JOSEPH VAN DER VEKEN (Antwerp 1872 – Brussels 1964)
A Pair of Donor Panels
oil on panel
20 ¼ x 8 ½ inches each (51.5 x 21.6 cm.)
WHO FOOLED GOERING AND IS PART OF THE GHENT ALTARPIECE?
Pablo Picasso is often credited as saying “good artists borrow, great artists steal”. The suggestion is that while great art alters its source material, lesser art relies on imitation. But then, a counterfeit good enough to fool the experts is in a category of its own. Perhaps that is why forgeries hold such allure and disdain at the same time. Are they artists to be respected for their work or criminals to be shunned and dismissed?
Josephus (Jef) Maria Van der Veken was born in Antwerp in 1872. His parents operated a porcelain wares business and after a series of events including the death of his father and living for a time in an orphanage, Van der Veken apprenticed as a decorator, eventually specialising in painting imitations of wood and marble. He then took additional free classes at the Antwerp Academy of Arts including a drawing class where he was best in his class. Possibly in search of inspiration, he began to draw and paint meticulous copies of Old Masters. This caught the attention of antique dealers who – at first – bought his work as props in their shops. Van der Veken learned that some of his work was being passed off as authentic, decided to become a dealer himself. Along with an unknown business partner, he sold Old Master copies and old objects, provided expertise, executed restorations and offered to draw up inventories of estates. Judging from records, it was a successful business many with international clients until the start of WWI.
With his business in disarray, Van der Veken took a new tact. He started doing what would eventually be termed ‘hyper-restoration.’ He was taking degraded or ruined panels that he had purchased cheaply and creating partial fakes by scraping much of the original off, and repainting it, leaving minor parts of the original composition. He also often ‘enhanced’ anonymous works by giving them the look and feel of a specific master. These talents would bring him all sorts of notoriety in the coming years.
Sometime prior to WWII, Van der Veken also became acquainted with Émile Renders, a banker and art collector. Renders became well-known for his outstanding collection of 15th century Flemish Masters which he was actively building. In 1941, Renders sold 20 works from his collection to Hermann Goering for 300kg of gold. It was only after the war that it came to light that Renders was buying damaged or ruined panels and Van der Veken was performing his ‘hyper-restoration’ on them-thus selling Goering a pile of likely forgeries! Much of which came to light after many of the works were returned to the Belgian state.
Separately, in 1934, the lower left panel of the Ghent Altarpiece of The Just Judges was stolen and never recovered. Van der Veken was always suspected of being involved in the theft and was continuously interviewed while always proclaiming his innocence. But, in 1940 the Nazis stole the entire Altarpiece, which was recovered in 1945, returned to Ghent, but still missing the lower left panel. Such was his reputation, that although being suspected in stealing the original, Van der Veken was commissioned to paint a replica of the still missing panel, for which he did.
Van der Veken’s panel remains on view as part of the Ghent Altarpiece, the original never being recovered. Hanging next to what is a masterpiece of European art and one of the world’s treasures, it is hard to challenge his talent. In his lifetime, he was regarded as one of the most skilled restorers of Netherlandish painting of the 15th and 16th centuries and spent a large part of his career serving as senior conservator of the Musée des Beaux- Arts, Brussels. His restoration techniques were often controversial, but his experiments, systemic investigations and photographic documentation were ground breaking in the field.
So, is Van der Veken considered a ‘great artist’ by Picasso’s definition? Critics have claimed that a forger has technical talent but lacks creativity. But who deems someone to be creative? Richard Prince is deemed ‘creative’ by appropriating other’s work and adding a comment. Maybe Van der Veken would be doing the same? It is suspected that many of Van der Veken’s works still hang in great collections around the world, side by side with original masters, still undetected by current scholars. Could Picasso have been on to something?
31 August 2022