The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century
Edward Dolnick, 2008
HarperCollins
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060825423
Summary
As riveting as a World War II thriller, The Forger's Spell is the true story of Johannes Vermeer and the small-time Dutch painter who dared to impersonate him centuries later. The con man's mark was Hermann Goering, one of the most reviled leaders of Nazi Germany and a fanatic collector of art.
It was an almost perfect crime. For seven years a no-account painter named Han van Meegeren managed to pass off his paintings as those of one of the most beloved and admired artists who ever lived. But, as Edward Dolnick reveals, the reason for the forger's success was not his artistic skill. Van Meegeren was a mediocre artist. His true genius lay in psychological manipulation, and he came within inches of fooling both the Nazis and the world. Instead, he landed in an Amsterdam court on trial for his life.
ARTnews called Dolnick's previous book, the Edgar Award-winning The Rescue Artist, "the best book ever written on art crime." In The Forger's Spell, the stage is bigger, the stakes are higher, and the villains are blacker. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Marblehead, Massachusetts, USA
• Awards—Edgar Award
• Currently—lives in the Washington, DC area
Edward Dolnick is an American writer, formerly a science writer at the Boston Globe. He has been published in the Atlantic Monthly, New York Times Magazine, and Washington Post, among other publications.
His books include Madness on the Couch: Blaming the Victim in the Heyday of Psychoanalysis (1998) and Down the Great Unknown: John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon (2001).
Dolnick's book The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece (2005)—an account of the 1994 theft, and eventual recovery, of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" from Norway's National Gallery in Oslo—won the 2006 Edgar Award in the Best Crime Fact category.
The Forger's Spell (2008), describes the 1930-40s forging of Johannes Vermeer paintings by a critic-detesting Dutch artist, accepted as "masterpieces" by art experts until the artist's confession and trial in 1945.
Dolnick lives in the Washington, D.C. area, is married, and has two children. His wife, Lynn Iphigene Golden, is a member of the Ochs-Sulzberger family, publishers of the New York Times, and is on the board of The New York Times Company. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Dolnick...tells his story engagingly and with a light touch. He has a novelist's talent for characterization, and he raises fascinating questions. How, for instance, could the forgeries have fooled anyone? (Dolnick says that van Meegeren was "perhaps the only forger whose most famous works a layman would immediately identify as fake.") How do forgers set about doing their work? One chapter is titled "Forgery 101"; it contains instructions from which any prospective forger would benefit. And why does our estimation of a work of art change when we discover it is a fake? Forgery is interesting in part because it demands great, if imitative, skill, and in part because copying itself has become a significant aspect of contemporary art-making. It is an art-crime that encourages reflections on the nature of art itself. This book is an aid to such reflections.
Anthony Julius - New York Times
Gripping historical narrative.... Dolnick, a veteran science writer, knows his way around a canvas.... The Forger's Spell has raised provocative questions about the nature of art and the psychology of deception.
Washington Post Book World
Edgar-winner Dolnick (The Rescue Artist) delves into the extraordinary story of Han van Meegeren (1889—1947), who made a fortune in German-occupied Holland by forging paintings of the 17th-century Dutch painter Vermeer. The discovery of a "new" Vermeer was just what the beleaguered Dutch needed to lift their spirits, and van Meegeren's Christ at Emmaus had already been bought by the Boymans Museum in Rotterdam in 1937 for $2.6 million. Collectors, critics and the public were blind to the clumsiness of this work and five other "Vermeers" done by van Meegeren. Dolnick asks how everyone could have been fooled, and he answers with a fascinating analysis of the forger's technique and a perceptive discussion of van Meegeren's genius at manipulating people. Van Meegeren was unmasked in 1945 by one of his clients, Hermann Goering. Later accused of treason for collaboration, he saved himself from execution and even became a hero for having swindled Goering. Dolnick's compelling look at how a forger worked his magic leads to one sad conclusion: there will always be eager victims waiting to be duped. (Illustrated.)
