Customer Reviews

The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Jonathan Lopez has written a stunning book that sweeps the reader up into the peculiar world of Han Van Meegeren, who spent years creating supposedly "missing" masterpieces by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. Van Meegeren managed to dupe not only wealthy financiers, such as Andrew Mellon, and important political figures like Hermann Goering, but also major museums, such as the National Gallery in Washington DC. Remarkably Mellon's faux Vermeers hung in Washington until the 1960s, when their questionable and more modern provenance came to the fore. Lopez has deftly managed to write a page turner that also provides the reader with copious amounts of original research. Especially fascinating is the portrait he gives of life in Holland under the Nazi occupation. As Lopez traces out the forger's odd and extravagant life, he also provides insightful conclusions, including the connections he makes between Van Meegeren's strange wartime fake Vermeers and the forger's sinister fascist beliefs. I loved this book and recommend it highly to anyone with an interest in art or history. It's a great read.

"The Man Who Made Vermeers" tells the story of Dutch art forger Han van Meegeren in greater detail, with deeper insight, and providing a more compelling sense of historical context than any other treatment I have seen of this subject. The author, Jonathan Lopez, is an elegant prose stylist, and he manages to synthesize an extraordinary amount of original research into a tight and extremely entertaining narrative that combines elements of a real-life mystery story with a wide range of thought-provoking ideas.

At the heart of "The Man Who Made Vermeers" is the notion that forgeries are always in some way "about" the way the present looks at the past. In the case of Van Meegeren, who was an ardent fascist sympathizer, it seems that the forger incorporated, either consciously or unconsciously, the visual repertoire of Nazi culture into the fake Vermeers that he created from 1936 onwards, after his visit to the Berlin summer Olympics. (He had faked other Vermeers in a more 1920s-influenced style before that.) In particular Lopez's discussion of the effect of Nazi Volksgeist painting on these post-1936 "Vermeers" is a tour de force - completely riveting to read and extremely convincing. The way that he ties Van Meegeren's practice as a forger to larger questions of fascist ideology is also quite impressive.

In general, the author's understanding of the historical and culture trends of the era is very solid, as is his knowledge of Dutch art history and of the history of Holland in general (According to the information in the back of the book, he apparently also writes in Dutch, so maybe he is of partly Dutch background.)

As a work of narrative story telling, "The Man Who Vermeers" holds together beautifully. The straightforward structure, swift pacing, and reader-friendly, non-academic tone make for a pleasurable experience from beginning to end. Personally, I found the descriptions of life in Nazi-occupied Holland particularly gripping and really well done. This is an excellent book, highly recommended for readers with an interest in art, criminal enterprises, or World War II history. It is likely to be the definitive book on the subject for many years to come.

Not only is "The Man Who Made Vermeers" a great introduction to Han Van Meegeren and his notorious Vermeer forgeries, it serves as an excellent window into Nazi-controlled Holland during the war. It is Lopez's examination of Van Meegeren's Nazi sympathies--and his deft analysis of how Van Meegeren's faux Vermeers sprang from the same 20th-century Nazi iconography as contemporary propaganda paintings--that really sets the book apart. A devasting reappraisal of the man who "fooled" Hermann Goering and a good read for anyone interested in art, World War II, or how the two intersected.

There are a lot of fun books out there that use artworks as a sort of McGuffin for an elaborate or at least distracting plot. Books like The DaVinci Code or The Girl with the Pearl Earring, for instance, give the impression of being based on art historical research, but they take gross liberties with the historical record (or lack thereof). In a way, this ultimately devalues the artworks such books use as plot devices because readers come to see the art as mere accessories to a fantastical tale.

In The Man Who Made Vermeers, the artworks (or, rather, "artworks") remain at the center of a fascinating history. As objects of aesthetic pleasure, economic gain, or social status, the paintings at the heart of Lopez's story exert exactly the sort of power we have come to expect from art. Their status as fakes only complicates our understanding of the real value of art in society.

The Man Who Made Vermeers proves that it is possible to combine lively prose, an intriguing plot AND original research to create a wonderfully engaging yet scholarly narrative. Because the book's prose is so effortless, the painstaking archival research that the author must have undertaken is not as evident as it might be if the book were written in a more conventionally academic style.

Highly recommended!

I just finished reading this book and I really enjoyed it. It's a book that appeals to the general public -- not only those into art. I'm not especially interested in art myself, but I got so into the story and the characters that I read it in record time. Faster than I've read anything in a long time. The author clearly did a huge amount of research. But he turns it into a really easy read. I definitely recommend it for anyone looking for a really interesting true story.

