Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
De la Faille
asked him about the provenance and was told they were from the collec-
tion of a refugee who had settled in Switzerland, a Russian nobleman who
feared reprisals would be taken against his family and therefore wished to
remain anonymous. De la Faille had already heard the story from Wacker
himself, but Wacker refused to provide him with any further details. It
sounded plausible: thousands of Russian refugees had fled to the capitals
of Europe after the Bolshevik revolution. Moreover, art dealers were not
unaccustomed to maintaining owner anonymity, since competitors could
easily draw from the same source. Owners in turn could require discre-
tion because of inheritance questions, taxes, or security. But there was one
aspect of Wackers story that could be checked. He had told De la Faille
that according to the Russian the paintings, about ,c in all, had been part
of the collection of Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. De la Faille made inquiries
with Engineer Van Gogh. The Engineer wrote him in March :,: to say
that he had checked his mothers papers, and apparently there had never
been a sale of that number of paintings to any one dealer or collector, let
alone a Russian nobleman.
,
A Real Van Gogh.indd 46 29-5-2010 15:23:55
iaxi vax cocus ;
De la Faille was shocked. He did not doubt Wackers good faith and
thought Wacker had been the victim of fraud. How could he himself, the
Van Gogh expert, have been so wrong? The press would later contend that
he and Wacker were in collusion, since he had written certificates of au-
thenticity for the canvases. De la Faille thought the criticism was unde-
served. He argued that every expert received a fee for writing certificates of
authenticity, and that colleagues resented him for charging so little, namely
:, guilders.
,c
He was also accused of having had a financial interest in the
sale of the Wacker Van Goghs: it was said that he was paid for putting the
paintings on sale. He had issued certificates of authenticity for :: Wacker
paintings, but the sources do not tell us which transactions he had had a
role in or what his profit or commission had been. According to his own
statement made in :,,:, he had sold three Wacker paintings in the Neth-
erlands in early :,: for ,,ccc guilders but had bought them back after
having been convinced that they were spurious.
,:
Had De la Faille been blinded by the temptation of money or the prospect
of prot or commission? He himself said that initially he had felt some hesi-
tancy about the Wacker paintings when he was working on the catalogue:
As soon as I saw the paintings I felt doubt enter my heart. But as so often
happens, one examines the canvases more closely and analyzes them, and if
they are not blatant forgeries one reasons the doubt away. On top of that, I
did not see the paintings side by side but in succession, and with rather long
intervals in between, so I could not compare them with each other.
,:
Te
idea that his Van Gogh catalogue contained forged works was terrible, he
said, because I had devoted years of my life to that eort. But it was my
duty to make my mistake known. After all, art dealers and purchasers use
books like this as advisors ... and I dont want to be a poor advisor!
,,
Was his judgment inuenced by commercial considerations? I am inclined
to answer that question with a yes, albeit a weak one, since there are no
good sources to back me up. Needless to say, De la Faille did not know he had
been dealing with forged work. His behavior after January :,:, however, is
unambiguous proof of his desire to rectify the errors he had made concerning
the Wacker Van Goghs and his willingness to retract his judgment.
After the incident at the Cassirer gallery in January :,:, De la Faille
wanted to study all the paintings again and to compare them with undis-
puted Van Goghs from the same period and with similar motifs. His exami-
A Real Van Gogh.indd 47 29-5-2010 15:23:55
8 ax i\i ioi ax i\i
nation was of a stylistic nature. Exactly what did he focus on, and did he
really study all the works a second time? We dont know. But we do know
something about how he dealt with one Wacker Van Gogh: Self-Portrait at
the Easel (F ,:,). Otto Wacker offered the canvas through a front man to
director J. Siedenberg of the Frans Buffa & Zonen gallery of Amsterdam
in February :,:. Siedenberg had misgivings. De la Faille accompanied
Siedenberg on a visit to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in February to
compare the painting with Self-Portrait (F ,::), an undisputed Van Gogh
from the collection of Engineer V.W. van Gogh that was in the museum on
loan.
,
The canvases were almost identical in terms of composition, yet they
differed greatly in color and execution. The execution of the Wacker paint-
ing was weaker. Siedenberg and De la Faille agreed that the Van Gogh from
the Wacker gallery was not by the master. De la Faille informed Wacker, but
he had already found another buyer for the canvas. So De la Faille contacted
the new owner the conductor and art dealer Joseph Stransky of New York
and told him of his findings. Stransky in turn sold the painting within a
few weeks to the American collector Chester Dale. Whether Dale was also
informed is highly unlikely. Dale would learn of the report in the newspa-
pers at the end of November.
,,
De la Faille spent the following months studying the Van Goghs of Otto
Wacker, some of which had found other owners. After May he gradually be-
came convinced that not just a few but all of Wackers paintings were fakes,
and he turned down an invitation to discuss the matter in November :,:
during the Van Gogh exhibition at the Kastner Gesellschaft in Hannover.
The management was going to show seven Wacker paintings among a group
of undisputed paintings by Vincent. De la Faille was now sure of what he
was doing, and he regarded any discussion as superfluous: the paintings
were fakes.
,o
After a few days, the director of the Gesellschaft seconded his
opinion: the Wacker Van Goghs had not been able to withstand comparison
with the genuine Van Goghs. All seven were unmistakable forgeries.
