Han van Meegeren: A Forgery Trial, Not Treason, per Godley

What did van Meegeren say in 1945?

In the spring of 1945, Allied investigators found Christ and the Adulteress, a painting signed as a Vermeer, in Göring’s collection. A written record of its sale led Dutch investigators along a chain of dealers to van Meegeren (Exhibit F, pp. 25, 200). At the end of May 1945 the political police called at his house in Amsterdam.

He first said he had bought the picture from an Italian family whose name he would not give. Godley writes that this made the authorities suspect him of acting as a go-between for Nazi sympathizers, and he was held (Exhibit F, pp. 26, 201). The question, as Godley puts it, was whether he was a traitor; nobody yet doubted the painting. After repeated questioning, he said he had painted it himself, and the others too (Exhibit F, p. 27).

That confession is testimony, not proof. He gave it under arrest, and it served him: a man who sold the Germans his own fake had not sold them a Dutch treasure. Godley reports that the collaboration charges were later dropped (Exhibit F, pp. 28, 207).

A press caption written that October survives on the back of an Anefo photograph now in the Rijksmuseum. In Dutch it opens, “Enige maanden geleden deed de kunstschilder Hans van Meegeren de opzienbarende bekentenis,” which means “Some months ago the painter Hans van Meegeren made the sensational confession” (translated by Hoax and Hindsight). It goes on to say that he had painted the Emmaus picture, not Vermeer, and that he offered to paint a new picture in Vermeer’s style before witnesses (Exhibit A).

Hands at a palette in van Meegeren’s Amsterdam studio, October 1945, photographed by Koos Raucamp for the Anefo agency. The face and the canvas are out of frame (Exhibit B).

Godley dates that demonstration from August to October 1945. Six witnesses watched and police guarded him while he painted a biblical scene, Young Christ Teaching in the Temple (Exhibit F, pp. 27, 207). By Godley’s account it was meant to show only that his claim was possible. The authorities then set up an international commission to examine the paintings (Exhibit F, pp. 27, 208).

Which paintings did he say were his?

By his own account, he had painted all eight pictures that were sold. Godley lists them: six “Vermeers” and two “de Hoochs” (Exhibit F, p. 2). The first and most admired was Christ at Emmaus. It was certified as a Vermeer by Dr. Bredius, a well-known authority, and bought for the Boymans Museum in Rotterdam at the end of 1937 (Exhibit F, p. 18).

The eight paintings van Meegeren sold, and the 1945 demonstration piece, by final buyer as Godley names them. Box shapes and labels only; no painting is shown. Drawn from the table published with this page (Exhibit F).

Seven of the eight paintings ended with holders in the Netherlands: a museum, collectors in Rotterdam, an Amsterdam dealer, and the Dutch state, which bought The Washing of Christ’s Feet after a government committee declared it a Vermeer (Exhibit F, pp. 176–177). The dealer had sold Head of Christ to a Rotterdam collector, who handed it back when he bought The Last Supper (Exhibit F, pp. 174–175). Only one went to Göring.

Godley does not give a firm date for that last painting: on one page he has it begun at the end of 1942, on another at the end of 1943 (Exhibit F, pp. 170, 192). His years for two earlier sales also differ: one page puts Head of Christ and The Last Supper in 1940, another dates the sale of Head of Christ to 1941 and has The Last Supper follow within a few months (Exhibit F, pp. 168, 174–175). He also lists pictures that never reached the market. A “Hals,” a “Terborch” and two more “Vermeers” were found in van Meegeren’s house in Nice after the confession (Exhibit F, p. 21).

The paintings, one row per painting, with final buyer and source (CSV) (where the data comes from) Data: John Godley, Master Art Forger (1951)

What did the commission’s tests show?

The Belgian scientist P. B. Coremans led the international commission. By Godley’s account its report was complete by the spring of 1947 (Exhibit F, p. 208). Coremans published his findings in 1949 as Van Meegeren’s Faked Vermeers and De Hooghs (Exhibit G). That book has not been read here, so the test results below come from Godley’s account of the trial, which is a second-hand report.

According to Godley, Coremans showed the court X-rays that revealed older pictures under several of the forgeries. He also showed sections cut from the paint, with old paint from the earlier pictures lying between the canvas and van Meegeren’s layer (Exhibit F, pp. 227–228). A second commission member, A. W. de Wild, said the forger had taken a paint recipe from de Wild’s own treatise on Vermeer’s methods (Exhibit F, p. 229). A 2019 study of radiocarbon dating in paintings, citing Coremans, also says he scraped old paintings to reuse their canvases (Exhibit H).

Outside experts were asked too. Godley writes that two British specialists, from the British Museum’s research laboratory and the National Gallery, spent a month with the pictures in early 1947 and sent in their own reports (Exhibit F, p. 208).

