Jonathan Lopez reveals that three 1920s

fake Vermeers are by the notorious art forger

Han van Meegeren, who, far from being an
independent operator, was part of a slick
operation of organised art fraud.

of northern baroque painting at the National Gallery of Art in

Washington, dc, linked three 1920s-vintage Vermeer forgeries
to the workshop of a Dutch art-world intriguer named Theo
van Wijngaarden, long known as a mentor and associate of Van
Meegeren.3 New investigations, extending the line of enquiry
first proposed by Wheelock, have now added a further twist to
this revelation. Interviews with members of Van Wijngaarden’s
family, archival research in the Netherlands, Germany, Great
Britain and the us, and comparisons of the fakes with Van
Meegeren’s contemporaneous work in his own name, combine to
suggest that Van Meegeren himself was the creator of the forgeries
in question. Likewise, the evidence indicates that, during this early
phase of his career, Van Meegeren worked not as an independent
operator, as he is known to have done later, but as a forger to the

B
trade, a cog in the international machinery of organised art fraud.
Wheelock’s essay centres upon a young Englishman named
Harold R. Wright, who arrived in Berlin in June 1927 bearing a
est remembered today for having hitherto unknown Dutch genre painting called The Lace Maker
fabricated a fictitious ‘biblical’ period (Fig. 1). Wright presented this picture for the expert consideration
in the oeuvre of Johannes Vermeer, of Wilhelm von Bode, director-general of the Prussian state
the notorious art forger Han van museums, who, in due course, declared it to be a ‘genuine, perfect,
Meegeren (Fig. 2) never admitted to and very characteristic work of Jan Vermeer of Delft’.4 Yet The
creating any fakes dating from before Lace Maker was a fake, one of a group of three related Vermeer
1937, but there have always been forgeries that surfaced on the market during this period. Two of
rumours suggesting that his career them, The Lace Maker and The Smiling Girl (Fig. 9), were purchased
had, in fact, begun much earlier than at great expense by the art dealer Joseph Duveen on the basis of
that. As is fairly well known, the Bode’s mistaken attributions; they were then sold by Duveen to
government of the Netherlands arrested Van Meegeren as a Nazi the American banker Andrew Mellon.5
collaborator at the end of World War ii, charging that he had sold The third fake in this series, The Girl with a Blue Bow (Fig. 5),
a Vermeer to Hermann Goering during the German occupation. took a more circuitous path to acclaim, as it was deemed not to be
When Van Meegeren revealed that he himself had painted by the master when Wright had shown it to Bode in 1924.6 Given
Goering’s prized masterpiece, he became extremely popular with that he raised no known objections when Wright later returned to
the general public, and his case was thereafter handled with kid propose another Vermeer, Bode seems to have treated Wright’s
gloves. Van Meegeren acknowledged forging only the six unsuccessful first sortie as an ordinary case of wishful thinking.
biblically-themed Vermeers that the government already knew to With so many picture hunters during the 1920s trying to induce
be connected to him through the front men who had brought the Bode to attribute minor 17th-century paintings to Vermeer –
works to market, two ‘Pieter de Hoochs’ sold in the same manner, hoping to cash in on the lofty prices for the master’s work and the
and a few unfinished items that remained in his atelier.1 Although still relatively ill-defined limits of his oeuvre – there would have
confidential sources informed the investigative team working on
the case that Van Meegeren had sold forgeries to ‘Englishmen and 1 The Lace Maker by an imitator of Johannes Vermeer (1632-75),
Americans’ decades before the outbreak of hostilities, the matter here attributed to Han van Meegeren (1889-1947), c. 1925.
seems not to have received any official attention.2 Gelatine-based paint on canvas, 44.5 x 40 cm. © The National
The rumours, however, appear to have had a strong foundation Gallery of Art, Washington, dc 2 Han van Meegeren in 1945.
in reality. In a notable 1995 essay, Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., curator Photo: George Rodger/Time & Life Pictures. © Getty Images

