Van Meegeren Fake or Fortune?

-£18,500,000. £19 million...

-The art world -

glamour, wealth, intrigue.

95... Selling at 95 million dollars.

Beneath the surface, there's a darker place - a world of high stakes and gambles.

International art dealer Philip Mould knows the risks.

He hunts down sleepers -

paintings that hide secrets.

In the past, we looked AT pictures. Now, almost, you can look THROUGH them.

Paint almost acts like blood at a crime scene.

I'm Fiona Bruce,

and I have over 20 years' experience as a journalist.

Every picture tells its own story, and it's up to us to try and uncover it.

We're teaming up to investigate human dramas

and mysterious tales locked in paint.

It's a world of great beauty and ugly deceptions.

How many fakes are out there?

-Some law-enforcement agencies suggest 40 to 50% of the art market could be fakes.

-Nearly half?!

In this episode, we go on the trail of a painting which hides the story

of one of the greatest scandals the art world has ever seen.

These are like your dirty little secret, aren't they?

Could it be by the most daring forger of modern times?

We're not just dealing with an artistic mind, we're dealing with a sophisticated criminal mind.

Controversially, it's part of the collection at one of our leading art establishments.

After 50 years, they're about to find out

whether their painting is genuine or fake.

Sneaking a peek!

'As an art dealer, Philip Mould operates in a world

'where paintings exchange hands for millions of pounds...'

Put it down!

'..but he has to be constantly on his guard.

'Fakes are one of the biggest problems in the art world.

'We're on our way to see a painting which has been foxing art specialists.'

The picture I'm going to take you to see now has caused real controversy.

Opinion is divided amongst experts as to whether it's genuine or fake.

And are there still a lot of fakes out there, even now?

There are. I've been taken in. Others have been taken in. But there was one faker

in the 20th century who left all the other fakers standing.

His name was Han van Meegeren and, believe it or not,

he conned the art world out of about £65 million in modern money.

Wow. So, a very successful faker.

And it's possible that the picture we're going to see now is by him.

In the 1940s, van Meegeren caused a scandal when it was discovered

he'd swindled the art world with his forgeries of Dutch old masters,

among them a series of paintings faking the work of Johan Vermeer.

When he was caught, it emerged that the world's most prestigious art galleries and respected experts

had been duped by van Meegeren's fakes.

During his trial in 1947,

van Meegeren confessed to forging seven old masters,

but he didn't own up to ALL his work.

21 of his fakes have now been identified,

and I suspect there are more lurking out there.

So you think van Meegeren is still causing trouble? After all these years?

Yes, and in one of the last places you'd expect.

We're heading to the Courtauld Institute in London,

a centre of excellence for the study of art.

Here, the next generation of art world experts are trained,

but hanging inside this highly respected establishment

is a picture causing confusion and controversy.

Recent press reports have raised awkward questions

about the attribution of this work of art,

which has hung in the Courtauld since 1960.

Leading experts can't agree when it was painted and by whom.

Dr Aviva Burnstock is their head of conservation, and teaches the scientific study of paintings.

She's keen for us to help solve the mystery surrounding the picture,

which is causing such disagreement amongst the art establishment.

So here it is.

This is a painting that is riddled with mystery.

-It represents... The Procuress, it's called, isn't it?

-Yes.

There's a madam on the right, handing over one of her girls

to a rather lascivious-looking client in the middle, right?

-Is she the madam or is she the tart?

-She's the tart.

Oh, I see. So who's the procuress?

-Is that a woman?!

-This is a woman, yeah.

-And she's pointing to her hand where she wants money.

-Oh, I see.

Now, the question is, is this a genuine 17th-century canvas,

a work done in the studio of an artist called Dirck van Baburen?

If it is, then it's an interesting picture in itself.

Or - and this is where it gets exciting - could this be a work

by the most notorious faker of the 20th century, Han van Meegeren?

What do you make of it?

Well, it was given to the Courtauld in 1960

and it's hung here for the last 18 years as far, as I know,

and experts really are undecided. It's gone back and forward

-between being a fake by van Meegeren or a genuine 17th-century painting.

-So people keep changing their mind?

-Yes, the experts are divided. Everyone has a different view.

-I love that it's in the heart

of the institute of excellence about art history and art conservation,

you've been walking past it all these years, and we still don't know.

-Do you think we can get to the bottom of it?

-What makes this project so exciting is that,

finally, we WILL be able to get to the bottom of this

and find out whether this is a fake or a genuine 17th-century painting.

And presumably, if it is a 300-year-old painting, that'll make it much more valuable

-than if it's a Han van Meegeren done a few decades ago.

-Funnily enough, the reverse.

If it is by van Meegeren, he's got a sort of cult following,

there are people out there who'd want to buy it. Just any 17th-century artist

copying the work of a great painter of the period does not necessarily mean people pay money.

-Really?

-But a name, a big name, a dark name like van Meegeren...

-A notorious name.

-Absolutely.

What would you prefer? Would you prefer it to be by van Meegeren?

-I find that really odd, here of all places.

-He certainly is a famous forger

and to have a painting by a famous forger such as van Meegeren

would be more exciting in some ways. As long as there's only one of them here!

-You'd enjoy having one, wouldn't you?

-I just wonder if I'm ever going to understand your world, Philip.

Philip's head of research, Dr Bendor Grosvenor,

has years of experience uncovering secrets behind paintings.

He's been tracing the provenance of The Procuress - who owned the painting and when.

How did The Procuress end up at the Courtauld?

Well, it was given to them in 1960 by this man, called Geoffrey Webb.

