Art authentication can be a tricky byplay . Seasoned experts can be befool by counterfeit or overleap important clues that could cement the penning of a particular piece . At stake : report of museum and meg of dollars .
The artistic creation world ’s latest controversy arrived Tuesday , when two striking scholars of Post - impressionistic artist Vincent van Goghdeclaredthat a 65 - varlet sketchbook pass down as a family heirloom in France was once owned by the uni - dog-eared Felis concolor .
Amsterdam ’s Van Gogh Museum , however , provoke back with anopen letterclaiming the sketch pad was not the actual article . Using their library of more than 500 van Gogh drawings as a reference , museum staff member wrote that the exemplification are n’t indicative of the artist ’s development circa 1888 and that the brown ink used was discrepant with his druthers of black or purple ink .
It ’s believed that van Gogh give the proprietor of a hotel in Arles , France with the sketchbook after he had been remanded to a genial institution after slice off his pinna ; van Gogh had asked his doctor , Felix Rey , to pass it along to the Ginouxs , who welcomed the creative person as their node and had given him a book of account in which to draw . The museum indicate that Rey had result Arles by then and had never issue forth to gossip him .
One of the assimilator plump for the workplace as genuine , Bogomila Welsh - Ovcharov , is a highly - respected van Gogh expert who has just egress a book titledVincent van Gogh : The Lost Arles Sketchbook , have commentary and reproduction of select illustrations . Welsh - Ovcharov spent three years research the sketches after discovering them in 2013 . The account book , she said , was in the Ginoux household for decades before it come into the possession of a neighbour , who was unaware of its significance . The neighbor ’s girl thought piddling of it until a admirer suggested she show it to an art historian .
Welsh - Ovcharov maintains that an entry in the hotel ’s 1890 date book supports her version of events . In it , an employee of the Ginouxs wrote : “ Monsieur Doctor Rey left for M. and Mme . Ginoux from the painter Van Goghe [ sic ] some empty Olea europaea boxes and a bundle of checked towels as well as a magnanimous book of drawings and apologizes for the hold . ”
[ h / tThe New York Times ]
