Courtauld Museum Fake Old Master, Not a Fake

An old master painting thought to be a fake was donated to the Courtauld Institute of Art in 1960.  It was attributed to master forger Hans Van Meegeren.  Van Meegeren is best known for his forgeries of Vermeer paintings, associations with Nazi's and for selling a fake Vermeer to Hermann Goring.  Two books out recently documented the forgeries and  Van Megerens life.

The painting in the London museum is a now considered a genuine Dutch old master from the Golden Age painting as current scholarship has revealed. The painting is a variation of The Procuress, a 1622 brothel scene by Dirck van Baburen,and it appears in the backgrounds of two of Vermeers paintings.  According to the report, the painting may have also belonged to Vermeer.

The Art Newspaper reports

Over the past year, Court­auld specialists and The Art Newspaper have investigated The Procuress. It is now believed that the painting is a 17th-century version of the Baburen. What makes this discovery particularly exciting is that it could well have been a picture once hanging in Ver­meer’s house in Delft.

There are two other versions of The Procuress which were thought to be the original, until now. The first, at the Rijks­museum in Amsterdam, was considered the prime picture. But in 1949 another version, from an English private collection, emerged, and was auctioned at Christie’s. It was a finer picture and was accepted as the original. The following year it was bought by Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

The Courtauld’s picture is slightly closer in dimensions to the original Baburen in Boston, which had only emerged in 1949, two years after Van Meegeren’s death.

Research also suggested that it was unlikely The Procuress had been found at Nice. Van Meegeren’s villa was searched by Dutch police investigators in 1945. Official documents record the discovery of only four paintings, which did not include The Procuress.

Scientific work at the Courtauld now confirms that the picture could well date from the 17th century. The 98cm x 103cm canvas is old (although theoretically a faker could have reused a canvas), but more importantly there is no evidence—from a sample analysis—that modern pigments have been used. There was also nothing on an X-ray to suggest it was a modern fake.

To read the full Art Newspaper article, click HERE.