I like mysteries, intrigue, politics, and history. I picked up The Man Who Made Vermeers because it was one of the best sellers in my local bookstore. One of the salespeople told me that customers who read crime fiction had been buying it, and I can really see why. The book presents an excellent understanding of Han van Meegeren, the Dutch artist who sold a fake Vermeer to Hermann Goering during World War II.

It turns out that Van Meegeren was a fascinating figure--much more interesting than I would have thought. Because Van Meegeren had fooled Hermann Goering, he became a hero in the Netherlands after the war and he presented himself as kind of a patriot. But it appears that swindling Goering was more or less an accident. Van Meegeren didn't have an axe to grind with Goering. In fact, he had been an admirer of Hitler and fascism since the movement began, and had even painted work on commission for the German occupying forces.

What you really get to see here is the criminal mind at work. While other books about Van Meegeren have taken his story at face value and presented him as a hero, Lopez convinced me that this man was no hero at all. The book offers real insight into the psychology of a fundamentally duplicitous individual who capitalized on one of the darkest moments in world history...

What's really terrific about this book is the way that it sets the story of Van Meegeren's forgeries within the personal biography of the forger and the history of the period. In fact, I'm starting to think that this is the way that art should always be looked at, because I suddenly saw these fake Vermeers in a completely new light. I've heard people ask how anyone could have been fooled by these pictures, but through really simple side-by-side comparisons, the author makes it totally clear that the paintings really looked like the pictures that people of the time saw around them. So Van Meegeren's early forgeries (which look a LOT like real Vermeers) also resemble movie posters from the 1930s, and his late forgeries (like the famous one he sold to Hermann Goering) resemble Nazi propaganda pictures.

As a side note, I also just want to say how impressed I was with the way that the author clearly did a huge amount of research, but made the book a really engrossing one to read. None of that academic stuff that you find in a lot of books about art. But at the same time, treating the subject in a very serious way. And it's a very serious topic. Van Meegeren held truly despicable fascist beliefs, and his forgeries expressed them.

I found the book totally eye-opening. I definitely recommend it!

As an art historian, I approached this book with considerable skepticism because the story of Han van Meegeren has been told so many times and, in general, so badly (at least outside the Dutch academic literature), that yet another volume on the subject seemed like it would probably be a waste of time. "The Man Who Made Vermeers," however, is a very different kind of book than its too many English-language predecessors. In its level of detailed research on Van Meegeren, this book is comparable only to Marijke van den Brandhof's out of print "Een vroege Vermeer uit 1937," which I highly recommend to readers of Dutch. As Lopez acknowledges, had Van den Brandhof lived, she might have gone on to pursue many of the lines of inquiry explored in "The Man Who Made Vermeers." In any case, instead of indulging in the usual anti-intellecual sneering that the Van Meegeren story tends to inspire in people who write for a popular audience, Lopez successfully adopts an approach that I could easily compare to Simon Schama's best work, where story-telling, history, and a profound engagement with the world of ideas make for an exciting narrative that is nonetheless well grounded in real scholarship. "The Man Who Made Vermeers" contains, for instance, a discussion of the history of Vermeer attribution and misattribution that is as good as anything in the academic literature but that is completely comprehensible to someone with no previous background in art. The only objection that I might raise to the book as a whole would be that Lopez sometimes concedes a little too much to the lay reader. In his efforts to appeal to a broad audience, he shies away from interrogations of his methodological framework. Quibbles aside, much to my surprise, this is a very strong book.

"The Man Who Made Vermeers" is an amazing piece of work. Stunning. Truly impressive. Fun to read, easy to follow, hugely informative. It covers so much ground with so much ease that it is breathtaking. I'm mostly a reader of fiction, but I bought this book because Amazon recommended it with Joseph O'Neill's "Netherland." What the two books have in common, aside from a slight Dutch connection, is that they are beautifully written works by people who really know how to tell a story. I was so engrossed by this book that I was sorry when it was over. Very well done indeed.

Jonathan Lopez presents an insightful look at the mind of Han van Meegeren, as explores his Nazi sympathies, manipulative tendencies, and general deceitfulness. Lopez seamlessly weaves the story of Nazi rule in the Netherlands, and the tale of World War II, into van Meegeren's biography. While Lopez's work is certainly scholarly, I did not find it to be "above my head" (as an individual without a strong background on Vermeer and Dutch painting in general) nor, frankly, was it "dumbed down" for uneducated readers. In short, I highly recommend this book; it is a page turner from beginning to end!