Henricus Antonius "Han" van Meegeren was a Dutch painter and portraitist, considered one of the most ingenious art forgers of the 20th century. Van Meegeren became a national hero after World War II when it was revealed that he had sold a forged painting to Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
Mentmore Towers, historically known simply as "Mentmore", is a 19th-century English country house built between 1852 and 1854 for the Rothschild family in the village of Mentmore in Buckinghamshire. Sir Joseph Paxton and his son-in-law, George Henry Stokes, designed the building in the 19th-century revival of late 16th and early 17th-century Elizabethan and Jacobean styles called Jacobethan. The house was designed for the banker and collector of fine art Baron Mayer de Rothschild as a country home, and as a display case for his collection of fine art. The mansion has been described as one of the greatest houses of the Victorian era. Mentmore was inherited by Hannah Primrose, Countess of Rosebery, née Rothschild, and owned by her descendants, the Earls of Rosebery.
Thomas Patrick Keating (1917–1984) was an English artist, art restorer and art forger. Considered the most prolific and versatile art forger of the 20th century, he claimed to have faked more than two thousand paintings by over a hundred and fifty different artists. Total estimated profits from his forgeries amount in today's value to more than (US) ten million dollars.
Rembrandt Peale was an American artist and museum keeper. A prolific portrait painter, he was especially acclaimed for his likenesses of presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Peale's style was influenced by French neoclassicism after a stay in Paris in his early thirties.
Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq, also known as The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch, but commonly referred to as The Night Watch, is a 1642 painting by Rembrandt van Rijn. It is in the collection of the Amsterdam Museum but is prominently displayed in the Rijksmuseum as the best-known painting in its collection. The Night Watch is one of the most famous Dutch Golden Age paintings. Rembrandt's large painting is famed for transforming a group portrait of a civic guard company into a compelling drama energized by light and shadow (tenebrism). The title is a misnomer; the painting does not depict a nocturnal scene.
Art forgery is the creation and sale of works of art which are falsely credited to other, usually more famous artists. Art forgery can be extremely lucrative, but modern dating and analysis techniques have made the identification of forged artwork much simpler.
John Myatt,, is a British artist convicted of art forgery who, with John Drewe, perpetrated what has been described as "the biggest art fraud of the 20th century". After his conviction, Myatt was able to continue profiting from his forgery career through his creation of "genuine fakes".
Otto Wacker (1898–1970) was a German art dealer who became infamous for commissioning and selling forgeries of paintings by Vincent van Gogh. He had gained a good reputation in the 1920s after false starts in various other professions. Since the end of World War II, he lived in East Berlin. A study of his life and times has been written by Modris Eksteins.
National Museum Cardiff is a museum and art gallery in Cardiff, Wales. The museum is part of the wider network of Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales. Entry is kept free by a grant from the Welsh Government.
Nightwatching is a 2007 film about the artist Rembrandt and the creation of his 1642 painting The Night Watch. The film is directed by Peter Greenaway and stars Martin Freeman as Rembrandt, with Eva Birthistle as his wife Saskia van Uylenburg, Jodhi May as his lover Geertje Dircx, and Emily Holmes as his other lover Hendrickje Stoffels. Reinier van Brummelen is the director of photography. James Willcock, known for his esoteric sets, is the art director.
Wilhelm von Bode was a German art historian and museum curator. Born Arnold Wilhelm Bode in Calvörde, and known as Wilhelm Bode for most of his career, he was ennobled in 1913, and thereafter adopted the aristocratic "von". He was the creator and first curator of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, now called the Bode Museum in his honor, in 1904.
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art. It is estimated Rembrandt produced a total of about three hundred paintings, three hundred etchings, and two thousand drawings.
Ernst van de Wetering was a Dutch art historian and an expert on Rembrandt and his work.
Anthony Gene Tetro, known as Tony Tetro, is an art forger known for his perfectionism in copies of artwork produced in the 1970s and 1980s. Tetro never received formal art lessons, but learned from books, by painting and experimentation. Over three decades, Tetro forged works by Rembrandt, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí and Norman Rockwell and others. Tetro's paintings and lithographs, known for their perfectionism, were sold by art dealers and auction houses as legitimate works and hang in museums, galleries around the world. He was caught after Hiro Yamagata found a forgery of his own work for sale in a gallery.
Geertje Dircx was the lover of Rembrandt van Rijn after the death of his wife Saskia. She was hired as a nurse to the painter's son Titus, but lived with Rembrandt as his lover for several years. The relationship broke up acrimoniously, leading to a lengthy court-case for "breach of promise", in which she claimed maintenance from Rembrandt. On Rembrandt's initiative, she was eventually imprisoned in a workhouse on charges of having descended into a life of loose morals. After her release she made attempts to sue Rembrandt for wrongful imprisonment.
The Spanish Forger is the name given to an unidentified individual who, in the late 19th to early 20th century, created a large number of forgeries of medieval miniatures.
Ma Jir Bo or Ma Jiabao was a Chinese realism artist and oil painter. Ma is praised for his great portraitures, highly realistic texture-feeling still lifes and memory-rekindling landscapes of Hong Kong all that made him a leading oil painter of his era. Ma is regarded as 'the legacy of Classic Western Masters in the East'. During his career, he created roughly 300 oil paintings, some 50 watercolours, as well as some traditional Chinese ink paintings and Chinese calligraphies.
Pierre Grassou is an 1839 short story by French author Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) and included in the Scènes de la vie privee section of his novel sequence La Comédie humaine.
The Preacher Eleazar Swalmius is a 1637 oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch artist Rembrandt. It is currently owned by the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp. The painting has been certified a real Rembrandt. The painting was listed in 1727 in the catalog of the Duke of Orléans collection, as a portrait of an Amsterdam mayor by Rembrandt. It remained in the noble family's possession until 1792, when Duke Louis-Philippe-Joseph sold the entire collection to finance his political career and pay off debts. The painting passed through several English collections into the hands of the Bourgeois brothers, art dealers from Cologne, who sold the painting as an original Rembrandt to the museum in 1886. The painting was stored away for a long time due to doubts cast over its authenticity.
