Salt mines and castles: The discovery and restitution of looted European art

by Thomas Carr Howe

Lamont’s reference to the Boymans’ “Vermeer” called to mind the great furor in the art world nearly a decade ago when that picture had turned up in the art market.

Dr. Bredius, the famous connoisseur of Dutch painting, discovered the picture in Paris in 1936. He was convinced that it was a hitherto unknown work by Vermeer, the rarest of all Dutch masters. The subject matter was of special interest to Dr. Bredius, for the only other Vermeer which dealt with a religious theme was the one in the National Gallery at Edinburgh.

The past history of the picture was as reassuring as that of many another accepted “old master.” Dr. Bredius learned that it had belonged to a Dutch family. One of the daughters had married a Frenchman in the middle eighties. The picture had been a wedding present and she had taken it with her to Paris. But their house had been too small for such a large painting—it was four feet high and nearly square—so the canvas had been relegated to the attic. According to the story, they hadn’t known that it was particularly valuable or they might have sold it. In any case, the picture remained in the attic until the couple died. It had come to light again when the house was being dismantled.

Through Dr. Bredius, the Boymans Museum had become interested in the picture. Other experts were called in. A few questioned it, but the majority accepted it as a Vermeer. In 1937, the directors of the Boymans Museum purchased the Christ at Emmaus for the staggering price of three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.

Unknown to the outside world, several more Vermeers were “discovered” during the war years. All were of religious subjects. One was bought at a fantastic price by Van Beuningen, the great private collector of Rotterdam; another by the Nazi-controlled Dutch Government for an exorbitant sum; and a third by Hermann Göring. Though the Reichsmarschall did not pay cash for his Vermeer, the price was high; he traded one hundred and thirty-seven pictures from his collection. According to Hofer, his adviser and agent, the paintings he gave in exchange were all of high quality.

The final chapter in the story of these newly found Vermeers is one of the most interesting in the annals of the art world. At the close of the war, Dr. van Gelder, the director of the Mauritshuis—the museum at The Hague—and other Dutch art authorities began an official investigation. It was curious that so many lost Vermeers had come to light in such a short space of time. It was recalled that in 1942 an artist named Van Meegeren had delivered a million guilders to a Dutch bank for credit to his account. The money was in thousand-guilder notes, which the Germans had ordered withdrawn from circulation at that time. The artist was not known to be a man of means and his mediocre talents as a painter could not have enabled him to amass such a fortune.

Van Meegeren was questioned and finally admitted that he had painted the Christ at Emmaus and the other lately discovered “Vermeers.” Even after he had made a full confession, there were certain Dutch critics who doubted the truth of his statements. This nettled Van Meegeren, and he promptly offered to demonstrate his prowess. His choice of a subject might have been symbolic: Jesus Confounding the Doctors. It took him two months to finish the picture. The work was done in the presence of several witnesses. He painted entirely from memory, using no models.

In the course of the demonstration, he explained the ingenious methods he had used to defraud the experts. In the first place his compositions were original but painted in the style of Vermeer. In the second, he used old canvas and only the pigments known to the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century. It had not been difficult to pick up at auctions old paintings of little value. It was not always necessary to remove the existing pictures. He frequently adapted portions of them to his own compositions, or, conversely, rearranged his to take advantage of part of an old picture. He was scrupulously careful to avoid modern zinc white and used only lead white which had been employed by the artists of the seventeenth century. He took equal precautions with his other colors, using ground lapis lazuli and cochineal for his blues and reds. He had obtained these, at great expense, from abroad.

At the time I was evacuating the Göring pictures, the Dutch government was completing its investigation of Van Meegeren’s activities. Subsequently, the Ministry of Education, Arts and Sciences publicly announced its findings, confirming the fact that Henrik van Meegeren was the author of the celebrated picture in the Boymans Museum and also of “other forgeries done so marvelously that the best art experts pronounced them genuine.”

Bancel La Farge and John Walker returned the following morning. Although it was Sunday, our crew of GIs had reported for work at seven-thirty and, under Steve’s supervision, continued to pack books. Some eight thousand volumes remained to be placed in cases before they could be loaded onto the trucks. While this work was in progress Lamont and I made a tour of the pictures with our guests. We looked again at the rooms we had visited the night before, singling out the paintings we thought would be of greatest interest to them, such as the best of the Dutch and Flemish masters, the Cranachs, the eighteenth century French pictures and the finest sculptures. We concluded the tour at noon. Our visitors had to get started on their way to the mine at Alt Aussee.