van Meegeren’s
Early Vermeers
APOLLO 23
VAN MEEGEREN’s early vermeers

been little reason for him to suspect Wright of

passing fakes. Ultimately, The Girl with a Blue Bow
was reintroduced, after Bode’s death, through a
series of auction and dealer sales in London.
Authenticated by Wilhelm Valentiner, it ended up
in an American private collection.7
Drawing upon extensive laboratory evidence,
Wheelock documented that all three of these
Vermeer forgeries were made by a single hand using
the same distinctive type of paint, a gelatine-glue
preparation designed to evade some of the
rudimentary solvent tests commonly deployed in
the unmasking of fakes during the interwar period.
Intrigued to discover that a gelatine-glue Frans Hals,
called The Laughing Cavalier (Fig. 3), had originated
in the ‘art-restoration’ studio of a certain Theo van
Wijngaarden in 1923, Wheelock set out to discover
if the shadowy Van Wijngaarden might have been
connected to the even more shadowy Harold
Wright. After an impressive programme of detective
work yielded documentary proof that Wright had
indeed been a hanger-on in Van Wijngaarden’s
circle in The Hague, Wheelock quite reasonably
ascribed the three fake Vermeers, as well as the
spurious Frans Hals, to ‘the workshop of Theo van
Wijngaarden’, with the tentative assumption being
that Van Wijngaarden himself was their author.
Interviewed for this article, members of Van 3 The Laughing Cavalier Han van Meegeren, however, was very adept at
Wijngaarden’s family in the Netherlands said they by an imitator of Frans painting faces, and he was apparently employed to
were unaware that any scholarly research had been Hals (1581/5-1666), here do precisely that in Van Wijngaarden’s atelier,
conducted into the life of their colourful ancestor – attributed to Han van turning out forgeries in the style of Frans Hals and
in whom they all take a measure of light-hearted Meegeren (1889-1947), other Dutch masters, from approximately 1920
pride – but they were quickly able to confirm much c. 1922. Gelatine-based onwards. As far as Van Wijngaarden’s grand-
of Wheelock’s sleuthing.8 They said that it was quite paint on panel, diam. 36 daughter understood the arrangement, Van
true that Van Wijngaarden had been an art forger, cm. Location unknown. Meegeren furnished the raw image-making talent
as well as a legitimate restorer of old pictures, and Photo: RKD while her grandfather provided the technical
that he had been associated, for a time, with an knowledge of faking methods. Interestingly, this
Englishman named Wright. However, when shown description of the partnership between Van
photographs of The Lace Maker, The Smiling Girl, Meegeren and Van Wijngaarden accords well with
and The Girl with the Blue Bow, Van Wijngaarden’s various facts uncovered, independently, through
granddaughter, a professional portraitist herself, said archival research into the once scandalous case
The author would like to thank Dr.
that she doubted very much that her grandfather Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., curator of
of The Laughing Cavalier.
had painted these pictures northern baroque painting, and Anne This fake Frans Hals was brought to market by
Halpern, of the Department of
Although Van Wijngaarden was well known for Curatorial Records, at the National
an old school chum of Van Meegeren,9 an engineer
executing copies of paintings that passed through Gallery of Art, Washington, dc; Dr by the name of H.A. de Haas, who was also an avid
Walter Liedtke, curator of European
his shop and adding signatures to works previously painting at the Metropolitan Museum
collector of Van Meegeren’s legitimate work.10
unsigned, his limitations as a painter and draughts- of Art, New York; Dr Jon Whiteley, When questions were raised in a very public way
keeper in the Department of Western
man would have precluded the production of Art at the Ashmolean Museum,
about the painting’s authenticity, De Haas indicated
completely improvisatory forgeries such as these Oxford; Dr Erin Coe, director of the that he had ‘purchased’ The Laughing Cavalier from
Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New
fake Vermeers. A self-taught artist, he possessed a York; Dr Jörn Grabowski, director of Van Wijngaarden, who, in turn, claimed to have
natural gift for colour harmony and a wonderful the Zentralarchiv der Staatlichen acquired it from an unnamed private collection
Museen zu Berlin; Fred Meijer of the
feeling for the texture and physicality of paint, but Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische in London.11 Considering the identities and
he never truly mastered the depiction of the human Documentatie, The Hague; Marijke associations of the people involved, it is hardly
Booth of Christie’s archive, London;
figure at close quarters. Indeed, to judge from a Sjoukje Atema and Paul Kempff of the surprising that contemporary gossip alleged that
1906 self-portrait, Van Wijngaarden was not very Haags Gemeentearchief; and the The Laughing Cavalier had been painted by Van
members of the Van Wijngaarden and
clear on the location of the various bones that form Vriesendorp families who assisted in Meegeren. In time, even Hofstede de Groot, the
the structure of the human face (Fig. 4). the research for this article. expert who had unwittingly authenticated the ‘Hals’,

