Van Gogh’s lost sketch book? Art world divided over new find
Historian claims ledger of 65 sketches given to café owners is by artist but experts dispute quality
A LOST sketch book containing 65 drawings purportedly by Van Gogh has been discovered 130 years after he used it to perfect some of his most famous works, it has been claimed.
However, the announcement by Prof Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov has caused a row in the art world.
An art historian and professor emirate of the art department at the University of Toronto, she believes she has found a ledger of lost works which passed from Van Gogh’s home in Arles to its current owner without anyone realising its significance.
In an announcement billed as a “truly momentous discovery”, she yesterday told the art world she would be publishing the 65 sketches for the first time, after working for three years to verify their authenticity.
But the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam argued the sketches were not by the artist, calling them mere “imitations” containing topographical errors, strange provenance and none of his characteristic style.
Prof Welsh-Ovcharov said the find is “like discovering a new tomb in Egypt”, and would allow the public to re-examine what they knew about Van Gogh by glimpsing over his shoulder into his working process for some of his famous scenes of sunflowers, haystacks and almond blossom.
The ledger is said to have been given to Van Gogh by the owners of a café near his home in Arles. It was later returned to the Ginoux family, filled with sketches, in May 1890, according to a notebook apparently also from the Café de la Gare.
The book is said to have passed to a niece, who died in 1927, when it was then left in the nearby Yellow House, where the artist once lived. It was given to the current owner on her 20th birthday. Prof Welsh-Ovcharov said the family had admired the drawings but did not know who they were by until a friend suggested taking them to a professional.
She said that the owner, whom she is not naming, was so unprepared for the revelation that she may have Van Gogh works in her possession that she happily tore pages out of the book to show the experts.
The 65 pictures, including a self-portrait, will be published for the first time in a 288-page book called Vincent Van Gogh, the fog of Arles: the rediscovered sketch book.
If real, they make up the eighth Van Gogh sketch book in existence, four of which are in the Amsterdam museum.
The Van Gogh Museum said: “The Van Gogh Museum has been aware for some time of the album of drawings that is now being presented as a lost Arles sketch book by Vincent van Gogh.” It said the museum’s researchers and curators gave the opinion that the drawings could not be attributed to Vincent van Gogh.
In particular, they alleged that there were questions over the ink and the story that its owners did not realise it was by the artist, and that there were mistakes in the landscape.
Another expert, Martin Bailey, author of Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence, said: “I would advise caution in attributing the sketch book to Van Gogh.” However, Prof Welsh-Ovcharov is supported by Ron Pickvance, a scholar who has written numerous papers on Van Gogh. The book is published in English by Abrams & Chronicle Books.