Fake paintings of Van Gogh

[LCR]

fake Van Gogh paintings

Buying Japanese insurance magnate Yasuo Goto van gogovskih "Fourteen Sunflowers" for shareholders Christie's in 1987 for a record price of $ 40 million has caused a huge scandal.

Throughout his life, Van Gogh sold only one work, "Red Vineyard, for 400 francs. Pere Tanguy sold his "Irises" for 30 francs. Shortly after the death of his brother, Theo van Gogh, organized a retrospective of paintings by Vincent in his apartment in Montmartre. Critics, including Albert Ore and Octave Mirbeau, discovered the talent of the artist, but Theo, who went mad and died of syphilis a few months later, nothing is earned on the ever-increasing popularity of his brother. His wife Johanna inherited 550 paintings, several hundred pictures and the vast amount of unsigned and undated letters of the artist, with whom she had known for five days.

Читать дальше... 

The first collector of Van Gogh became Marchand Vollar Ambroise, who began to seek out and buy all the paintings donated by the artist for life. He bought the works of Van Gogh's family and Ruhlen's heirs Tang, but he could not buy a canvas, owned by Arthur Gustave Ravou, the owner of the tavern in Auvers-sur-Oise, who sold the portrait of his daughter Adeline and landscape "City Hall on July 14 "In 1890, U.S. buyers. In 1896 - between the exhibitions of Gauguin and Cezanne - Vollar organized the first exhibition of Van Gogh. In 1901 an exhibition at the Bernheim-Jeune, Jr., that caused the admiration of young hudlozhnikov - Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck ...

In 1905 was organized a large retrospective of Van Gogh Museum Stedelijk. In 1909, "Sunflowers" was sold in a Paris gallery Drouet for 35000 francs, and on 24 February "Pere Tanguy" reached at the auctioned price of 20,200 francs. It soon became clear that the search for lost works of Van Gogh - a very profitable business, and falsiikatory went to work. Already at the exhibition held in 1928, were exhibited half wet paintings van Gogh. Marchand Otto Wacker show 30 unknown works by the artist, supposedly comes from the collection of a mysterious Russian kollktsionera.

Jean-Baptiste de La Fall, author of the only to date the union catalog of Van Gogh, published a book on forged works of the artist. He pointed out that falsifmkatory choose a well-known stories, described by Van Gogh in his letters, or invent new models of his Paris period.

Claude-Emile Shuffeneker, a minor artist of the Pont-Aven, where he met Gauguin, became one of the first rigged the van Gogh. He was assisted by his brother Amede, broker and trader in the art, as well as critic and businessman paintings Julien Leclercq. First Shuffeneker retouching originals, and then he began to make copies of them, which his brother, and Johanna LeClair represented as originals, and asked her to exchange them for belonging to her originals. Thus, these copies were in the hands of the heirs, which contributed to the fact that the art market acknowledged their originals. It seems that the "Sunflowers" sold at Christie's Japanese art collector, director of the firm Yasuda, belong to the "Van Gogh" a more than dubious origin.

Probably one of the two versions of "Garden Dobbin" - "one of my favorite paintings - van Gogh wrote to his brother about this film, written shortly before his suicide, is a forgery. Letters to the artist shows that he wrote only one landscape of this park in Auvers. The painting, housed in Basel, on the lawn shows the cat on the other, located in Hiroshima, cat no. Critic Benoit Lande, who believes that the Basel fabric - fake, claims that Shuffeneker, which for some time had access to a picture stored in Japan, "corrected" her by removing her from the cat. He supports his opinion with a quotation from a letter Van Gogh, in which the artist refers to a cat in the picture, and even brings her picture. The widow of Theo believed forgers and agreed that Van Gogh wrote two versions of "Garden Dobbin."

In 1992, the "Garden at Auvers," brought to their owners (the family Walter), put it does not sell, to 200 million francs. 55 million of this amount was paid to the banker, Jean-Marc Verny, who became its new owner, and 145 million - by French taxpayers. The state has announced it is the product of a national treasure, to prohibit the export of its abroad, thus offsetting the family of Walter inadequate price at which the cloth was sold as a result of the prohibition of exportation. This frantszskaya administration believes that the state has got off lightly, because before this ban, experts evaluated the work of 320 million francs. In turn, bought her banker promised that after his death, she will become the property of the French state on account of payment of inheritance taxes.
But soon the picture attributed Shuffenekeru. In 1998, the heirs Verne put this picture up for auction, but buyers it was not. Administration of the Museums of France, which has had the opportunity to buy this work literally for pennies, abstained.

The fact that experts have found many strange details. The choice is almost vertical angle, no horizon line, is very unusual for Van Gogh. It is doubtful, and tight contours of oval flower beds, and the use puantellisticheskoy technology, which the artist has ceased to use for two years before the official inception of this picture. Some experts now tend to believe that Shuffeneker wrote this now, using belonged to his two works - "Garden Dobin" Van Gogh and "Memoirs of a garden at Etten" Gauguin.