Now, Geoffrey Webb had a really important role at the end of World War II.

It was his job to track down all the paintings the Nazis had stolen, particularly from Holland,

and that's how he played a part in the arrest of Han van Meegeren in 1945.

And how did van Meegeren get caught?

He made one catastrophic mistake.

He allowed one of his fake Vermeers to end up in the hands of Hermann Goering,

Hitler's right-hand man and the Nazis' most prolific thief.

Not the sort of man you'd describe as the ideal client.

No. Not someone you'd want to con, either.

No, and the situation got even worse for van Meegeren.

When the picture was found in Goering's private art collection -

here it is with the American soldiers who discovered it -

they were able to trace the paper trail back to van Meegeren

and, as a result, he was arrested in 1945

not for selling Goering a fake painting

but for selling him what they thought was a real Vermeer,

a piece of priceless Dutch national heritage.

So this laid himself open to be charged with the repugnant crime of being a collaborator.

Yes. There was a very, very stiff jail sentence that he faced,

and possibly, worst of all, he faced a charge of treason,

for which, of course, the sentence was death.

Now, the only way that van Meegeren could get off these charges

and get himself out of the hole that he'd dug himself into

was by admitting that he hadn't sold Goering a real Vermeer but he'd sold him one of his fakes.

What an incredible story. It must have been an amazing trial.

It was, it was extraordinary, and he later confessed to producing seven fake old masters.

Seven! It must have been so humiliating for the experts.

And then what about the Courtauld's painting?

What about The Procuress? Did he confess to that one?

Crucially, the Courtauld's picture was not amongst them.

I guess what we need to do now is find out more about van Meegeren,

and to do that, we need to go to Holland.

And I want to get really close to a van Meegeren or two.

I want to get so close that I can see the signature brushstrokes of the great faker at work.

Our first stop - Amsterdam, scene of the crime.

Van Meegeren managed to convince the world's most respected art galleries that his works were genuine.

Among them, Holland's famous Rijksmuseum.

It's home to the world's greatest collection of paintings from the golden age of Dutch art,

including works by the artist van Meegeren dared to forge,

the 17th-century master Johan Vermeer.

His paintings are among the most iconic and the most valuable in the world.

Now, this is the artist who inspired van Meegeren

in his ultimate crime, Johan Vermeer.

What do you think of it?

Wow. Just beautiful, isn't it?

It's very gentle, very intimate.

Stunning.

It is so powerful, it's so introspective.

It's also just got a kind of humble subject, humble setting,

-so domestic, so ordinary and so absolutely exquisite as well, you know?

-Hmm.

You don't have to be able to appreciate art or know anything about art

to know that that is fantastic.

I agree with you.

I mean, the audacity of van Meegeren, thinking that he could take on this painter.

Now, just look at this.

I mean, frankly, he could not have chosen higher goalposts.

This is a variant of that picture, so what van Meegeren's done is he's taken half of the picture

and created a new composition.

I can't believe that van Meegeren thought he'd get away with it,

imitating Vermeer in the heart of the land where Vermeer is most known about and most appreciated.

-But he did.

-But that's where he's so damn clever.

People really wanted more Vermeers, more works by the great artist,

the sort of Shakespeare, as it were, in paint, of his time.

I mean, there are only 35 works known at the period.

But the other thing was, van Meegeren had the skills of a magician. He had a whole panoply of tricks.

In fact, there are some examples here of what he could do.

The Rijksmuseum has its own chapter in this story of shame.

Conservator Michel van de Laar takes us deep into the museum vaults

where, hidden away from view,

is a collection of paintings by van Meegeren himself.

My hope is that these forgeries might help us

solve the mystery of the Courtauld's painting.

On this rack is a painting which for a long time

used to be a big embarrassment for the Rijksmuseum, like an open wound.

A painting painted by Han van Meegeren

and bought in 1943 as a genuine Vermeer.

-What did they pay for it?

-They paid 1,168,000 Dutch guilders,

which would be today something like £12 million.

Hard to believe for such an ugly painting.

-An astonishing amount of money.

-An expensive mistake!

That must have been a record. Had the gallery paid as much for anything else?

-It was a record amount of money at that moment.

-Wow.

-Staggering.

-Yeah.

-That must hurt.

-Particularly when you look at it.

-Every time you get that painting out, that must hurt.

-Is that why it's got holes in it?

The holes were made in the court case of van Meegeren,

to see if it this indeed is a forgery or an original painting.

-It seems to be done with anger and vengeance.

-You have visions of...eek, eek, eek!

Obviously, it was a useless painting of no value.

-What do you think of it, Fiona?

-Looking at it, I'm no expert,

-but it looks a bit rubbish.

-It does, it does.

-A BIT rubbish?!

-What happened is that...

-Look at the face on the left.

-Yeah.

But art historians of the time wondered, "Aren't there more paintings by Vermeer?

"There must be religious work."

That's what Han van Meegeren anticipated on by making these paintings.

-So he was trying to produce a sort of lost but primitive early work...

-Right.

-..which no-one had anything to compare it with?

-Right.

-So he could just sort of dream up, in a sense, a whole new type of Vermeer.

-Yeah.

-She looks familiar, doesn't she?

-Yeah, I was just looking at her.

-This painting was used as a piece of evidence in the court case.

-Really?

-It's more convincing than the other one.

-Would that have taken YOU in?

-Go on!

-Shame on you!

-Put aside your professional pride.

Come on, 'fess up. If you'd been in the '40s and had seen that...

Well, in the '40s, I might well have actually doubted my eye.

Many people did, many people believed this was a Vermeer,

and the richest people in the world bought them.

