The Forger's Spell - Edward Dolnick [65]
Wim Pijbes is the art historian who put together the Van Meegeren exhibition in Rotterdam that stirred up all the fuss about posters and dung beetles. Pijbes, now the director of the Kunsthal, is a tall, slim man with blond hair combed straight back off his forehead. But the elegant mask cracks, and Pijbes almost cackles with delight, when he puts himself in the shoes of a forger trying to decide whether Rembrandt or Vermeer would be a better choice.
If it’s a big name you want, Rembrandt is hard to beat. “But with Rembrandt, everything is too complicated,” Pijbes says. “We know too much. We know who his pupils were, we know many, many, many of his drawings, we know his early work and his late work and everything in between. We know where he lived, we know all the house hold arrangements, we have letters, we can compare the paintings with one another. But Vermeer is special, almost unique in the art world, because his oeuvre is so small and so admired and yet so unknown in a way, because there are thirty-five icons in the world, and that’s it.”
But how to con experts who had spent their lives in the company of the real thing? They were a small, gossipy bunch; they all knew Vermeer; and most of them knew one another. It would be like trying to crash a family reunion.
29
LADY AND GENTLEMAN AT THE HARPSICHORD
In 1932, Bredius, now seventy-seven years old, grabbed the spotlight again. In an article in one of the leading art journals, The Burlington Magazine, he announced the discovery of a new Vermeer. This one was not merely important, like Allegory of Faith, but “one of the finest gems” Vermeer ever created. “An Unpublished Vermeer,” the headline shouted, and the article continued in the same excited tone.
Though Bredius could not have known it, his most fascinated reader had newly taken up residence only twenty-odd miles from Bredius’s home in Monaco. Van Meegeren and his wife, Jo, had truly found Roquebrune by accident, when their car broke down there on their summer holiday in 1932. Like many other visitors to the French Riviera, they felt the pull of sunshine and the Mediterranean, especially in contrast with the dark and gloom of Holland. They succumbed to that pull partly because it came at the same time as a push out of Holland, or so Van Meegeren felt.
The Hague had an active artistic community, and the city’s artists had banded together in a group called the Art Circle. In April 1932, Van Meegeren declared his intention to run for a position as an officer of the group. Thirty young members responded by threatening to resign, out of fear that “Van Meegeren will not be objective enough to give due recognition to all opinions.”
Deeply offended, Van Meegeren not only withdrew his candidacy but quit the Art Circle entirely. The board accepted his resignation at once, without making any effort to change his mind. Their pro forma note praising his service served only to damn him as over the hill. “We regret exceedingly to learn that you have resigned from the Circle,” the note read. “This will be a loss since you represented a spirit in the artist’s world that is dying out.”
Forty-three years old, scorned by the critics, declared irrelevant by his peers, Van Meegeren rounded up Jo and headed off in search of a warmer welcome.
ABRAHAM BREDIUS WAS a man who could strut standing still, and he took a few moments at the start of his Vermeer article to preen. He began by reminding his readers of just how many people had looked for Vermeers and how few had succeeded. “No more intense detective work has been carried on in the field of art,” he declared, but “as all the world knows, only some forty genuine paintings by this great little master are known to us today.”
Then, in his role as master of ceremonies, Bredius paused to point out the