Truth & Consequences

To Dutch Painter Hans van Meegeren, the fire felt better than the frying pan.

He was accused of being a collaborationist because he had sold Hermann Goering a priceless Vermeer. Van Meegeren pleaded guilty to forging the picture: instead of trafficking with the enemy, he had tricked him. And Goering, had been only one of his victims : Van Meegeren confessed that six "Vermeers" and several "Pieter de Hoochs" lining the Palace of Justice walls were really the work of his hand. Last week Forger Van Meegeren was sentenced to a year in jail.

Five world-famous authorities had originally certified the genuineness of Van Meegeren's "Vermeers" (TIME, Sept. 10, 1945). They didn't testify. Instead there were laboratory analysts with chemical and X-ray tests to prove that the paintings were fakes. As each expert finished, Van Meegeren would bob up to agree with everything he had said.

Van Meegeren was less pleased when D. A. Hoogendijk, a trusted Amsterdam dealer, who had sold two of the forgeries, testified sadly: "Now that I look around this courtroom and see all these paintings together, I don't understand how I could ever have believed them to be Vermeers.

It must have been the strains of the war that weakened my judgment." Sternly, the judge asked Van Meegeren why he had "done this thing." Replied the 58-year-old painter: "Because no one noticed my work." Van Meegeren wanted to know what was to become of his paintings. Informed that they would be returned to the suckers who had bought them (including the Dutch Government), he breathed a sigh of relief. The court might have ordered the paintings destroyed, and thus robbed Van Meegeren of his niche in art history.

Van Meegeren was actually tickled to get only one year in jail. "Two years," he told a reporter, "is the maximum punishment for such a thing. I know because I looked it up in our laws twelve years ago, before I started all this. But sir, I'm sure about one thing: if I die in jail they will just forget all about it. My paintings will become original Vermeers once more. I produced them not for money but for art's sake." The money was nothing to sneeze at, either. Though he declared himself bankrupt two years ago, Van Meegeren had made $2,800,000 with his crooked brush.

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