It became easier to understand how van Meegeren duped the world's experts

when Michel showed us the tricks of his trade.

-So these are all by van Meegeren?

-Yes.

And we can see on the, on the back, that he used an old painting,

-an old 17th-century painting, with patches and everything.

-The old goat!

-Would he have put these cracks in and this damage to the canvas?

-Yeah.

He liked those things because he knew that no painting would survive the centuries without cracks.

It's like the cracking on someone's face. It's an indication of age.

Sometimes it's the only evidence that one has that the picture is old.

-Here we can see he over-cleaned his own work.

-Yeah, look at this.

-That's astonishing, isn't it?

So he knackered his own pictures in order to give them

the appearance of a picture that has come down through the ages and has been over-cleaned.

I mean, this does look pretty realistic, doesn't it?

-I mean, to have this evidence of the process is such an insight, isn't it?

-Yeah.

I'm beginning to think we're not just dealing with an artistic mind,

-we're dealing with a sophisticated criminal mind, don't you think?

-Hm.

I also think these are like your dirty little secret, aren't they?

You have a past, though, cos you worked at the Courtauld

where the picture is that we're looking into.

-What's your view?

-It's hard to say, because I haven't studied the painting close up,

but I think it's older than van Meegeren's time.

-You don't think it's a 20th-century painting?

-No.

It's only on the basis of technical analysis that we will find out.

-But your hunch is that it's not a van Meegeren?

-OK, yeah.

-You want to know, though, don't you?

-I want to know.

-This is important to you?

-Yeah!

I'm keen to learn more about the man who wreaked havoc in the art world.

I've managed to track down the last person alive

who knew van Meegeren - his nephew, Pim Polman-Tuin.

-Hello!

-Hi.

-Glad to meet you, come in.

-Thank you.

Tell me about this photograph.

TRANSLATION:

-Did you ever see your uncle paint?

-Yeah.

So, this is you?

What do you remember of the trial and the whole scandal of it?

What do you think he would think now

if he knew that even today his paintings are still causing

arguments and disagreements? What would he think of all that?

I have a picture here where your uncle's still causing trouble.

Do you think your uncle painted this?

So you mean you think there are paintings still out there, in Holland and around the world,

that are undiscovered forgeries by your uncle?

So your uncle might have the last laugh, then?

Oh, ja, absolut. Absolut, I'm sure.

FIONA LAUGHS

Before I came here, I assumed that van Meegeren

was a kind of stain on the national honour of Holland.

But actually having met van Meegeren's nephew,

I can see that not only is he really rather proud of him,

but it's also a bit more complex than that,

because he's not the only one to be proud of van Meegeren.

They still, here in Holland, feel that, OK, he was a forger,

but he was a really good forger, and they're rather proud of that.

I've been doing some digging and I've been told

that the Rijksmuseum conservation lab holds some vital evidence.

This state-of-the-art facility is devoted to the scientific analysis

and conservation of some of the world's most treasured works of art.

In a corner of the studio is a cupboard full of the most fascinating collection of artefacts,

all seized from van Meegeren's studio at the time of his arrest in 1945.

Wow!

Although this evidence was examined during van Meegeren's trial,

it has never undergone the scrutiny of modern forensic tests.

Oh, look, this one says, "Han van Meegeren, October 1945."

-So this is a tag used in the trial.

-Yeah.

-This is one of his props in his paintings.

-Must've been.

Yeah, that's a 17th-century piece of glass. He went to infinite pains, this man, didn't he?

-Now, this is a dream.

-Fantastic.

Look at this.

Now, these are all samples of the pigments

that were discovered in his studio.

So these are the pigments he used in his paintings, in his fakes?

These are the actual ingredients for his pictures.

Wow, look at them.

Cinnabar... Oh, look, lapis lazuli.

What a gift, eh?

I mean, I can't think of another comparison of an artist

being able to be discovered, or re-discovered, so precisely in this way.

Analyse these and we'll be able to find out exactly what was in his pictures,

and we'll be able move forward.

Before we returned home, I was shown one last piece of evidence

that could help us date the Courtauld's painting.

Several versions of The Procuress are known to exist.

This is quite common for 17th-century works of art,

as paintings were often replicated or copied by apprentices

who were learning their master's craft.

One of these versions has hung in the Rijksmuseum since 1898.

If van Meegeren did forge the Courtauld's painting,

he would've made his copy from this work, which is known to have been painted nearly 400 years ago

by an apprentice of the old master, Dirck van Baburen.

I asked Michel to take paint samples from this 17th-century work

to compare them to the Courtauld's Procuress.

The flecks of paint are so tiny it'll cause minimal damage.

I also convinced him to make another hole, albeit a microscopic one,

in their mutilated van Meegeren fake.

Would the paint from the Courtauld's picture

match up to the genuine work or the 20th-century forgery?

This is getting really exciting, this is REAL progress.

We've got the Rijksmuseum, the great institution, to allow us

to remove, and it's happening now, two flecks of paint,

two bits of paint, from two of their works of art.

It's quite a big ask. We are actually taking something off their paintings

and taking it over the Channel.

Paint almost acts like blood at a crime scene.

As a result of analysing the material,

we can establish things that were never formerly establishable.

We can work out whether the painting could've been done at that date.

If the pigment's not around then, it can't be.

We can establish sometimes what the actual artist used,

whether the likelihood is that it was that artist because of what they used.

All sorts of questions that the scientist,

that the microscope, that the scalpel can now answer.

So you're preparing here the samples of The Procuress

from the Rijksmuseum, and also van Meegeren.

