New production debuting at San Antonio's Overtime Theater deals in art, intrigue

Born in the Netherlands in 1889, Han van Meegeren aspired to be recognized as a great painter but got pigeonholed for his obsession with bygone eras, specifically the Dutch Golden Age. After finding limited success with his nostalgia-fueled originals, he began forging works by 17th-century masters including Johannes Vermeer. As part of his practice, van Meegeren purchased 17th-century canvases, made his own brushes from badger fur, mixed paints using period-specific formulas and “aged” his finished works hundreds of years by coating them with phenol formaldehyde resin and cracking them with a rolling pin.