Bamboozling Ourselves, Part 7

By Errol Morris

This is the final installment of “Bamboozling Ourselves.” Read the rest of the series.

A Tale of Three Locations

Amsterdam City Archives Goudstikker business card.

Herengracht 458.

A sumptuous urban palace, Herengracht 458 was built at the time Vermeer was painting real Vermeers. The building was acquired by Jacques Goudstikker in 1927 and outfitted with period rooms – furniture, decorative arts, textiles, sculptures and, most significantly, paintings – Gothic, Italian Renaissance and Old Dutch. It became an amazing museum-like showcase for art. The Goudstikker family had been shaping the art world of Amsterdam for three generations. Goudstikker’s grandfather, Jacob, his father, Eduard, and then Jacques, who joined the firm as a young man in 1919.

He was one of the first dealers to have a thorough education in art history. From the moment he entered the family business, Jacques Goudstikker combined serious scholarship with a keen sense of how to market and promote art. This was reflected in his elaborate catalogues – his were some of the first to use photography extensively. They became the authoritative sources for art historical knowledge in Holland. He provided an entire discourse on why people living in modern homes should include at least one Dutch master: “It’s craziness to believe that a modern human being should live between bicycle tubes and dental instruments.”

At his country estate, Nyenrode, he created tableaux vivants with his wife and other guests, a living version of the paintings in his collections. For Jacques Goudstikker, his art collections were very much alive.

Left, Amsterdam City Archives; right, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

There is a photograph of Goudstikker and Queen Wilhelmina in 1929 at an exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. In the next few years, he would mount shows in major cities throughout Europe and America. Despite the decline of the Dutch economy, Goudstikker’s business continued to thrive.

Amsterdam City Archives: Goudstikker and Queen Wilhelmina.

And then, in 1940, at the age of 43, Jacques Goudstikker was dead. In many ways, the story is very simple. He was a victim of the Nazis, though he was not killed in a Nazi concentration camp.

When I first read the details of Goudstikker’s death, I suspected some sort of foul play. But the story seems even worse. Bad luck, an absurd sequence of events that no single individual could ever hope to control – his desperate attempts to flee Amsterdam; the bombing of the cargo ship that was taking him, his wife and infant son across the English Channel to safety; the refusal of the authorities to allow them (or any of the other Jewish émigrés) to disembark at Dover; and his accidental death in the middle of the night en route to Liverpool. The family was crowded together with many refugees in the hold of the ship. The baby was crying, and Goudstikker went up on deck. The rest is conjecture. The deck listing in heavy seas, the black night, the open hatch. . .

Read the rest of this installment at the NYTimes.com>