That's right. I'm doing a final polish and they're ready to go to the Courtauld Institute.

My hope is that these samples hold the answer

to whether the Courtauld's painting is genuine or fake.

-How exciting. Thank you very much.

-OK, you're welcome.

We've left Amsterdam confident in the knowledge that we've gathered

enough evidence to solve the mystery of the Courtauld's painting.

While we've been away, Bendor has been studying documents

relating to van Meegeren's interrogation and trial.

I've got here a copy of van Meegeren's statement

he made when he was arrested in 1945.

It is, if you like, his confession, where he admits to everything

and it contains a reference to the Courtauld's Procuress.

-What, to our painting?

-Indeed.

-Good news.

But don't get too excited, because I've had the document translated

and he says, not that he painted The Procuress

but that his former wife bought it in 1938, and he even says here,

for about 600 francs in an antiques shop in Nice.

Well, there we are, aren't we? I mean, that's it.

He didn't...fake this painting - his wife bought it -

and there it is, in black and white.

You see, I just don't believe it, I just don't believe it.

This man was a liar.

He lied in paint, he was a forger and he twisted the truth as well.

I think this picture is by van Meegeren.

-I'll put my neck on the line.

-But he confessed. Hang on,

because he confessed to painting seven other fakes, or seven fakes, in court.

Why would he not confess to this one? Doesn't make sense.

Cos we know he didn't confess to everything. I'll tell you why I think it's a van Meegeren.

This is one of Vermeer's most famous pictures, The Concert. You probably recognise it.

You probably haven't looked that carefully at the background.

-You may have done. But lave a look. What can you see?

-Oh, right.

The Procuress?

-It's our picture, isn't it?

-Mm.

-Or it's the image.

-Mm.

Take a look at the next picture.

Again, a really famous work by Vermeer,

Young Woman At The Virginal.

But have a look at the painting in the background.

Oh, yes! It's The Procuress again, yeah.

Now, we know that Vermeer had a version of this picture in his studio.

We know that van Meegeren was obsessed by Vermeer.

My theory is, and it's a circumstantial theory, but I think it's a strong one,

I think that he was producing a prop to use in his fakes.

-What, props like he had in the cupboard?

-Exactly. The ones we saw.

-Yes. We know that van Meegeren

had a whole range of props, perhaps the most famous was this little white jug

that he used repeatedly in his fake Vermeers.

In fact, this is fascinating footage from the auction of van Meegeren's studio effects

after the whole scandal was exposed.

Don't forget that van Meegeren was wildly popular,

because he was the man who ripped off Goering. As you can see from the audience,

there was great demand to have a little piece of van Meegeren action.

Amazing.

Well, it's an interesting theory, and it's quite a seductive theory, but that's all it is.

-It's a theory, it's your hunch.

-We have these samples. I'm going to the Courtauld.

Let's see what they tell us.

The more I learn about how ambitious van Meegeren was

in plotting his fakes, the more I wonder to what extent

forgers are getting away with it today.

The thing is, there have been forgers since time immemorial

and, for sure, there'll be forgers and fakers out there now,

who are conning people, conning experts, who knows?

To find out more, I contact Scotland Yard.

I'm instructed to travel to a secret store

where the spoils of art crime are held.

Head of the Art and Antique Squad, Detective Sergeant Vernon Rapley,

agrees to show me the extent of the problem today.

It's like Fort Knox in here.

Even the location of this place is secret,

so why all the secrecy about this building?

Not only do we have our fakes and forgeries here

but also a lot of stolen artworks and antiquities

recovered from all over the world that are of very high value.

-So you don't want anyone to know where we are?

-Not really, no.

-In here?

-In here.

-Wow, look at this lot. So these are all fakes, are they?

-Yes, they are, yeah.

Wow.

What's happened to these paintings, how have you come by them all?

They've all been seized in our investigations by the art and antiques unit.

-This is, what, a Banksy?

-Yeah, that's a limited-edition print by Banksy,

something we're having a great deal of problems with now.

-Very easy to produce, and also, you have...

-It's just a stencil, isn't it?

It's just a stencil with a false signature applied

-but they sell for a considerable amount of money.

-Like what?

A limited-edition print like that's probably £1,500, £2,000 at least,

and then a smaller...something like a stencil painting, that run to tens of thousands of pounds.

Now looking at these... This is, what, a fake Lowry?

Indeed.

..there aren't old masters here, as such. Is that because the old masters are much harder to fake?

Indeed. What we're finding increasingly is that artists are preferring

to go for contemporary artworks. The checks that are done on them

are not so exacting as you would... If, for example, you were looking to buy a Vermeer,

you would conduct every check.

How many fakes and forgeries are out there in the art market?

Some law-enforcement agencies suggest 40 or 50% of the art market

-could be fake and forgeries.

-Nearly half?

-Nearly half, yes.

So, what does that say about the state of the art market,

or anyone who wants to go out and buy a painting,

if nearly half of them could be fakes? That's astonishing.

Well, there are without any doubt at all thousands of fakes out there

being produced on a daily basis by a number of artists,

and people need to consider that when they're making purchases and to act more carefully.

The thing that strikes me is that if up to half the paintings out there,

in the art market generally, could be fake,

there must be little time bombs

planted in galleries and museums around the world,

which in 5, 20, 100 years' time, people will come to realise

are not genuine works of art,

but they are fakes and therefore valueless.

And I'd quite like to learn a bit more about the people

who are planting these little time bombs, these forgers. Who are they?

While Fiona hunts down today's forgers,

I'm trying to nail one from the past.