A box of fifteen glass tubes of pigments and binders, kept as evidence against van Meegeren. Its tag belongs to police report No. 1a/45 of the national detective force, and the date 23-6-47 is written on the lid. Rijksmuseum, NG-2010-135 (Exhibit C).

Godley also says that van Meegeren hardened his paint with phenol and formaldehyde, the chemicals used to make Bakelite (Exhibit F, pp. 13, 128). Chemists found no phenol in routine tests, Godley writes, but found traces of it in Christ at Emmaus and the rest once they knew to look (Exhibit F, p. 20). A plastic of that kind would set the earliest possible date for the paint, the logic of a terminus post quem, the earliest date a part allows. This page has not read a dated first year for that resin, so it computes no such date.

The same reasoning exposed the Vinland Map, another forgery judged by what is in its ink: a material that came later than the object’s claimed date.

What was he tried for in 1947?

Press photographs date the trial session to 29 October 1947 (Exhibit E). A newsreel of week 44 of 1947, as its archive describes it, shows the trial opening before the district court in Amsterdam. In the listing, the forgeries arrive by truck, are hung in the courtroom as evidence, and are guarded by police (Exhibit D). One Anefo caption names the court the Gerechtshof, the Dutch word for an appeals court; the newsreel listing and Godley both place the trial in the district court (Exhibits D, E and F).

The courtroom at van Meegeren’s trial, Amsterdam, 29 October 1947, photographed by Harry Sagers for Anefo. The paintings on the walls were hung as evidence; a screen at left was used for projected photographs (Exhibits D, E and F).

The charge was not collaboration. Godley writes that prosecutors doubted they could prove false pretences, since van Meegeren might say he never told a buyer a picture was by Vermeer. But each picture bore a forged signature of Vermeer or de Hooch, and that became the charge (Exhibit F, p. 209).

In Godley’s account of the hearing, an official reads the indictment: “He is accused of forging signatures” (Exhibit F, p. 227). Van Meegeren admitted it.

At the close of the hearing, two years in prison were asked for (Exhibit F, p. 238). A fortnight later, at a special sitting, the court found him guilty and sentenced him to one year; Godley says his poor health was one reason the sentence was light (Exhibit F, p. 239). These are Godley’s words for the court’s finding. Neither the written judgment nor any Dutch newspaper report of 1947 has been read for this page.

Godley’s account of the hearing needs care of its own. He tells it in the present tense, like a scene, and in that chapter he does not say that he was there. The newsreel listing is the archive’s description of the film, not the film itself. Neither is a court record, so this page uses them for what happened in the room and keeps the court’s finding to the charge and the sentence.

Like the Tichborne Claimant, another deception that ended in a criminal court, this case ended with a sentence. Van Meegeren never served his. He collapsed, was taken to an Amsterdam hospital, and died there on 30 December 1947 (Exhibit F, pp. 1, 240–241). The 2019 study and library catalogue entries for later books give the same years of life, 1889 to 1947 (Exhibits H, J and K).

Why were the paintings accepted?

The case for Christ at Emmaus was built to fit a gap. Godley explains that few of Vermeer’s paintings can be dated, and that one early work, Christ with Martha and Mary, has a biblical subject. Van Meegeren, he says, set out to fill a gap in the painter’s career with religious pictures that experts might believe had been lost (Exhibit F, pp. 7–8, 14). Once the picture was accepted, connoisseurs debated whether Vermeer had seen a Caravaggio of the same subject; that debate took its authenticity for granted (Exhibit F, p. 14).

Illustration

An illustration of an imagined scene in a museum gallery of the 1940s, with visitors facing empty frames. Not a picture of any museum or painting; no work by Vermeer or van Meegeren is shown.

In Godley’s reading, then, Christ at Emmaus is what this site calls the wish-shaped fake: a forgery accepted partly because it fit what its audience expected. That reading is Godley’s, and it is not the whole story. He describes the wartime pictures as made with less and less care, and explains their sale by other causes: secret deals, buyers who feared a masterpiece would go to Germany, and the same few dealers handling several pictures (Exhibit F, pp. 170, 175, 193–194).

Testing played a part as well. In Godley’s account of the trial, de Wild was asked why the early examinations had passed the pictures. He answered that one dealer had twice refused to let the paintings in his keeping be X-rayed (Exhibit F, p. 229). That is a witness’s explanation, given in court by a member of the commission, and Godley notes that it left the other sales unexplained.

Godley also had a point of view. He wrote at the request of van Meegeren’s family, and he names the painter’s son and daughter as his main sources (Exhibit F, author’s note). His book calls the collaboration charges false and puts the critics’ errors at the centre of the story (Exhibit F, pp. 31, 194–195). A later book by Jonathan Lopez (2008) is subtitled Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren; it was read here only as a catalogue entry, and its arguments are not reported (Exhibit J).