The Forger's Spell - Edward Dolnick [21]
Prices spiraled upward. The Nazis, their pockets stuffed with other people’s money, had few qualms about high prices, and the Dutch took what they could get. Established German dealers raced to Holland to get in on the action; new dealers rose up overnight; newspapers ran ad after ad offering paintings. As more and more art sold, the spiral fed on itself—a buyer could rationalize paying a high price today on the grounds that his purchase would be only more valuable tomorrow.
For nearly everyone in Holland, the war years were the worst of times. For most people, sidestepping disaster was as much as one could hope for. But a few especially fleetfooted Dutchmen managed to turn the chaos and misery all around them into the opportunity of a lifetime. Han van Meegeren was one of these nimble creatures, able to move more quickly than others in part because he did not carry the burden of a conscience.
Van Meegeren did not need a nation overrun with “art lovers” in military uniforms in order to thrive. He had flourished even in the Depression. But think of the opportunities that war time provided him. First, the frenzy to buy art meant that paintings turned up out of nowhere, every day, and sold with no questions asked. Second, the Nazis had endless reserves of cash. Third, Hitler and Goering were rubes who fancied themselves connoisseurs. (In Goering’s case, at least, his chief art expert was no great shakes, either.) Fourth, the Nazis were not the only ones in the market. Faced with the hideous prospect of Dutch masterpieces falling into German hands, Holland’s art establishment and its great industrialists flung money at the sellers.
Best of all, from a schemer’s point of view, all the wheeling-and-dealing went on at hyperspeed, with no time for reflection or second thoughts. With ordinary paintings, this urgency posed no great danger—faced with a middling work, one could make only a middling mistake. But make the purchase of a lifetime in haste and you might well make the mistake of a lifetime. And then, beyond all the other hazards, the occupation years carried one last, special danger for art buyers. No buyer could make a side-by-side comparison of a newfound painting and an established work, because the best pieces from Dutch museums had been hidden away for safekeeping, out of reach.
For a con man in the art line, times like these would never come again.
11
VAN MEEGEREN’S TEARS
Han van Meegeren’s artistic career, which began with prizes and one-man shows, quickly lost its early promise. But the disdain of the critics had nothing to do with commercial success, and in The Hague in the 1920s, Van Meegeren became the portrait painter for Holland’s swells. As home to both the government and the royal court, The Hague abounded in judges and politicians and elegant spouses who wanted to commemorate themselves in oils, and Van Meegeren prospered.
His personal life was hectic, too. He fell in love with an actress named Jo de Boer. Jo was married to an art critic, one of those who, early on, had been impressed by Van Meegeren. The critic had come round for an interview, accompanied by his wife. In short order Van Meegeren had a new portrait subject and a new mistress. Van Meegeren’s marriage fell apart and so did Jo’s, and in 1928 Han and Jo married.
In the meantime, Van Meegeren had kept in touch with his artistic colleagues. He liked to party, but he favored quiet pleasures, too, and he had lolled away many a pleasant day playing chess and chatting about art and artists with a handful of close friends. Two painters made especially frequent visits to Van Meegeren’s home. The older of the two, a Dutch artist named Theo van Wijngaarden, was also a restorer and, more important, a forger who liked to talk shop.* The younger man, Henricus Rol, also Dutch, soaked