I'm at the Courtauld, with the paint samples from the Rijksmuseum

and the box of pigments that van Meegeren used,

eager to start scrutinising the evidence.

-Hi there.

-Hello.

'Aviva Burnstock, expert in the scientific study of paintings, has agreed to help me.

'Forgers are often caught by their careless use of modern materials,

'so in order to make sure his fakes weren't spotted by scientific tests,

'van Meegeren used the techniques of a 17th-century painter.

'By comparing the paint samples from the Rijksmuseum with the Courtauld's painting,

'we should be able to identify how The Procuress was painted and with what.'

What can we deduce from what you're looking at now?

What I'm looking at under the microscope and what I've captured on the screen here

are samples from the three different paintings

that you've brought samples from.

One is the Rijksmuseum 17th-century Procuress,

the second is the Rijksmuseum van Meegeren

and here is the sample from the Courtauld picture.

So we've got all three lined up.

We're in a pretty strong position to then make some comparisons.

Yes, we have the 17th-century painting, which has a classical structure.

The sort of technique you'd expect from a 17th-century painter in Holland.

-Exactly.

-Right.

The most important thing to look at is the first two layers.

The first reddish paint layer that was applied to smooth the canvas,

to fill up the canvas weaves, then a second grey layer,

mixture of black and white,

mixed together to create the smooth painting grey surface

that was very popular in the 17th century.

Now let's have a look at the van Meegeren from the Rijksmuseum.

-It's a similar technique.

-Closely similar technique.

-The only difference is the thickness of the layers.

-Fascinating.

Ok, we've got a 17th-century version,

we have got the van Meegeren version, showing a similar technique.

Let's compare it with the Courtauld version.

This is our picture from the Courtauld, which has a very similar structure.

The red layer followed by the grey layer. Here.

So what we know about van Meegeren is that he aped,

as far as possible, the exact techniques of the 17th century.

So, if this is a van Meegeren, this is exactly what you'd expect?

It rules him in, it definitely rules him in.

The structure is one thing. What about the materials?

What you can see is that the materials that have been used

are all consistent with 17th-century paintings

and we know that van Meegeren was very meticulous about choosing

17th-century materials or materials that could have been used then,

but what's really striking is that the box of pigments you gave me

from the Rijksmuseum are closely similar in colour and tonality

to some of these pigments that we're seeing in the Courtauld picture.

-You can tell that already?

-They just seem compellingly similar.

I can only tell so much from microscopy.

I need to do more sophisticated analytical techniques.

I feel we're making progress, but it's still frustrating.

We know The Procuress was painted in a 17th-century technique,

using 17th-century pigments, and we know that van Meegeren painted

in a 17th-century technique and used those pigments.

We have them here in this box,

the actual pigments that he applied to his paintings.

So that rules him in, but equally it could be a 17th-century picture.

But there's one sample in here that's not a 17th-century pigment

and it's marked "artificial resin".

I have a hunch what this might be, but if we can analyse it

and find out for certain, we can move forward.

The cunning tricks of the forger's hand are intriguing enough,

but I'm eager to get inside the forger's mind.

John Myatt served four months in prison in 1998

for painting and selling hundreds of fakes.

Today, he legally produces copies by declaring that he's the real artist.

But back then, he wasn't so upfront, and Scotland Yard said

he'd committed the biggest art fraud of the 20th century.

Wow. What a glory hole, look at all these.

And all these are done by you?

-Yeah, yeah.

-So this, this is in the manner of Monet?

-Yeah.

What else have we got here? This...

That's a Monet, Avenue Of Flowers, another Monet down there.

-Now what have we got across there?

-A Miro?

At the end there we've got a couple of Henri Matisse.

Umberto Giacometti and this is another Monet, Nicholson.

Just take me back to the beginning then, John,

because you were, what an art teacher?

Originally I was an art teacher. Later, about ten years after that,

-when I was looking after two youngsters...

-Your two children.

My two children, I was looking after them by myself,

I had to stop my teaching job because I had to be with them,

so I put an advert in Private Eye, "Genuine fakes from £250".

So you were offering to do fakes of paintings,

but being completely upfront about it, that they were fakes,

and these were ones that you've done.

How did that change?

One of the customers just took one of my paintings

into one of the auction houses and they said,

"We will put a reserve on that of £25,000."

He'd just paid me 250 quid for it

and he called me up and he said, "You can either keep the 250,

"or I'll give you £12,500, what's it going to be?"

And, um...I just said, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, let's do it."

And then from that moment on, you were churning them out.

Churning them out. Rolling away, yes.

I probably turned out about 200 fakes over a six, seven year period.

-You were committing fraud on a grand scale.

-Mm.

Did that not trouble you?

No. I remember thinking, no-one's being bashed over the head here,

everybody's still alive at the end of it, it's only painting.

But people were losing a lot of money.

I mean, did you...the paintings they bought then turned out to be fakes,

absolutely, I mean, it's not a victimless crime.

-Did you...were you troubled by that?

-No.

-You weren't?

No. Not until afterwards.

Not until about halfway through, I started feeling rotten about who I was and what I was doing

but I didn't get to that place soon enough.

-I guess the money was too tempting.

-Yeah.

-How many of your fakes are still out there now?

-120.

120. Why don't you go out and identify them?

-I had that question before...

-It's an obvious question, isn't it?

You put some fakes in the market, only you can identify them. Why don't you?

-If you're really penitent, that's what you'd do, surely?

-No.

Supposing you'd paid £30,000 and I come along and say, "I did that."

Well, you know, you've just lost a whole mass of money.

-Do you regret what you did, creating these?