24 APOLLO
 VAN MEEGEREN’s early vermeers

4 SelfPortrait by being a commissioned portrait, a type of picture that

Theo van Wijngaarden Vermeer did not paint. Vermeer’s most iconic image
(1874-1952), 1906. Oil of a female model, The Girl with the Pearl Earring
on panel, 24.5 x 19.5 cm. (Fig. 6), for instance, is a tronie, or expressive head,
Willem van Wijngaarden not a portrait, and if one were to categorise
collection, Amsterdam. Vermeer’s known close-up images of faces, all of
Photo: the author them would lie somewhere in the terrain between
the tronie and the full-fledged genre scene.
The conceptual shortcomings of The Girl with
a Blue Bow were, to some extent, rectified in the
second of the fake Vermeers, The Smiling Girl. The
1 Initially, he denied that the De
features of the model in this picture – which was
Hoochs were fake. Deposition of brought to Bode in March of 1926 by an inter-
Capt. Joseph Piller, 21 July 1945.
Haarlem, Noord Hollands Archief,
mediary rather than by Harold Wright directly
arch. 466/261. – unmistakably echo those of the inebriated female
2 Interrogation of P.J. Rienstra van figure in Vermeer’s Girl with a Wineglass (Fig. 10), a
Stuyvesande, 22 June 1945. The Hague,
Algemeen Rijksarchief, arch. 2.09.09/ genre scene depicting an awkward courtship rushed
24716 ii. along by drink, thus giving the forgery not only a
3 Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., ‘The Story sense of character study, but also a built-in narrative
of Two Vermeer Forgeries’, in Shop
Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive, backstory. As it happens, The Girl with a Wineglass
Cambridge, Mass., 1995, pp. 271-75. had been familiar to Bode (Fig. 8) since his earliest
4 Bode’s certificate of expertise, 27
June 1927. Los Angeles, Getty
youth: it was the pride of his native Braunschweig,
Research Library, Duveen Brothers the very first Vermeer that he had ever seen.13 The
Records [dbr], box 300, f. 3.
heard about these rumours: he dismissed them resemblance between these two images was among
5 In 1937, Mellon included both
pictures in his founding gift for the vehemently in a newspaper interview at the time.12 the facts Bode noted in attributing the The Smiling
National Gallery of Art in Washington, Although Van Wijngaarden’s granddaughter Girl; the notion that this ‘Vermeer’ might have been
dc, where they hung until the 1950s as
genuine Vermeers. In storage, they are could not say with any certainty whether Van manufactured expressly for him to rediscover,
now items 1937.1.54 and 1937.1.55 in Meegeren had painted the three Vermeer forgeries seems, however, not to have crossed his mind.
the Special Collection, also cross-
catalogued under the donor’s name as under discussion, examination of Van Meegeren’s In consequence, when Wright returned in person
part of the Andrew Mellon Collection.. work in his own name argues strongly in favour of to Berlin with The Lace Maker, in 1927, Bode had
6 Berlin, Zentralarchiv der Statlichen his authorship. The Girl with a Blue Bow, for instance, little trouble accepting that this was a work of the
Museen [zsmb], Nachlass Bode, no.
6000. bears an uncanny resemblance to the children’s master too: not only was The Lace Maker a proper
7 That of Mrs Charlotte Hyde of portraits that he painted for Dutch patrician families genre scene answering to the description of a lost
Glens Falls, New York, whose home is
now a museum; the picture is no.
in and around The Hague during this period. The picture by Vermeer, sold at auction in 1816 and
1971.56 in the Hyde Collection. fake attempts to mimic Vermeer’s idiosyncratic way never seen again, but it was clearly painted by the
Valentiner’s certificate is in the
curatorial dossier.
with faces but actually has far more in common with same hand as the recently attributed Smiling Girl.14
