While rummaging through Dad’s papers for items to archive to picstory.net (yes, there is still much more to discover), I found some pages of “Het Kompas”, a newspaper from August 1945, originally 32 pages long. Unfortunately only the wrap-around pages survive.
It was the peacetime version of a second World War underground news sheet. It’s clear why Dad kept this copy, the front page is all about the famous forger of Vermeer’s paintings, Han van Meegeren, who had recently been arrested.
Ref. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_van_Meegeren
Why was this of interest to Dad (Jo Coomans)? As the story goes, he found occasional work during the war by copying valuable paintings, so owners could store the original away. The painting below is one of these copies, supposedly returned to him after the war.
Also, immediately after the war, he worked for a short time with an entrepreneur who sold souvenir paintings to the liberating troops, the usual windmill/canal views. So the controversy about van Meegeren and his Vermeer-like paintings would have been of interest to a budding painter like Jo.
Anyway… the remaining pages of the newspaper are just as interesting, read on…
