In the Company of Frans, Johannes and Vincent, Part II: Mischief

Forgery has always been an integral component of the art world.  As a matter of fact, it gives art an energizing roguish dimension.  In the matter of art fakery, the city of Arles in Provence has reached a new level. 

Vincent Van Gogh spent over a year (1888-89) in Arles where he produced some 200 works.  Several sites of his iconic paintings no longer exist.  The city was heavily bombed in WW2.  The house where Van Gogh and Gauguin had lived was flattened, so was the café where he got high on cheap absinthe and chatted up prostitutes.  The café, painting of which is titled Terrace of a Café at Night (Café la Nuit) had stood on Place Lamartine.  Van Gogh also painted its interior Café at Night.

This destruction gave ideas to three creative local entrepreneurs who made an identical replica of the café on the Place du Forum, the most central part of the city.  The fraud paid, tourists flocked to see Vincent’s café, business grew, the locals were happy.  It was Arles’ best kept secret!  All went well until 2023 when the entrepreneurs became tax evasion delinquents and the café was closed by order of Justice.  I read the news in Le Monde newspaper “The Fabricated Finances of the Fake Van Gogh Café in Arles”.  I felt cheated and fooled by a bunch of swindlers and by the city officialdom which kept the fakery going for financial gains. 

Terrace Café at Night belongs to the Kröller-Müller Museum in Holland.  I travelled there partly to see the painting for the first time.  The painting is a glorious clash of blue and yellow.  However, it seems that the news of the demise of the replica has not yet reached the Dutch countryside, the painting label still refers to Place du Forum!  The museum and its art park are magnificent and worth the visit.  The museum was the lifework of German-born Helene Müller (1869-1939) and her Dutch husband Anton Kröller (1862-1941). Their art collection was one of the largest European private collections.  In the mid-1930s, short of funds and therefore unable to build their dream museum, the Kröller-Müller donated their collections to the State, in exchange for the construction of the museum.  The museum opened its doors in 1938.

The WW2 period was both murky and dramatic.  A new biography by Ariette Dekker (The Confident, 2024) shed new light on the activities of the museum’s director’s during the Nazi occupation of Holland.   Sam Van Deventer was an insider, having ingratiated himself with Helene and Anton during two decades, so much that many people regarded the relationship as a kind of ménage à trois.  At the outset of the war, the museum squirrelled away its “entartete art”, (degenerated art) and the most valuable pieces of the collections were stored away in a bombproof shelter large enough to, later on, stockpile art looted from Jewish families.  The appointment of Van Deventer had been at the Nazis’ request and during his short tenure he became an enthusiastic fan of all things Nazi.  Deventer sold three “sexy” Cranach paintings to the people of Germany for their “emotional value”.  The canvases were in fact intended for Hitler and Göring’s collections.  Anton Kröller diverted parts of the German money for his personal needs.

During a post-war investigation, Van Deventer argued a tactical collaboration to preserve the wholeness of the K-M collections.  His enthusiastic compliance to the occupiers’ orders has still not been fully explained. During the ménage à trois period, Van Deventer personally purchased five Van Gogh paintings.  In 1940, he sold The Olive Trees (1889) bought in 1925 for $8000.00, to an anonymous German collector, probably Göring.  After the war, the painting reappeared in Switzerland, and was legally purchased by an American collector, who bequeathed it to MOMA.  Now, it can be lawfully admired at MOMA in NYC. 

Disgraced, Van Deventer lived off the sale of his personal art collections.  After his death in 1972, his two remaining Van Goghs were donated to the K-M museum.  He also had a fake Van Gogh self-portrait.  Was it the work of Han Van Meegeren, the 20^th century Dutch forger supremo? Probably not.

In the mid-1930s, Meegeren was living lavishly on the French Riviera making good money on the back of the ignorant and arrogant Dutch art establishment.  He was selling fake Vermeer paintings of his own making to top museums and renowned collectors.  His final triumph occurred during his 1947 treason trial.  From being a Nazi collaborator punishable by death, overnight he became a national hero for having traded a forged Vermeer to Field-Marshal Göring in exchange for 200 legit Flemish paintings of less prestige.  This theatrical outcome humbled the art establishment and forced it to seriously review its authentication methods.

Hals and Vermeer were rediscovered at about the same time, in the mid-19^th century, and by the same French journalist Théophile Thoré who praised their artistical qualities. Frans Hals was “resurrected” in 1868 and “transformed from a riotous drunk to a modern icon”! As soon as “resurrected”, fakes and forgeries popped up.  Amazingly, portraits painted by Judith Leyster, a Hals’ contemporary became attributed to Hals, his signature painted over that of Leyster.  The frauds were later discovered and Leyster’s work revealed.  Very recently, Sotheby’s, the art auction house requested a $5.38m reimbursement from a seller of an allegedly forged Frans Hals portrait. 

Coming back to Arles, the fake Café is still close and tourist traffic has considerably decreased on Place du Forum.  In compensation, Vincent’s famed canvas Starry Night over the Rhône is on loan to the city for the first time.  Vincent admitted to have been more impressed by the yellow reflection of the new gas lighting than the stars!