8 Interviews with A. van Wijngaarden,
Van Meegeren’s 1924 oil portrait of young Cornelia Today, of course, one wonders how Bode could
N. van Wijngaarden, W. van Françoise Delhez (Fig. 7) – with her endearing have failed to notice that the putatively 17th-century
Wijngaarden, D. Coenradi and W.
Coenradi, various dates, April 2004 to saucer eyes and button nose – than it does with any young woman depicted in The Lace Maker possesses
March 2007. genuine painting by Vermeer. Likewise, although the the attitude, hairstyle and gamine physique of a
9 Handwritten notes of Marijke van handling of Van Meegeren’s portraits is pleasingly modern flapper. But fakes often reflect the styles
den Brandhof from her conversation
with De Haas, c. 1976: The Hague, rkd, free and buttery, there is an underlying sense of of the period in which they are made far more than
Archief van den Brandhof [vdb], box calculated, almost formulaic image-making that the one that they attempt to imitate, as forgers
2.
10 De Haas lent eight items to a Van
carries over virtually unchanged to the fakes. The unconsciously incorporate their own artistic
Meegeren exhibition held at the broad, oblique brushstrokes forming the headdress tendencies into the image regardless of its derivative
Kortrijk Stadsmuseum in 1961: exhib.
pamphlet rkd/vdb, box 3.
of The Smiling Girl, for example, are executed with a intentions.15 Immersed in the visual culture of the
11 Criminal complaint, rkd, Archief
mechanical deliberateness highly reminiscent of the day, Bode was unable to perceive any anachronism
Hofstede de Groot [hgd], inv. 78. treatment Van Meegeren gives to the velvet hair in The Lace Maker. On a subliminal level, he may
12 Het Vaderland (The Hague), 10 June ribbon in his portrait of Marie Vriesendorp (Fig. 11). have found something seductive about the fake’s
1926.
13 Wilhelm von Bode, Mein Leben,
Van Meegeren’s deep involvement with reinterpretation of Vermeer’s delicate aesthetic
Berlin, 1930, vol. i, p. 27. portraiture could also help to account for the overall through the lens of 1920s high-society glamour.
14 Mentioned in E. Plietzsch’s stylistic evolution of the three fake Vermeers. The Complementing the visual case for Van
certificate of expertise. dbr: box 300, f.
3.
Girl with a Blue Bow, the first of the series, makes a Meegeren’s role in the three early Vermeer forgeries,
15 Similarly, Wheelock observes, ‘What valiant attempt at imitating Vermeer’s style, with archival evidence helps to illuminate the mechanics
may have seemed a possible image of liquid, pointillé highlights and rich, ultramarine-blue of how these picture swindles actually worked. It
Vermeer’s work in 1920 appeared less
appropriate in 1940 and inconceivable shadows, but it failed to gain Bode’s approval, would appear that, after the difficulties occasioned
in the 1990s’, op. cit., p. 273. perhaps, in part, because it gives the impression of by the sale of the Frans-Hals-style Laughing Cavalier,

APOLLO 25
 5 The Girl with a Blue
Bow by an imitator of
Johannes Vermeer
(1632-75), here attributed
to Han van Meegeren
(1889-1947), c. 1923.
Gelatine-based paint on
canvas, 33 x 25 cm. The
Hyde Collection, Glens
Falls, New York. Photo:
Joseph Levy

16 1901 United Kingdom Census, rg

13/3198, folio 114/20; also, registration
cited at note 26 and birth date in
Wheelock, op. cit., p. 275.
17 See notes 23-27.
18 Annotated catalogues and daybooks
for sale, 25 February 1924, lots 89, 106,
139 and 140. London, Christie’s
Archive.
19 Fred Meijer, Dutch and Flemish
Still-life Paintings: the Ashmolean Museum
Oxford, Oxford and Zwolle, 2003, p. 15.
20 Ibid., 13.
21 Idem.
22 Letter on file, Oxford, The
Ashmolean Museum, Records of the
Ward Collection [rwc], box 1.
23 Letter, Wright to Hofstede de
Groot, 24 June 1925, rkd/hgd: inv. 70;
zsmb, nl Bode, nr.6000.