-Oh, yes, yes. Oh, yes.

You chose to fake the modern end of painting

because it was easy to recreate these.

What's the hardest thing about creating a forgery like van Meegeren did?

The major problem is using the right materials

and materials that will withstand scientific analysis,

and that was his major achievement.

Do you think you could do it?

-Er...

-Recreate a 17th-century Vermeer?

-Yes, I do.

-Very confident.

-I am very confident.

Well, you know, I'm in my comfort zone.

Well, John seems very confident, scarily confident,

that he can reproduce a 17th-century masterpiece

using van Meegeren's techniques. We shall see.

I mean, the interesting thing is,

we don't know exactly the precise details of what van Meegeren did

and this is one way hopefully, we're going to find out.

Van Meegeren managed to fool the experts by his painstaking use

of 17th-century materials, so I need to buy the authentic ingredients

for John to paint our fake.

I'm heading to one of the last surviving traditional pigment shops,

to meet Dr David Cranswick, an expert in painting techniques.

-Hello.

-All right?

-Hi there.

-Nice to meet you.

We've set ourselves a rather ambitious task

of trying to recreate Vermeer's great masterpiece,

The Girl With The Pearl Earring.

What about that glorious blue in the scarf, how do we recreate that?

That's one of the most precious of all the colours,

that's lapis lazuli, which we have up here on a shelf.

It's made from the rock. This is a piece of lapis.

-It's a gorgeous blue, isn't it?

-Absolutely.

Once the pigment is drawn out of the rock, washed and purified,

-then, weight for weight, it's the same price as gold.

-Really?

And what about her gorgeous red lips there?

They would have been painted with vermillion

and it's made by mixing together mercury and sulphur.

If it's got mercury in it, it's presumably pretty dangerous stuff.

It is, you need to be very careful with it.

-What about the yellow in her scarf and clothing?

-Lead tin yellow,

this one here. Mixed with yellow ochre,

it gives this very beautiful bright yellow colour, which he would have used.

-Here in the material down below, we have orpiment.

-Orpiment.

Made from arsenic, this is a sample of it, so I wouldn't touch it.

-This is what arsenic looks like?

-That is what arsenic looks like.

-It's amazing that something so beautiful can be so deadly.

-Mm.

-The white of her pearl earring?

-Now, that's a very ancient colour.

-They'd get firstly stale urine...

-It had to be stale, had it?

Had to be stale, absolutely, the staler the better.

-Have a sheet of lead, bury the whole thing into a dung heap.

-In dung?

-Absolutely.

-It gets better!

-It gets better.

So out of wee and poo effectively

and one of the most toxic substances, lead,

comes this pristine white.

In the 17th century, these vivid powders would have been

transformed into paint by mixing them with oil.

What we're looking for is,

in the end, the final result should be like butter at room temperature.

It should be soft, shiny, glistening, but not runny at all.

-Can I have a go?

-Yeah, go ahead.

Ooh, it feels lovely.

We knew that van Meegeren followed the same traditional methods to make his paint,

but he added a special ingredient to the mix.

He confessed to adding to his recipe something he called artificial resin.

Basic tests undertaken during van Meegeren's trial

revealed what this resin was, but methods of identifying chemicals

have moved on considerably in the last 60 years.

Just to be sure, and with all the advances of modern science,

we reanalysed the sample.

Do you remember those test tubes that we picked up in Amsterdam,

that been taken from van Meegeren's studio?

Well, one of them, if you recall, had written on it "artificial resin".

-The one with the brown stuff in.

-Absolutely.

We've had it analysed and I've got the results. Bendor.

Yes, the analysis confirms that van Meegeren used to mix his paints

with a special ingredient called phenol formaldehyde.

-Phenol what?

-Phenol formaldehyde is better known as Bakelite.

-Bakelite?

-So van Meegeren used Bakelite?

-Yes.

So the kind of stuff that was used for old radios and for hairdryers.

Yes, you could take your pick really.

We've got some particularly hideous-looking examples from the 1940s here.

It was a type of resin that you could pour into a mould

for any shape that you like and when it's set it was extremely hard.

And it was that hardness that appealed to van Meegeren.

Traditional oil paint takes hundreds of years to dry sometimes,

and in his day, in van Meegeren's day, they used a test

to establish whether the painting was completely hard,

whether the paint had gone completely solid. They'd use something like acetone, which I've got here.

-Like nail varnish remover?

-Exactly.

And they used that to see if a painting was genuinely old

-or a modern fake?

-Certainly.

You're not going to put nail varnish remover on that painting?

I am, and it was very simple.

If the paint is old, and I believe this to be old, at least 300 years old,

nothing will come off onto the swab.

If it's modern, there'll be pigment on this piece of cotton wool.

Have a look.

That was lucky. Well, it's clean.

Cor! So van Meegeren put Bakelite on his paintings

so that when someone put a swab over it, it wouldn't come off,

-it would be that hard that even something like this wouldn't remove it.

-Exactly.

Bakelite was his unique fingerprint.

That means, then, that the Courtauld's Procuress,

if it's by van Meegeren, will have Bakelite in it.

While Philip heads off to test the Courtauld's painting for Bakelite,

I have to try and find some to paint our fake with.

But it turns out the chemical it's made from, phenol formaldehyde,

is pretty hazardous stuff.

Certainly not something that should be handled in an artist's studio,

like van Meegeren did.

But John has agreed to follow van Meegeren's methods as closely as possible

and so we have to take precautions.

It means he's going to have to paint our fake

in a rather unconventional setting -

the chemistry lab of Imperial College, London.

Hiya. You need these just to be in the room. There's a coat for you.

