Han van Meegeren (1889-1947)
Cooking dinner with family
Signature: Bottom left
Dimensions work: 28 x 42 cm
Provenance:
-From a private collection
- True Vue art glass
- Galerie Kunst en Kader
Henricus Antonius (Han) van Meegeren (Deventer, 10 October 1889 - Amsterdam, 30 December 1947) was a Dutch painter and art forger. He forged works by Johannes Vermeer, among others.
n 1913, he established himself as a painter in The Hague. Van Meegeren had chosen a difficult path. He had renounced modern art and was unlikely to gain recognition by painting in a style that had been popular centuries before. Although his work was initially well received,he was subsequently ridiculed by art critics and at one point could not even exhibit.
Nonetheless, he had great success with some works, and was also much in demand as a portrait painter. One very well-known work by Van Meegeren under his own name was (and still is) found in many Dutch living rooms, namely Little Deer,[2] a copper engraving from 1921. It is actually about a roe deer, a painting after toys of then Princess Juliana. Because the title Het reetje van Juliana was not considered neat, the work was named after a deer. Van Meegeren made it during a lesson at an academy for frees in The Hague, where he was a drawing teacher. A variant of the Little Deer, the Deer with Young, is also to be found in the painting.
