Philip Hale, Jan Vermeer of Delft (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1913).
Ladies’ Home Journal…Wheelock and Glass, “Appreciation,” p. 169.
The debate centered on…“The Milkmaid,” in Wheelock, ed., Johannes Vermeer, p. 112.
J. P. Morgan owned three…Strouse, p. 611.
All six of the Vermeers…Wheelock and Glass, “Appreciation,” p. 168.
“Railroads,” Frick declared…Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1934), p. 344.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: A GHOST’S FINGERPRINTS
We have seventy-odd Rembrandt…Albert Blankert puts the Rembrandt tally at roughly forty painted self-portraits and thirty etched self-portraits. Personal communication, June 4, 2006.
“Rembrandt, the painter of mystery”…Wheelock and Glass, “Appreciation,” p. 171.
Historians can name fifty…Bailey, Responses to Rembrandt, p. 41.
“Not only are the paintings”…Blankert, Vermeer of Delft, p. 17.
“full of warmth”…Schneider, p. 79.
“almost inhuman coolness”…Updike, p. 26.
That house still stands…Philip Steadman, Vermeer’s Camera, pp. 59–62.
The buildings that Vermeer…Author interview with Frederik Kreuger, Aug. 23, 2005. Kreuger, a resident of Delft, graciously conducted me on a tour of the city he knows so well, with special attention paid to locations relevant to Vermeer and Van Meegeren. A tireless investigator of all things related to Van Meegeren, Kreuger taught engineering at Van Meegeren’s old school, the Delft Institute of Technology. He is the author of a biography called Han van Meegeren: Meestervervalser, which is notable for thoroughness and more than a hundred reproductions of Van Meegeren’s paintings, and an account of Van Meegeren’s arrest called De Arrestatie van een Meestervervalser. Kreuger also wrote a novel based on the case, available in English, called The Deception.
Even Vermeer’s mortal remains…Kreuger, Aug. 23, 2005.
Ordinarily they moved often…I owe this information on Van Meegeren’s student days, and in particular the speculation about a liberal landlady, to Kreuger.
“generally ignored or completely forgotten”…J. H. Huizinga, Dutch Civilization in the Seventeenth Century and Other Essays, p. 44.
At age twenty-one…The source of these sentences on “master painters” is Bailey, Vermeer, pp. 56 and 89.
Certainly no one spoke…Arthur Wheelock, Vermeer: The Complete Works, p. 6.
But his work commanded…Blankert, Vermeer of Delft, p. 60.
At an Amsterdam auction…Bailey, Vermeer, p. 212.
Two hundred guilders was…Ibid., p. 99.
One Dutch scholar has made…Bailey, Responses to Rembrandt, p. 67, citing the work of A. D. van der Woude.
that second job may have brought in…Bailey, Vermeer, p. 99.
“decay and Decadence”…Ibid., p. 204.
“The greatest mystery”…Paul Johnson, Art: A New History, p. 379.
Vermeer’s paintings “passed”…Updike, p. 24.
In July 2004…See Carol Vogel, “Long Suspect, A Vermeer Is Vindicated by $30-Million Sale,” New York Times, July 8, 2004; Martin Bailey, “Rediscovery: A 36th Vermeer?” www.theartnewspaper.com, March 2001; Martin Bailey, “Oh Yes It Is! Oh No It’s Not!” www.theartnewspaper.com, July/August 2001.
“An eighteenth-century owner”…Koningsberger, p. 169.
“Historical accuracy was not”…Blankert, Vermeer of Delft, p. 62.
Worse still, a long list…Bailey, Vermeer, pp. 215–16.
The word Bürger…Blankert, p. 68.
The long-neglected Vermeer…Bailey, Vermeer, p. 220.
In 1816, the authors…Blankert, Vermeer of Delft, pp. 64–65.
In Amsterdam he found…Bailey, Vermeer, p. 215.
In Dresden he discovered…Blankert, Vermeer of Delft, p. 156.
In Brunswick he turned up…Ibid., p.