24 Letter to Duveen Brothers, Paris,

from Frau Alma Buchheister, Bremen,
dbr, box 300, f.3.

25 Cable, Paris to London, 11 April

1928, dbr, box 249, f. 14.
26 Wright’s foreign resident
registration, 20 July 1928, The Hague,
Haags Gemeentearchief, Vreemdelings-
dienst.
27 Van Nierop & Baaks Nederlandsche
Naamlooze Vennootschappen, Amsterdam,
1932, p. 479; Het Vaderland, 9 July 1938.
28 Meijer, op. cit., p. 18.
29 That Ward studied at Heidelberg:
undated letter from nephew of Ward’s
first wife, c. 2003, rwc, bx. 1. Ward was
also a student at ‘King’s College’:
Meijer, op. cit., p. 19.
30 Letter, Ward to Hofstede de Groot,
8 March 1928, rkd/hgd, inv. 73.

in 1923, Theo van Wijngaarden reached out to iron worker, was just 27 years old when he first
another figure in the art world to take over the showed up in Berlin with a fake Vermeer.16 Some-
marketing side of the forgery business, switching one else had to have been behind him, and there can
the venue of the fraud from The Hague to Berlin be very little doubt about who that person was.
and adding much needed layers of distance and Throughout the period that he sold fake pictures,
anonymity to the whole operation. Yet, while it Wright was a managerial employee in a British paint
might seem logical to assume that this mystery manufacturing firm called Titanine Ltd, a privately
figure was Wright, even the most elementary held enterprise whose president was an industrial
research into his background indicates that this was chemist and art collector named Theodore W.H.
not the case. Scarcely fitting the role of a criminal Ward.17 As far as the records of Christie’s auction
mastermind, Wright, the son of a Nottinghamshire house indicate, Wright made his first appearance on

26 APOLLO
 VAN MEEGEREN’s early vermeers

6 The Girl with the Pearl

Earring by Johannes
Vermeer (1632-75),
c. 1665-67. Oil on
canvas, 46.5 x 40 cm.
Mauritshuis, The
Hague. Photo: akg-
images

7 Cornelia Françoise
Delhez by Han van
Meegeren (1889-1947),
1924. Oil on canvas, 80
x 51 cm. Collection
Huib and Francine
Vriesendorp, New York.
Photo: the author

