John Godley Kilbracken (1920–2006)

For years now it has surprised me that the work by Dutch forger Han van Meegeren is still discussed and talked about is if it represents high quality paintings by Vermeer. Sure, one of the paintings was sold to Herman Goering, but I think that says more about the buyer than the seller. Besides this book I saw another brief documentary come by on ArtBabble in which the Dutch museum Boijmans Van Beuningen proudly displayed their poor quality paintings by Van Meegeren. They show both real Vermeers and forged ones. In this book the author goes into the history of Van Meegeren's exploits and shows some more of his Vermeer's forgeries. Each forgery clearly looks like the specific style of Van Meegeren, not Vermeer.

It is very difficult to believe that anyone would be fooled by these fake Vermeers. There is nothing in the paintings that reminds us of the colour choice, lighting design, composition and anything else we associate with Vermeer. Even anyone who is shown a number of real Vermeers and then shown this one will say: are you sure this one was painted by the same person?

If you look at Van Meegeren's earlier drawings and paintings you can see a clear unique style that is also evident in this work, something the author of this book shows but not links to the quality of the later forged paintings. The most striking feature of Van Meegeren is his inability to paint or draw faces. Anyone he painted looks and feels the same. There are no facial lines, no definition or tone and nothing that makes his faces even stand out amongst each other.

Surprisingly the author of this book has the clear opinion that the forgeries were of high quality when he mentions: "Van Meegeren displayed extraordinary skill on the technical side, even for him, in The Drinkers. The paint structure was more complex than in any other of his forgeries: there were six separate paint layers." From this we can learn that the forgeries were mostly judged on a chemical level and not an aesthetic or paint technical one, something anyone should be able to do without difficulty.

As a historical work describing the life of Van Meegeren this work is excellent. As a demonstration of the quality of the forgeries it is slim at best with mostly chemical details and not paint technical details.… (meer)