I Was Vermeer

July 10, 2006
In this intriguing if dry biography, Wynne recounts how Dutch forger Han van Meegeren successfully passed off more than a dozen bogus works—including, most famously, The Supper at Emmaus
in 1937—as authentic Vermeers, Halses and de Hooches. Van Meegeren, who favored the style of the old Dutch masters just as modernism was hitting its stride, decided to embarrass his forward-looking critics by creating and selling his own "Vermeer." He continued his charade until he was forced to admit his crimes in 1947 while defending himself against a separate charge of treason. Wynne takes great care in explaining just how the increasingly paranoid and drug-addicted van Meegeren managed to fool the international art community, including a technical breakdown of how van Meegeren employed plastic to create the antique look of cracked craquelure
in his canvases. Wynne also ruminates on how the arrogance of the art world—of critics like Abraham Bredius who were so confident in their ability to spot fakes that they brushed aside X-rays and other modern tests, as well as collectors desperate for authenticity—fuels the market for forgeries.

October 1, 2006
Some real-life stories are more fantastic than anything Hollywood can invent. That a mid-20th-century artist could create forgeries that fooled the entire art world is the extraordinary story of Dutch art forger Hans van Meegeren (18891947). Recognizing that very few Johannes Vermeer paintings were known in his time and that there were no known early Vermeers, Meergeren realized he could create works that could not be compared to any authenticated Vermeer. Those fakes fooled everyoneart scholars, museum curators, and Nazi Reich Marshal Hermann Göring included. Meegeren's deception was only discovered when he confessed it in court to save himself. London-based journalist and literary translator Wynne uses his journalistic skills to present a remarkable story that is part mystery, part adventure, part biography, and part courtroom drama. His thorough research and accomplished writing style bring this unique event in art history to the general public. Highly recommended. (Illustrations not seen.)"Eugene C. Burt, Seattle"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2006
The police tracked down Han van Meegeren in 1945 after learning of his connection to a "Vermeer" stashed in the loot of Hermann Goring. Bursting with malevolent pride, van Meegeren made the astonishing admission that he, not Johannes Vermeer van Delft, was the painter--and one of the great art-world scandals was off and running. Wynne's account of van Meegeren's fraud, the first book-length account in English in four decades, contains insights into the mind of a forger as well as narrative verve about van Meegeren's methods of foisting his deceptions upon the Dutch art-history elite. Born in 1889, the youthful van Meegeren began a painting career and received accolades, but his Old Masters style was considered passe. Expert in seventeenth-century technique, Van Meegeren cunningly plotted vengeance by exploiting critics' belief that Christ-themed Vermeers awaited discovery; " mirabile dictu," the theorized "Vermeers" turned up in the 1930s and 1940s. An astutely rendered and delicious tale of an infamous forger.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)