I Was Vermeer: The Rise and Fall of the Twentieth Century's Greatest Forger

New York: Bloomsbury, 2006. x, 276 pages, [8] pages of plates, illustrations (some colour); 22 cm. Tight, clean copy. Stated First U.S. Edition. Dust jacket price-clipped on the front flap. "Frank Wynne's remarkable book tells the story of Han van Meegeren, a paranoid, drug-addicted, second-rate painter whose Vermeer forgeries made him a secret superstar of the art worldand along the way, it reveals the collusion and ego that, even today, allow art forgery to thrive. During van Meegeren's heyday as a forger of Vermeers, he earned 50 million dollars, the acclamation of the world's press, and the satisfaction of swindling the Nazis. His canvases were so nearly authentic that they would almost certainly be prized among the catalogue of Vermeers if he had not confessed. And, no doubt, he never would have confessed at all if he hadnt been trapped in a catch-22: he had thrived so noticably during the war that when it ended, he was quickly arrested as a Nazi collaborator. His only defense was to admit that he himself had painted the remarkable 'Vermeers' that had passed through his hands--a confession the public refused to believe, until, in a huge media event, the courts staged the public painting of what would be van Meegeren's last 'Vermeer.' I Was Vermeer is an utterly gripping real-life mystery, capturing both the life of the consummate art forger, phenomenally skilled and yet necessarily unrecognized, and the equally fascinating work of the experts who identify forgeries and track down their perpetrators. Wry, amoral, irreverent, and plotted like a thriller, it is the first major book in forty years on this astonishing episode in history. / Frank Wynne is a writer and award-winning literary translator. Born in Ireland he has lived and worked in Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Buenos Aires and currently lives in San Jose, Costa Rica. He has translated more than a dozen major novels, among them the works of Michel Houellebecq, Fre;de;ric Beigbeder, Pierre Me;rot and the Ivorian novelist Ahmadou Kourouma. A journalist and broadcaster, he has written for the Sunday Times, the Independent, the Irish Times, Melody Maker, and Time Out." - Publisher.. 1st.. Hardcover. Fine/Very Good. 8vo.