The Forger's Spell - Edward Dolnick [156]
believed to the end that Emmaus…Albert Blankert personal communication, Feb. 15, 2007.
Jean Decoen, a Belgian art critic…Jean Decoen, Back to the Truth: Two Genuine Vermeers, p. 7.
“The whole picture reveals”…Ibid., p. 42.
“Listen, Monsieur Van Meegeren”…Ibid., p. 11.
EPILOGUE
“Yesterday this picture was worth millions”…Or so he supposedly said. I have not found Van Meegeren’s remark in any contemporary account of the trial, though perhaps he made his observation to a reporter or during a break rather than in a formal setting. The question, which is a good one, is often cited in discussions of forgery. See, for instance, Peter Landesman, “A Twentieth-Century Master Scam,” New York Times Magazine, July 18, 1999. Robertson Davies may offer a clue. In his essay “Painting, Fiction, and Faking” (included in the book The Merry Heart), Davies writes that Van Meegeren “asked a question which nobody attempted to answer; later, a play was written about him in which his question took this form.” Davies then gives the quote in its customary form. See The Merry Heart, p. 87.
were in fact merely snobs…Arthur Koestler put the snobbism case forcefully in “The Anatomy of Snobbery,” Anchor Review 1 (1955).
a brilliant collection of essays…The essay collection is Dutton, ed., The Forger’s Art: Forgery and the Philosophy of Art.
“He is great for that reason”…Italics in original. Alfred Lessing, “What Is Wrong with a Forger?” pp. 73–74, included in Dutton.
Dutton asks us to imagine…Years after Dutton’s thought experiment, the real-life case of the pianist Joyce Hatto turned on precisely such manipulations in the engineering studio.
the sort of disaster that engineers call…See Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
At a dozen places, Van Meegeren’s scheme…In a passage on normal accidents and airplane crashes, the writer and pi lot William Langewiesche remarks, “As Charles Perrow mentioned to me, Murphy’s Law is wrong—what can go wrong usually goes right. But then one day, a few of the bad little choices combine, and circumstances take an airplane down.” See Langewiesche, Inside the Sky (New York: Vintage, 1998), p. 196.
In September 2003, a museum in Bolton…“Museum Secures Rare Egyptian Sculpture,” BBC News, Sept. 30, 2003, and Martin Bailey, “How the Entire British Art World Was Duped by a Fake Egyptian Statue,” The Art Newspaper, May 2006.
by a self-taught English forger…“Fake It Till You Make It,” Newsweek, Dec. 24, 2007.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alsop, Joseph. “The Faker’s Art.” New York Review of Books, Oct. 23, 1986.
Anderson, David. “Old Masters to Order: Forgery as a Fine Art.” New York Times Magazine, Dec. 23, 1945.
Arnau, Frank. The Art of the Faker. Boston: Little, Brown, 1959.
Bailey, Anthony. Responses to Rembrandt. New York: Timken, 1994.
———. Vermeer: A View of Delft. New York: Henry Holt, 2001.
Ball, Philip. Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.
Barnouw-de Ranitz, Louise. “Abraham Bredius, a Biography” (online at http://www.museumbredius.nl/biography.htm).
Behrman, S. N. Duveen. New York: Random House, 1951.
Blankert, Albert. “The Case of Han van Meegeren’s Fake Vermeer Supper at Emmaus Reconsidered.” In In His Milieu: Essays on Netherlandish Art in Memory of John Michael Montias, ed. A. Golahny et al., Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006.
———. Rembrandt: A Genius and His Impact. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, 1997.
———. Selected Writings on Dutch Painting. Zwolle, Holland: Waanders, 2004.
———. Vermeer of Delft. New York: Dutton, 1978.
Blom, Philipp. To Have and to Hold: An Intimate History of Collectors and Collecting. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 2003.
Boswell, Helen. “Berlin Newsletter.” Art Digest, Jan. 1, 1948, and Feb. 15, 1948.
Bredius, Abraham. “A New Vermeer.” The Burlington Magazine 71, Nov. 1937, pp. 210–11.
———. “Een Prachtige Pieter de Hoogh.” Oud Holland 56 (1939): 126–27.
———. “Ein Pseudo-Vermeer in der Berliner