Word: meegeren
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...much money for an honest Dutchman to have made during the German occupation. But when Artist Hans van Meegeren was accused of collaborating and was asked to explain his quick fortune of $3,024,000, he had an answer ready. Said Van Meegeren: he had made his pile not by collaborating but by forging seven Vermeers and two Pieter de Hooches; one phony Vermeer he had patriotically palmed off on Göring (TIME, Sept. 10, 1945). To prove it, he painted still another "Vermeer," Jesus in the Temple (see cut), in his cell. It looked unlike Vermeer...
...experts, some of whom had solemnly verified the forged Vermeers, were now at work with their biggest X-ray machines and subtlest chemicals to prove Van Meegeren a fraud when his case comes up next month (although The Netherlands Government's information service has already said that "there can be no doubt that this mad genius did paint the seven pictures attributed to Vermeer...
Last week, while awaiting trial in an Amsterdam jail (for collaboration with the Nazis), van Meegeren was under close watch by the art experts themselves, whose own prestige was involved. To their amusement, then to their stupefaction, he was painting another "Vermeer...
...final proof, said the Dutch, the faked Vermeer Christ and the Disciples in Boyman's Museum at Rotterdam shows Christ seated in a chair which was copied from a chair in van Meegeren's studio...
...Meegeren had been suspected of faking as far back as 1937 (a "Frans Hals," sold to a U.S. buyer, proved to have been fastened to its stretcher with modern thumbtacks). He really hit his stride when the Nazis came in; he sent the Führer a portfolio of reproductions of his work, obsequiously dedicated, and slyly passed off a phony on Goring. From the profits of his "discovered Vermeers" he moved into an Amsterdam mansion...