-Very attractive.

-And a coat for you.

'Head of department, Tom Weldon, is on hand to ensure our safety.'

-There you go.

-How do I look?

-Excellent!

I'm ready. What are we dealing with here?

We're going to mix some phenol with some formaldehyde to make the Bakelite.

And what is it about these, either separately or together,

that makes them so dangerous we have to get kitted up like this?

They're not so ridiculously dangerous to us.

We're used to handling lots of far more toxic things than this.

But both of these are cancer-causing agents.

They're both toxic and they're both corrosive.

So cancer is the thing that everybody gets really scared about.

But actually, of these, the thing I'd be most worried about immediately is the corrosive nature.

If you get these on your skin, it's likely to cause blistering and hurt and it gets worse...

You're listening carefully, John, aren't you?!

..because the formaldehyde is volatile

and we're going to heat it up,

which means that we'll get gaseous formaldehyde,

so we need to protect ourselves from that as well.

-What, from breathing that in?

-Yes. That's why we're going to do it in a fume hood.

The air will blow over it and it will take all the fumes away

so you can't expose yourself, so you'll be all right.

Can I just ask you, because our faker, van Meegeren,

used these without any of these precautions.

How dangerous would that have been?

Given that he did it over years and years and years,

it almost certainly would've affected his health in some way.

Probably bad lungs. Ulceration of the skin.

-Well, he certainly died quite young.

-There you go.

-Late 50s.

I've never had it so good.

You'll be all right, we'll sort you out.

-You're really looking forward to it now, aren't you?

-Wow.

Well, shall we start our journey into the unknown?

That's a very good way of putting it.

Paint, phenol formaldehyde, canvas.

Van Meegeren never revealed precisely

how he mixed phenol formaldehyde with traditional pigments

but in later years, his son recalled seeing him

loading his brush with paint, then dipping it into the toxic solution.

Now how does it feel?

It feels as though it leaves the brush, um...

-very quickly.

-So you can't push it around the canvas.

-Exactly.

You can't cover up the canvas.

So, what are you trying to do first,

-just sort of paint in the big blocks of colour?

-Exactly that.

What I'm doing is what all 17th-century painters would do,

is to block the painting, to get rid of this white and establish

the basic shapes, the shape of the face, the yellow ochre here,

the blue here and the slightly lighter colours.

-This is how Vermeer would have done it and how van Meegeren?

-Yes.

You see, it's coming, isn't it? I mean, it's...

It is, there's something quite impressive about your whack-it-on technique, John.

So this is ultramarine blue,

extracted from the lapis lazuli, worth its weight in gold.

-Worth its weight in gold.

-Have you used it before?

-No.

It's very hard to get hold of these days.

When you think about the works you did when you were faking paintings,

all those years ago, and what you're doing now...

I took absolutely no... I paid no regard

to the authenticity of materials or of canvases or anything, none.

I painted with household emulsion paint,

KY Jelly and yet they were still authenticated.

This is interesting because we're actually using 17th-century pigments

and the whole thing is as authentic as we can do it

under these strange circumstances.

What's happening here? Do you see how this paint's clouding over?

Look at that.

It looks sort of cloudy, as if it's coagulating.

No, there's something happening. It's kind of just doing strange things now.

-Is that the phenol formaldehyde making it look so weird?

-Can't be anything else, can it?

It's a reaction.

What are you going to do about that, then?

Well, I've got another two or three days!

'To be fair to John, it took van Meegeren four years of experiments

'to perfect his techniques.

'He never wrote down the exact proportions

'of his paint and phenol formaldehyde mix.'

The thing is, when I was standing next to John, I thought,

actually, even I could do that, slap the paint on,

and it looked a bit rubbish, but coming back here,

it looks brilliant. I completely see what he's doing.

The structure of the face is taking shape

and I think he might know what he's doing. The only thing is,

this phenol formaldehyde is messing things up a bit.

You know, no-one has done this since van Meegeren.

No-one has tried this, this is a first, so will it work?

I genuinely have no idea.

At the Courtauld Institute,

analytical chemist Klaas Jan van den Berg has flown from Amsterdam

to take samples from The Procuress to test for phenol formaldehyde.

So we know that van Meegeren used phenol formaldehyde, Bakelite,

in his pictures, and if we can prove there's that element in this picture,

-then we've got the most unequivocal proof we need.

-That's absolutely right.

What we have to do now is be very careful just to take

the top layer of paint or the top layers of paint

because we think van Meegeren re-used canvases,

so the top layers are definitely going to be his paint and we hope,

or think, they might be bound in phenol formaldehyde resin.

If you strike lower you could go to an earlier, more honest, even 17th-century layer, possibly.

That's right. If he re-used a canvas and scrubbed the top paint layers down,

-then those first layers will be typical of the 17th century.

-Uh-huh.

In your mind, how crucial is this test?

This is the absolute proof. This test will tell us, for sure,

whether this is by van Meegeren or not.

-You wouldn't have a hesitation?

-Not a hesitation.

It hasn't been used by any other forger we know of.

Back at the lab, John is finding that forging an old master is no easy task.

Van Meegeren's toxic mix of paint and phenol formaldehyde

is proving tough to handle.

-John.

-Fiona.

-Let's have a look.

Well, it certainly looks like her.

Yeah.

-The paint looks a bit...

-Yes.

-..weird, doesn't it?

The paint is... It's a bit like painting with ground-up cornflakes.

There's a whole area here where the paint's actually dropped off.

Oh, yes. Yes, I can see, there's a little gap in her scarf.

-How have you found it, frustrating?

