 He was the son of Augusta Louisa Henrietta Camps and Hendrikus Johannes van Meegeren, a French and history teacher at the Kweekschool (training college for schoolteachers) in the city of Deventer.Early on, Han felt neglected and misunderstood by his father, as the elder van Meegeren strictly forbade his artistic development and constantly derided him.His father often forced him to write a hundred times, "I know nothing, I am nothing, I am capable of nothing."