The second version of the famous portrait of Dr. Gachet, which is stored in the Museum d'Orsay, which in the letters of the artist there is absolutely no mention, is very questionable authorship. Jean-Marie Tass, the critic in Le Figaro, which we are obliged to identify inconsistencies in the "Garden at Auvers, I am confident that this work is a fake, as well as the Van Gogh self-portrait from the collection of the Metropolitan in New York.

Tass and Lande also argue that sold at Christie's «Fourteen Sunflowers" is a mediocre copy, made Shuffenekerom on the basis of two works of Van Gogh, now kept in London and Amsterdam. Letters census of property, information about sold Johanna works - all confirm this hypothesis. Zhyudit Gerard, a young artist and one of Gauguin's girlfriend, testified that she saw as Shuffeneker took the picture of Van Gogh, which were painted sunflowers. The catalog La Fall stated that "Fourteen Sunflowers" belonged Shuffenekeru. This picture was not included in the first census was made by Johan. But Christie's, based on the research of art historians, published in recent years, tried to rewrite history and claimed that this picture is part of the inheritance of the artist.

Already in 1993, the Italian scholar Antonio de Robertis published a study in which he came to the conclusion that this work is written not by Van Gogh, and Shuffenekerom. But this view has gone unnoticed. Benoit Lande confirmed that the painting sold in London - nothing like a mediocre copy of the work from the collection of London Natsionalonoy Galleries, and that there exists at least a dozen obvious stylistic errors. At the same time, the Van Gogh Museum, which has expertise in this work, received from Mr. Goto as a gift to 102 million to build a new wing.

According to some experts, from seven hundred works attributed to Van Gogh, more than a hundred are fakes. In order to ascertain the authenticity of the collection, which inherited the Musée d'Orsay, the research laboratory at the museum administration French produced an analysis of eight paintings by Cezanne, eight paintings Int Gogh, eight copies of Dr. Gachet, his father and eleven copies of Blanche Derus.
Examination copies of "Modern Olympia" Gachet's father, which he borrowed from Cézanne at the time of execution copies, identified the quality of the counterfeiter of Dr. Gachet. Sravnitelnyy radiographic analysis of a sketch by Cezanne and copies made by Dr. Gachet, showed that the technique of Dr. Gachet was very primitive - he painted his model before the "paint" it - and quite different from the techniques of Cezanne, who once wrote on a canvas. X-rays revealed that Cezanne used only brushes, whereas we used Gachet and spatula. This examination revealed that copies of Dr. Gachet instantly identifiable.

Subject drugoggo studies were copies of works by Van Gogh painted Gachet commissioned artist Blanche Deruss to make an inventory of its own works of Van Gogh. This study found that, to achieve the effect of roughness and topography, Blanche Deruss rubbed and scratched the paper.

Paolo Kadorin, restorer of the Basel Museum, noticed that some paint on the canvases of Van Gogh withered. He noted that the edges of the work, protected from sunlight, windows, red paint is much brighter than in the open part of the paintings. Chemist Laboratories Museums of France, Jean-Paul Liu, came to the same conclusion by analyzing the picture of "Two Girls" and "Portrait of Doctor Gachet". Roses, written in the first of these works, very pale or completely disappeared, and purple colors were faded and became withered beige hue. On the second branch of the work that Dr. Gachet holds in his hand, blue, and the Van Gogh wrote to his brother that he wrote them in purple.

Chemical analysis of some of the pigments revealed that to make a special deep red color, Van Gogh used lacquer geraniums containing eosin. This feature, unfortunately, destroyed by light, is present in all works written in Auvers-sur-Oise between May and July 1890 Red paint in watercolors Blanche Deruss has not changed, which proves that Dr Gachet was not going to produce counterfeit, otherwise he would have ensured its kopiistku Blanche Deruss necessary materials, as he knew, what pigments are used Van Gogh.

Radiographic analysis also revealed that at the end of life, Van Gogh almost exclusively used the canvas asimmmetrichnogo weaving in the 12 x 18 threads per square centimeter. Son of Dr. Gachet, signed his copy of the pseudonym Louis van Rissel, used cardboard about 20 x 20 threads per square centimeter. He could also buy their materials from the supplier of Van Gogh, Tasso and Lot in Paris. However, there is no certainty that he knew where supplied negruntovanny canvas, which sent Theo. Other discoveries: after painting, Van Gogh, dried it, laying under the bed to the other canvases. Therefore, on the reverse side of some paintings traces of paint still not completely dried out paintings to which they were placed. Gachet was working in his attic, on the easel, and painting were drying in the same position. This proves that the hypothesis that the father and son forged Gachet, Van Gogh, is untrue.