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 Man Who Made Vermeers:
1. Is Van Meegeren a sympathetic character? How did he explain his motivation to become a forger? Is his explanation reliable? Take a look at the book's 1918 photograph of Van Meegeren. Does it affect how you think of him?
2. In what way did Van Meegeren's forgeries capture the attitudes of the time? How did he bend history in his paintings to reflect his personal ideological beliefs? What were his beliefs?
3. Lopez writes that "slowly but surely, the imitative logic of forgery condemned Van Meegeren to a state of arrested development." What does he mean by that statement?
4. What about Van Meergeren's patron, the man who backed him—British art collector Theodore Ward? What kind of character was he, and what was his motivation?
5. Is there a sort of Robin Hood quality to Van Meergeren's forgeries, on the parts of both Ward and Van Meegeren?
6. After his arrest, when he revealed that the masterpieces he had sold to Hermann Goering were fake, Van Meegeren became a folk hero for having duped the villains of Europe. Did he deserve this new found reputation?
7. Why did Van Meegeren not reveal the true extent of his forgeries to the authorities?
8. What questions does this book reveal about the definition of "art"? Is it possible for Van Meegeren's works to stand on their own as actual works of art? If the paintings appeared to be real and fooled so many authoritative art experts, why can't Van Meegeren's work be valued on its creativity, competency, and beauty?
9. How did Van Meegeren get away with his scam for so long?
10. Follow-up to Question 9: In what way was Van Meergeren a product of his era? In other words, how does the author present the specific cultural environment that allowed the Vermeer swindles to occur?
11. What finally precipitated the discovery of the Vermeer forgeries?
12. What suprised...or intrigued you most about Lopez's book?
13. Have you read Edward Dolnick's book, The Forger's Spell, on the same subject? If so, how do these two books compare?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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