-Very, very.

What's it make you think about Van Meegeren and the way he worked?

It was pretty clever stuff, wasn't it?

It's enormously clever, it's very hard to understand

that degree of commitment to a strange process.

It's something very...

To go to such great lengths to recreate something

-from the 17th century?

-Yeah.

-So, baking next then.

-Baking next.

Have you had a go to see how that works?

We have. It's been a catastrophe.

Oh! I can hardly wait to see it.

Van Meegeren's final, and bizarre stage, was to bake his fakes.

Heat should cause the phenol formaldehyde to harden,

giving the painting the texture and appearance of an old master.

This, distressingly, is white paint!

-That's white paint?

-That's white paint, I baked it.

-And you got chocolate mousse.

-And we got chocolate mousse!

Chocolate eclair! I mean it's... It's very worrying.

Well, the moment has come. Shall we put her in the oven?

How long are we going to leave her in here for?

Two hours at 110.

Who knows what we'll find when we come back.

It's going to be an agonising wait.

As John's test samples have shown, if we get the temperature

or the timing wrong, our fake might be ruined.

It could come out a complete charred mess.

It could actually burst into flames in that oven so, um,

it'll be a real shame after all this effort.

Well, can only wait and see really, see what happens.

I'm also waiting anxiously

while the Courtauld painting is undergoing its final, crucial test.

The job requires a state-of-the-art machine which the Courtauld isn't equipped with,

so the samples were sent to the lab in Amsterdam where Klaas Jan got to work.

Under intense heat, the paint sample breaks down into its component chemicals,

to reveal whether Van Meegeren's unique ingredient,

phenol formaldehyde, is present in the Courtauld's painting.

But what has a spell in the oven done to John's painting?

Have we overcooked our fake?

Da-dah! It looks pretty good, doesn't it?

Actually it's smoothed out, hasn't it?

-We've really learned something from this.

-We have.

Because when we put it in the oven, it looked...

-you know, in the nicest possible way, a bit ropey.

-Yeah.

And...it has vastly improved with two hours in the oven.

Right, so what do we do next?

Well, I think we try and get some cracking.

Van Meegeren would age his fakes by causing the paint surface to crack.

But when we try it, things start to go badly wrong.

Oh, no! Cracking here, look.

-The only thing is it's cracking and it's actually...

-There she goes, look.

-It's coming off.

-It is.

-That would lift off now.

-Hang on!

BOTH LAUGH

-Oh, no.

-Oh, God!

-Oh, no! Look, it's...

Well, I think we've taken this lady as far as we can go really.

Probably a bit too far.

Yes, it's rather sad, isn't it?

I think Van Meegeren has trounced us.

Yes.

-He got over the final hurdle and we didn't quite get there.

-Yes.

-Hi, Philip.

-Hey.

I have here our attempt

at reproducing van Meegeren's techniques.

What do you think?

Well, I'd say it's sort of convincingly...knackered.

It is, now watch this as well.

What do you mean?! Don't do that!

I know, but that's the thing, we baked it, bits started falling off.

I mean, it's not a bad attempt

but I have to say I wouldn't be taken in, are you?

No, obviously, cos it's falling apart.

At last it's here - news from the lab in Amsterdam.

We shall find out once and for all whether Van Meegeren painted The Procuress.

-Hi, Klaas Jan.

-Klaas Jan, hi.

-Hi.

What have you discovered?

Well, a team has done the analysis of the sample

that I took from The Procuress at the Courtauld

and the result is that the painting was painted

with phenol formaldehyde resin, which is very similar to Bakelite.

-That's it! That is it.

-That's what we're looking for.

So we know definitely... Cor, that's brilliant!

We know definitely that The Procuress was painted

by Van Meegeren cos it has Bakelite in it.

That is correct, yes.

So it's as black and white as that. It is Van Meegeren, it can only be by Van Meegeren.

Yes, because this is a modern synthetic resin

which was only invented in the 20th century

and Van Meegeren was the only artist,

to our knowledge, who has been using this material.

-Fantastic!

-That's the finding in the studio.

This is going to be so interesting from the point of view

of not only the Courtauld Institute but the Rijksmuseum.

We've added another picture to the famous faker's oeuvre.

So how do you feel about that?

Well, I'm as excited as you are.

It's really a nice find,

I wouldn't have expected it myself, but there it is.

Also some of the most prominent experts in this country have...

-Speculated that this is a 17th-century picture.

-Absolutely.

And it's made with Bakelite.

Here we are, and we've cracked it. Fantastic!

It was with great delight that I called Aviva

at the Courtauld Institute finally to reveal the news.

All our hard work has paid off and this long-overlooked painting

is now going to be proudly displayed

in the Courtauld's Old Master gallery,

as part of a special exhibition.

-Hi, there.

-Hello.

-Hi, Aviva, how are you?

Very well.

-Well...

-Da-dah!

Gosh, how amazing to see it here in the Courtauld!

Yes, it's great to see it here.

I mean, there can't be many examples of where you get

such a clear attribution as this, I mean, there's just no doubt.

I don't think I've ever seen such an unequivocal result.

This is absolutely and clearly Van Meegeren.

-D'you feel differently about it?

-It does make you think differently.

It makes you feel more sure about its place in history.

-What will you do with it?

-It'll be very useful for teaching

and we're going to use it to show students about a case

that's so clearly and distinctively a forgery.

I think Van Meegeren would've liked this, hanging amongst all these Old Masters.

Yes, probably not quite what he imagined, being hung as a forgery,

but, he's in one of the most august art institutions in the world

and he'll be studied by generations to come.

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