The Forger's Spell - Edward Dolnick [84]
In June 1937, after he lost a bid for reelection, Boon traveled to the French Riviera to vacation in the sun. There, by chance, the earnest ex-politician bumped into the artist he remembered so well. Van Meegeren promptly spun a story custom-made to seduce his old friend. He had a favor to ask, Van Meegeren explained, and it would be a favor not merely to him but, what was more important, to a Dutch family living in Italy and suffering at the hands of the Fascists. “They were confirmed anti-Fascists and were being spied on by the black-shirts and their agents,” as Boon later recalled the story. “The family was in danger and they desperately wanted to emigrate to America.”
Collection Gemeentearchief, The Hague
G. A. Boon
The family needed to raise money in a hurry, which was where Van Meegeren came in. They owned an art collection that had been assembled two or three generations before. As he sensed Boon yielding, Van Meegeren added a few details to enhance the story’s credibility. The collection numbered 162 paintings and included works by Holbein, El Greco, Rembrandt, and Hals. Half the art belonged to a woman with the unusual name of Mavroeke, and half to her daughter. Mavroeke had fallen in love with Van Meegeren. She had asked him to sell one particularly striking painting on her behalf, but she could not let the Italian authorities know what she was planning. If she could smuggle the painting into France, Mavroeke had asked Van Meegeren, would there be any chance he could find a buyer?
But he was a better artist than a salesman, Van Meegeren told Boon sadly. Perhaps his friend could lend a hand? Obviously, so delicate a transaction would call for discretion. But, after all, Boon was a tactful man. And though it seemed crass to mention it, of course there was a commission involved. A generous commission, in fact, since we were, after all, talking about a masterpiece. Van Meegeren suggested that the painting might fetch several million.* Even a small percentage of so great a sum would go a long way. If Boon could see his way clear to helping out, Van Meegeren went on, he would happily share his cut with him.
Boon offered, at once, to do his best. Van Meegeren suggested that a prudent first step might be to seek out the opinion of an eminent authority on art. Did Boon happen to know the name Abraham Bredius?
BOON IMMEDIATELY CONTACTED Bredius at Villa Evelyne, his home in Monaco. At the end of June 1937, Boon knocked at Bredius’s door. He had Christ at Emmaus with him. While a servant struggled to free Emmaus from its packing crate, Bredius warned Boon not to hope for too much. Few “discoveries” panned out. Only the day before someone in Austria had sent him a photograph of what they thought was a Van Dyck. Bredius had written back right away. Stay home. Save yourself the trip. The photograph is enough to tell me not to bother with the painting.
Boon slumped a bit. Bredius turned to look at Emmaus.
From his first glance, Bredius said later, he knew he was in the presence of a “delicious Vermeer.” In his long career—by the time he set eyes on Emmaus he was eighty-two years old—nothing else compared with this “wonderful moment.” Bredius found himself nearly dizzy with excitement, “in an almost overwrought state of mind, in ecstasy.”
Or so he later declared, repeatedly. But something deeply fishy was going on.
For only days after Boon’s visit to Monaco, Bredius’s “secretary” and longtime partner Joseph Kronig sent a most curious letter to a notary—in Holland, a prestigious post roughly comparable to a hybrid of a lawyer and a judge—in The Hague. “As requested by Dr. A. Bredius of Monaco,” the letter began, “I write to ask you to try and obtain information about the reliability