8 Wilhelm von Bode, Ward collection is now generally recognised as one

a photograph published of the most comprehensive of its type in the world.
in Berliner Tageblatt, Despite the generous impulse that lay behind this
5 February 1914 gift, Ward is said to have had a number of deeply
unsatisfactory character traits, perhaps the most
distressing of which was a marked tendency towards
arrogant and disputatious behaviour. In an elegantly
written biographical essay included in the catalogue
of the Ward collection, the noted Dutch art
historian Fred Meijer relates that, once, while eating
lunch at the Ritz in London, Ward chose to express
his displeasure with the quality of the soup on offer
by ostentatiously carrying his bowl across the dining
room and emptying it in the street outside.20 Meijer
also states that, on another occasion, during a trip to
New York, Ward took time out to send a letter to
the Ashmolean’s curators roundly condemning the
permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum
of Art. After characterising the Met’s pictures as ‘a
great disappointment’, Ward opined that ‘several of
the Rembrandts are of no great age and should, to
use an American expression, be “debunked”. It
serves them right for wanting only big names.’21
Indeed, to judge from the cool expression of
superiority on view in a 1928 oil portrait (Fig. 12),
Ward was not the sort of man who suffered fools
gladly. Wearing a red velvet smoking jacket, cigar
duly in hand, he looks, moreover, as though he
the London art scene in February 1924, buying and tended to perceive fools wherever he went.
selling paintings in direct partnership with Ward, Interestingly, the artist who painted this telling
a collaboration from which the much younger image of Ward shared very much the same outlook
Wright could presumably have learned a great deal.18 on life. He was none other than Han van Meegeren.
Ward possessed a famously keen eye for pictures: Van Meegeren’s portrait of Ward was given to
most notably, he had assembled an outstanding the Ashmolean Museum in 1997 by Ward’s son,
collection of Dutch still-life paintings, at very low who sent, in addition to the picture, a brief note in
cost, during the early years of the 20th century, which he recalled Van Meegeren’s frequent visits
when such works were badly under-appreciated.19 to the Ward family’s London residence during the
Ward later donated his still lifes to the Ashmolean 1920s. Not surprisingly, the younger Ward retained
Museum, Oxford, in memory of his wife, Daisy. The an especially fond memory of Van Meegeren’s pretty

APOLLO 27
stepdaughter, Jola, who had accompanied the forger
on at least one of these trips. Yet Van Meegeren
himself also made a lasting impression. ‘Van
Meegeren was very amusing’, Ward’s son wrote,
‘because my father was aware of his tendency to
paint under another name – and quite successfully!
It was then an open joke between him and my
father and mother.’22
Eye-opening on several levels, in Piccadilly;23 when he was 9 The Smiling Girl by
this reminiscence not only tends negotiating to sell pictures in an imitator of Johannes
to confirm that Van Meegeren Berlin, he was ostensibly the Vermeer (1632-75), here
painted the three Vermeer manager of a small paint attributed to Han van
forgeries associated with factory Ward owned in Meegeren (1889-1947),
Harold Wright, but it Bremen;24 and when, in c. 1924. Gelatine-based
also suggests that Ward 1928, after his triumph paint on canvas, 41 x
had a bit more going on with The Lace Maker, 31.8 cm. © The
in his life than one Wright approached National Gallery of
might otherwise have Duveen Brothers Art, Washington, dc
imagined. Although, with a Frans Hals so
in all fairness, it must dodgy that Duveen’s 10 The Girl with a
be stated that Ward people began to Wineglass by Johannes
was never publicly suspect him of being Vermeer (1632-75),
implicated in any ‘a clever, dangerous, c. 1660. Oil on canvas,
crime of any kind, the and tricky man’,25 he 78 x 67 cm. Herzog
circumstantial evidence hastily relocated to The Anton Ulrich Museum,
certainly suggests that Hague26 to run Ward’s Braunschweig. Photo:
Wright’s involvement in the distribution office there, later akg-images
promotion of the fakes was expanding it to a full-fledged
orchestrated directly by Ward. For production facility.27 The notion 11 Marie Vriesendorp
instance, Wright’s frequent movements that Wright, a junior employee, did all by Han van Meegeren
within Ward’s paint company – from London, to of this on his own – that he had such latitude to (1889-1947), 1926. Oil
Germany, to The Hague – dovetailed conveniently decide his postings and could change jobs at the on canvas, 58 x 48 cm.
with the needs of the forgery business, if not drop of a hat – seems highly improbable. Private collection, the
necessarily the demands of the paint trade. When These decisions, however, would certainly have Netherlands. Photo:
Wright was handling paperwork related to the fallen under the purview of Ward himself. In the author
attribution of pictures that he and Ward bought at contrast to the novice Wright, Theodore Ward had
Christie’s, he operated out of Ward’s London office years of experience buying and selling pictures

