The Forger's Spell by Edward Dolnick
Author:Edward Dolnick
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Non-fiction
ISBN: 9780060825416
Publisher: New York : Harper, c2008.
Published: 2008-01-02T00:00:00+00:00
ON SEPTEMBER 14, 1937, Boon sent Bredius a one-sentence letter. He had arrived in Paris with the precious “lamb”—Christ at Emmaus—and had stored it in a vault at the Crédit Lyonnais bank.
This Paris trip was a remarkable gamble by Boon and Van Meegeren. They already had Bredius and Hannema clamoring for the opportunity to throw money their way. Adding Duveen to the mix might lead to a bidding war, if all went well, but why not pin down a Dutch offer first?
On October 4, at the bank, Boon unveiled Emmaus to two of Duveen’s best-regarded art experts. Edward Fowles would one day run Duveen Brothers. Armand Lowengard, Duveen’s nephew, had the reputation of having “an almost infallible eye.” The two men took one glance and gasped in astonishment. “The moment we looked at it we knew it was a forgery,” Fowles recalled later. The supposed masterpiece looked like “a poor piece of painted up linoleum.”
For the rest of his life, Fowles looked back on the Van Meegeren affair with bafflement. “The thing I never can understand,” he wrote in a letter more than a Decade later, “is how anybody who has ever seen a Vermeer can be taken in by the one that I saw. It was so dead, without any of the sparkle or life which is so prevalent in pictures by the master.”
Fowles and Lowengard immediately sent a telegram to Duveen’s New York branch, on Fifth Avenue. In case of prying eyes, they put several key words in code—Vermeer became villa, Bredius became bruin, pounds became south, picture became Peter, among others—but there was no missing their meaning. “BOTH SEEN TODAY AT BANK LARGE VILLA ABOUT FOUR FEET BY THREE,” the telegram began. “CHRISTS SUPPER AT EMMAUS SUPPOSED BELONG PRIVATE FAMILY CERTIFIED BY BRUIN WHO WRITING ARTICLE BUSBY BEGINNING NOVEMBER STOP PRICE SOUTH NINETY THOUSAND STOP PETER ROTTEN FAKE.”
Boon made no attempt to keep the news from Bredius. The stakes were enormous—£90,000 was roughly $5.5 million in today’s dollars—but Boon passed along the disastrous news as if he found it of no great interest. It was, he allowed, mildly puzzling. Could it be a bargaining ploy on Duveen’s part? Had Duveen’s men truly hated the painting, or were they scheming to knock down the price so that later they could grab it for less?
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