Han Van Meegeren - Trial, Sentence and Death

Trial, Sentence and Death

The trial of Han van Meegeren began on 29 October 1947 in Room 4 of the Regional Court in Amsterdam. The collaboration charges had been dropped, since the expert panel had found that the "Vermeer" sold to Hermann Göring had been a forgery and was, therefore, not the cultural property of the Netherlands. The public prosecutor, H. A. Wassenbergh, brought charges of forgery and fraud and demanded a sentence of two years in prison.

The court commissioned an international group of experts to address the authenticity of van Meegeren's paintings. The commission included curators, professors and doctors from the Netherlands, Belgium, and England and was led by the director of the chemical laboratory at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Dr. Paul Coremans. The commission examined the eight Vermeer and Frans Hals paintings which van Meegeren had identified as forgeries. With the help of the commission, Dr. Coremans was able to determine the chemical composition of van Meegeren’s paints. He found that van Meegeren had prepared the paints by mixing them with the plastic bonding agent Albertol, a phenolformaldehyde resin. A bottle with exactly that ingredient had been found in van Meegeren's studio. This chemical component was introduced and manufactured in the 20th century, proving that the “Vermeers” and “Frans Halses” examined by the commission were in fact made by van Meegeren. The commission's other findings suggested that the dust in the craquelure was too homogeneous to be of natural origin. The matter found in the craquelure appeared to come from India ink, which had accumulated even in areas that natural dirt or dust would never have reached. The paint had become so hard that not only alcohol but also strong acids and bases did not attack the surface, a clear indication that the surface had not been formed in a natural manner. The craquelure on the surface did not always match that in the ground layer, which with a natural craquelure would certainly have been the case. Thus, the test results obtained by the commission appeared to confirm that the works were forgeries created by van Meegeren, but their authenticity would continue to be debated by some of the experts until 1967 and 1977, when new investigative techniques were used to analyze the paintings (see below).

On 12 November 1947, the Fourth Chamber of the Amsterdam Regional Court found Han van Meegeren guilty of forgery and fraud, and sentenced him to a minimal one year in prison. While waiting to be removed to prison, van Meegeren returned to his house at 321 Keizersgracht, where his health continued to decline. During this last month of his life, he strolled freely around his neighborhood.

On 26 November 1947, the last day to appeal the ruling, van Meegeren suffered a heart attack and was rushed to the Valeriuskliniek hospital in Amsterdam. While at the hospital, he suffered a second heart attack on 29 December. He was pronounced dead at 5:00 pm on 30 December 1947, at the age of 58. His family and several hundred of his friends attended his funeral at the Driehuis Westerveld Crematorium chapel. In 1948, his urn was buried in the general cemetery in the village of Diepenveen (municipality of Deventer).