Arthur Wheelock on Vermeer | New York Studio School

Описание: Fall 2025 Evening Lecture Series: Arthur Wheelock Jr. "The 'Van Meegeren Affair' and its Impact on our Understanding of Vermeer" recorded on December 3, 2025. This lecture is generously supported by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

The “Van Meegeren Affair” concerns the trial of Han van Meegeren in 1947 where he successfully argued that he had not sold priceless Vermeer paintings to the Nazis, but, instead had duped them into buying forgeries that he had painted. During the trial, it was shown that he had also painted The Supper at Emmaus, a painting that the Museum Boymans had recently purchased as a Vermeer.

This talk discusses how these revelations shocked the Dutch public and the art-historical establishment, which resulted in scholars reassessing Vermeer’s oeuvre and rejecting works that they had previously attributed to the master. One such painting was Vermeer’s Girl with the Red Hat, in the National Gallery of Art, and another was Young Woman Seated at a Virginal, in The Leiden Collection. Another consequence was the reluctance to accept newly discovered Vermeer paintings, such as St. Praxedis, now in a Japanese collection.

Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. is Senior Advisor to The Leiden Collection. He is former curator of Northern Baroque painting at the National Gallery of Art and Professor of Art History at the University of Maryland. Wheelock, who oversaw a significant expansion of the Gallery’s collection of Dutch and Flemish paintings, has published extensively, including catalogues of the Dutch and Flemish paintings in the National Gallery, and in The Leiden Collection. Art and Life in Rembrandt’s Time, a major exhibition of paintings from the Leiden Collection, is currently on view at the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach.

Wheelock has organized over fifty international loan exhibitions over the course of his career, both thematic shows such as Gods, Saints, & Heroes (1980), Rembrandt’s Late Religious Portraits (2005); and Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age (2009); but also monographic ones, including Anthony van Dyck; Jan Steen; Aelbert Cuyp; Jan Lievens; and Gerard ter Borch. He has studied Vermeer’s extensively, and not only organized the Vermeer exhibition of 1995, but also Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting, and Johannes Vermeer: On Reflection.

Wheelock holds numerous distinctions, among them being named Knight Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau by the Dutch government and Commander in The Order of Leopold I by the Belgian government. He also received the Bicentennial Medal and the Kellogg Award for lifetime achievement from Williams College; the Centennial Medal from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University; and the honorary degree of Doctor of Art from Dickenson College.

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