‘Lost’ van Gogh sketches disputed
Canadian art historian’s discovery under harsh scrutiny from Amsterdam-based authority on artist’s work
A Canadian art historian’s discovery of a 126-year-old sketchbook purported to be the lost work of beloved painter Vincent van Gogh is being dismissed as fake by the Netherlands’ Van Gogh Museum, the world’s foremost authority on the artist’s life and work.
Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, a retired professor of art history at the University of Toronto, released her findings on Tuesday, claiming the book to be the work of the Dutch artist, made during his most fertile period in the south of France.
Accompanying the announcement, she released a book, Vincent van Gogh: The Lost Arles Sketchbook, detailing her three years of work authenticating the drawings. By initial accounts published in two Canadian media outlets Tuesday morning, Welsh-Ovcharov appears to have authenticated the sketchbook independently, but in apparent defiance of the museum’s own conclusions.
Nearly simultaneously on Tuesday, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam issued a statement discrediting Welsh-Ovcharov’s claims about the sketchbook, calling the drawings it contained “monotonous, clumsy and spiritless,” and almost certainly fraudulent.
In the statement, the museum said it had been aware of the alleged lost sketchbook as far back as 2008, and had since examined it for its authenticity. It concluded that the work, in full, contains only “imitations of van Gogh’s drawings.”
The museum alleges its conclusions were deliberately excluded from the publication.
“Because our earlier opinion about the drawings is not included in Vincent van Gogh: The Lost Arles Sketchbook, the Van Gogh Museum is presenting the above information to the public,” it said.
That the historian, a well-regarded van Gogh scholar, would proceed in the face of the museum’s assessment took some experts by surprise.
“They are the ones that have all that knowledge, so I’m very surprised,” said Anabelle Kienle Ponka, associate curator of European art at the National Gallery of Canada, who curated the 2012 exhibition Van Gogh Up Close. “She has done great work in the past, but to ignore that assessment is very strange.”
Welsh-Ovcharov entered the process of the sketchbook’s authentication relatively late, in 2013, almost five years after the museum had dismissed its veracity, according to a CBC story. On a trip to France, she was asked by a local art historian to examine the sketches. Though initially dubious, Welsh-Ovcharov became quickly convinced of the works’ authenticity.
The book was said to have been returned to the owners of a café in Arles that Van Gogh frequented by the doctor who treated his self-amputated ear. But the museum disputed this alleged provenance, stating it was inconsistent with all timelines and biographies it had established in its archives.
The museum alleges a litany of inconsistencies, including the materials used (van Gogh, in all documented drawings from the period the book is alleged to cover, never used brown ink, as in the disputed works) and the scenes and artifacts sketched (several buildings, which van Gogh himself observed and sketched over the years, are incorrectly represented, as though drawn by someone “not very familiar with the places depicted”).
It concludes that the notebook comes from “an unreliable source” and rejects its authenticity outright. It reached this conclusion, it said, based on consultation with its internal team of experts with decades’ worth of experience and research on the Dutch artist’s life and output.
Welsh-Ovcharov has curated van Gogh exhibitions at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and published previous books on the artist as well.
She also served as a guest curator for the Art Gallery of Ontario’s current Mystical Landscapes exhibition, which includes two works by van Gogh. Katharine Lochnan, the gallery’s senior curator of international exhibitions, declined to comment Tuesday.
Welsh-Ovcharov has yet to respond to the Van Gogh Museum’s allegation. The Toronto Star has attempted to contact her through the University of Toronto. The university said she was in Paris attending a launch event for the new book.
Kienle Ponka, meanwhile, is reserving judgment until she can see the book for herself.
“Van Gogh produces such excitement — he’s very seductive,” she said. “At the same time we have to be cautious and question everything.”