28 APOLLO
 VAN MEEGEREN’s early vermeers

throughout Europe. Aside from assembling his own 12 Theodore W.H. Ward partners, including brothers, uncles, cousins and a
collection, he was also a private dealer; his brothers by Han van Meegeren sizeable group of outside investors. In 1936, the
Albert and Rudolf operated a London gallery for (1889-1947), 1928. Oil company was valued at just over £53,000.37 By
about 12 years; and these activities seem to have on canvas, 101.5 x 76.5 comparison, Duveen paid a total of £56,000 – about
put Ward in contact with some of the less savoury cm. Ashmolean £2m today – for The Lace Maker and The Smiling Girl,
elements of the art world. Once, when one of his Museum, Oxford all in cash. The potential profits from promoting
own pictures mysteriously disappeared, Ward wrote 31 Receipt of sale, 22 April 1926, dbr,
fakes were big enough to tempt a great many people.
to the curators at the Ashmolean that, ‘At a very box 299, f. 14. And it would appear that Ward, over time, grew
wild guess, I would say that it was stolen by two 32 Documents relating to the trial of curiously richer than the other members of his
Messrs Metzenmacher and Holländer,
men who do odd jobs for one of the dealers in the zsmb, i/gg, no 317. family: he drove a Rolls-Royce doctor’s coupé, filled
St. James’s district.’28 33 Duveen paid Wendland £1200 for his closets with what his nephew derisively described
Then, of course, there was the Berlin connection. directing the picture to the firm. The as ‘a hundred pairs of shoes’, and developed a
paperwork is misfiled in the dossier for
Unlike Wright, Ward had longstanding contacts in The Smiling Girl: dbr, box 299, f. 14. See marked fondness for the Riviera.38 He retired to
also Buchheister letter, cited in note 24.
Germany. Although British by birth, he was of Cannes, where he lived his final years in the
34 Allied Art Investigation Unit [aliu],
German extraction, spoke German fluently, and had ‘Detailed Interrogation Report: Hans
Mediterranean sunshine, far from the house on the
studied for at time at Heidelberg.29 In his adventures Wendland’, College Park, Maryland, Finchley Road where he had so often entertained
National Archives and Record
as a marchand-amateur, he often sent works of art to Administration [nara], M 1782.
Han van Meegeren, the master forger of Vermeer.
Berlin for sale through local dealers and galleries.30 35 aliu, ‘Final Report’: nara, M 1782.

And looking at the various transactions involved in 36 The Times, 2 May 1892. Jonathan Lopez has written a biography of Han
the promotion of the fake Vermeers, it is apparent 37 The Times, 19 June 1936. van Meegeren, The Man Who Made Vermeers, to
that they were orchestrated by someone – like Ward 38 Meijer, op. cit., p. 13. be published by Harcourt in August.
– who was keenly aware of how the Weimar-era art
world worked. Indeed, several fairly notorious
Berliners were called upon to help carry out the
scheme. For instance, The Smiling Girl was presented
to Wilhelm von Bode for attribution not by Harold
Wright, but by a German army officer turned art
dealer named Walter Kurt Rohde,31 who was later
implicated in a plot to forge Bode’s certificates of
expertise.32 Likewise, after Wright got Bode to
approve The Lace Maker, the initial contacts to sell
the picture to Duveen were set up through a chain
of German dealers that began with Hans
Wendland,33 an extremely disreputable person
whom Bode had fired from the staff of the Kaiser
Friedrichs in 1906 for theft, and who later became
involved with the Nazis’ art-looting apparatus,
laundering stolen Holocaust assets through the
Swiss market.34 As it happens, Ward’s brother
Rudolf, although technically a British subject, was
also suspected of trading in art of questionable
origins in occupied Paris, where he came under the
direct protection of the ss and was said, by Allied
military intelligence, to have ‘worked consistently
throughout the war in the German interest’.35
Still, one has to wonder why, in the 1920s, a
prosperous businessman like Theodore Ward would
have taken an interest in art forgery. He certainly
didn’t appear to need the money, but although Ward
was well-off, he was not a truly wealthy man – at
least not initially – and his family had, over the years,
known its economic ups and downs. Ward’s father
had gone bankrupt in the shipping business at the
turn of the century and was, at one time, wanted by
the police in connection with an incident of petty
theft.36 What is more, the paint business, although
successful, was a property Ward owned with many

APOLLO 29