Publishers Weekly
In 1945, just after the end of World War II in Europe, a Dutch detective looking for artwork looted by the Nazis and for Nazi collaborators questioned a high-living Dutch artist named Han van Meegeren. Had van Meegeren, the detective inquired, been involved in the sale to Hermann Goring of a priceless Vermeer painting? Upon further questioning, van Meegeren confessed that he had painted this Vermeer himself, along with other Vermeers then in the collections of several major Dutch art museums, and so began the unraveling of "the greatest art hoax of the twentieth century." While other books—including Frank Wynne's I Was Vermeer and Lord Kilbracken's Van Meegeren: Master Forger—have covered this intriguing case of forgery, greed, and detection, this account by Dolnick, author of the Edgar Award-winning The Rescue Artist, is especially strong in plot development and characterization. It also has a unique point of view: that van Meegeren was not a genius and master forger but rather his "true distinction was [that] he is perhaps the only forger whose most famous works a layman would immediately identify as fake." Recommended for public and academic library art and true-crime collections.
Marcia Welsch - Library Journal
Dolnick covers it all, from Van Meegeren’s technical brilliance to his shrewd choice of subject matter to his extraordinary manipulation of egos and perceptions. [His] zesty, incisive, and entertaining inquiry illuminates the hidden dimensions...of art and ambition, deception and war. —Donna Seaman
Booklist
Mesmerizing account of an amateur artist who made millions selling forged paintings to art-obsessed Nazis and business tycoons. Veteran science journalist Dolnick (The Rescue Artist: The True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece, 2005, etc.) brings his expertise in art theft, criminal psychology and military history to a scintillating portrait of Dutch painter Han van Meegeren (1889-1947). Humiliated by critics who dismissed his work as lackluster, Van Meegeren turned to cunningly crafting paintings that he peddled during the 1930s and '40s as the work of revered 17th-century master Johannes Vermeer. The polished, fast-paced narrative captures the surreal mood in Nazi-occupied Holland. As German forces killed more than 70 percent of the Jewish population, the highest toll in Europe, Hitler and his leading aide, Hermann Goering, pillaged museums and private homes for paintings, sculpture and jewelry. In a rivalry Dolnick likens to a perverse schoolyard competition, the men also vied for treasures from art dealers enticed by the Nazis' looted cash. Enter Van Meegeren, a disaffected artist who watched with glee as the same critics who had ridiculed his original work swooned over the technically competent but off-kilter compositions he sold for princely sums as "lost Vermeers." In compelling prose, Dolnick details the doctored canvases, phony paint and fake bills of sale Van Meegeren painstakingly created to achieve his grand deceit. In addition to Nazis and wealthy Europeans, the author notes, he also duped affluent Americans such as Andrew Mellon. After a high-profile 1947 trial during which the con artist demonstrated his techniques, the Dutch government found van Meegeren guilty of forgery and fraud. He died less than two months later, before serving his one-year prison sentence. Energetic and authoritative.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Forger's Spell:
1. What motivated Han van Meegeren to become a forger?
2. Van Meergeren mastered the scientific side of forgery through by using plastics in his paints. Would you consider him a genius?
3. Talk about the Nazis' passion for art, especially in light of the fact that the crates of confiscated masterpieces often lay unopened.
4. Why has Vermeer been so prized as an artist? What is it about his paintings, beyond their limited number, that is so alluring?
5. Dolnick says that laymen would not have been fooled by van Meergeren's fakes. How, then, was he able to fool scholars and curators, starting with Abraham Bredius? What is the psychology behind conning art dealers and collectors into accepting forgeries as genuine? What makes those who should know fall for fakery? Is "connossieurship" a hollow pretense...or does it have merit?
6. Van Meergeren became a sort of folk hero after the war when his deception was uncovered. Did he deserve that status? Does the fact that van Meergeren was able to swindle Goering, Hitler's second in command, increase your estimation of him?
7. Dolnick's book calls into question the nature of art itself, especially "great" art. If a painting is skillfuly imitative of a great artist, isn't the imitation something to be admired and valued in and of itself? If a work is good enough to fool the experts, isn't it good enough to be considered on its own merits as "art"?
8. What is the "Uncanny Valley"? How does it play out in van Meegeren's forgeries? Can you think of other instances in life where the Uncanny Valley theory applies?
9. Did you learn something new about the world of art—and the practice of forgery—by reading this book? What surprised, or intrigued, you most?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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