,;
Supp|ment
De la Faille was determined to keep the matter under wraps. He decided to
follow the unwritten law of the art trade: when a work of art is being sold
whose spuriousness is incontestable, seller and buyer will observe all neces-
A Real Van Gogh.indd 48 29-5-2010 15:23:55
suiiiixixr
,. Self-Portrait at the Easel (F :),
, x , cm. National Gallery of Art,
Washington.
1o. Certicate of authenticity by
De la Faille on the back of a
photograph of Self-Portrait at the
Easel:
Te undersigned declares that he has
examined the painting reproduced on
the opposite side, , centimeters high
and ,., centimeters wide. He regards
it as a genuine and characteristic work
by Vincent van Gogh, painted in 1
during his stay in Arles. It will be
described and included in his catalogue
raisonn on the masters work.
Berlin, July :v, 1,:;, J.B. de la Faille
But in February 1,:8 De la Faille
judged it a forgery.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 49 29-5-2010 15:23:55
o ax i\i ioi ax i\i
sary discretion. The seller will take the work back and compensate the buyer
for any loss. The purpose of this confidentiality is to safeguard the reputa-
tions of both seller and buyer. While the rule is exemplary in its simplicity,
there are factors that can sap the rule of all its power, and the Wacker Van
Gogh case had them in spades. The number of persons and official bodies
that had anything to do with the canvases only increased as :,: drew to a
close. By November, more than half of the ,c paintings had passed through
the hands of dozens of art dealers and private collectors. A few dealers
had been warned by De la Faille and had sold the paintings back, but not
all of them succeeded in recovering the damage wrought by Otto Wacker.
The resulting discontent was difficult to hide. In addition, a wide range of
people had been consulted: art experts, museum directors, restorers, paint-
ers, art historians, and critics, not to mention the exhibition in the Kestner
Gesellschaft and subsequent discussion. De la Faille made an arrangement
with his publisher whereby owners of the catalogue which would have
numbered in the dozens by the end of November would be sent a Suppl-
ment containing a list of the fake Wacker paintings. He also informed his
business relations in the German and Dutch art world of his plan. So De la
Failles effort to keep the matter quiet was doomed to failure.
11. Another new Van Gogh. Cartoon
by Piet van der Hem in De Haagsche Post,
December 8, 1,:8. An expert touts the
authenticity of a self-portrait of Vincent
van Gogh with headphones and radio.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 50 29-5-2010 15:23:55
suiiiixixr ,1
The German press had the scoop on the Wacker paintings. On : No-
vember :,:, it was front-page news: Famous Van Gogh paintings are
fakes, Huge discovery of forged paintings, Spurious Van Goghs, etc.
,
The Dutch newspapers followed a day later. They announced that De la
Failles Supplment listing all ,c fake Van Goghs from the Otto Wacker
gallery would appear within a week. Wacker threatened to take legal steps
to prevent publication and said he would prosecute De la Faille for libel
if necessary. It never went beyond a threat, but it was enough to alert the
journalists. And there was plenty to write about. The amount of money in-
volved was considerable; prices circulating in the press ranged from :,,ccc
to ;,,ccc Reichsmark per painting. The Berlin police became involved and
began holding interrogations in Germany and the Netherlands, and this
was before any party had filed a single complaint against Wacker. It all
had to do with dissension in the art world. One person insisted that all the
paintings were fakes while another said they were all genuine, and yet an-
other that some were genuine and some were fake, which meant there was
no agreement over the number and identity of the contested works. There
were experts who revised an opinion that they had previously announced
with staunch conviction: the German Van Gogh expert Julius Meier-Grfe
(:o;-:,,,) who, like De la Faille, had been issuing certificates of authen-
ticity for Wacker Van Goghs since :,:o, now began to waver. The German
art dealers were split. A few bought back the paintings they had sold. One
of them was the art dealer Mathiessen, who lost a total of :,c,ccc marks.
The dealer Hugo Perls, on the other hand, had also sold Wacker Van Goghs
and would not hear of buying them back. Then there was the legal action:
shortly before Christmas, Mathiessen instigated civil proceedings against
Wacker. A female buyer sued the Hugo Perls gallery because Perls did not
think he was obliged to take back any of the paintings. There was the se-
crecy about the former Russian owner. Some thought it was a credible story,
others a dubious alibi. Commenting on one particular painting, Engineer
Van Gogh told a journalist from De Telegraaf he had never seen it at his
mothers and there was no indication in any of her files that she had ever
sold anything to Russians.
,,
In short, the Dutch and German morning and
evening editions had much to report on in December :,:.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 51 29-5-2010 15:23:55
: ax i\i ioi ax i\i
1: and 1. Bilder, angeblich von Van Gogh. Owners and dealers found
themselves in di cult straits. Te press here Kunst und Knstler published
reproductions of the contested paintings.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 52 29-5-2010 15:23:55
suiiiixixr ,
A Real Van Gogh.indd 53 29-5-2010 15:23:55
ax i\i ioi ax i\i
Te art pope
The Supplment was published on :c December :,:. De la Failles rejection
was impressive in its brevity; he listed ,c paintings, and only by number. But
De Telegraaf and the NRC looked up the titles and owners, published the
entire list and added dozens of photos of the canvases.
oc
Other newspapers
and magazines followed suit, with photos and commentary.
o:
De la Faille
let himself in for a flood of condemnation. The Netherlands Art Buyers
Association, founded in :,:, to settle disputes among dealers and between
dealers and the public, convened an emergency meeting without delay and
denounced both the publication and its author. It let the press know that
the work on Vincent van Gogh by J.B. de la Faille is regarded only as an
enumeration of the works attributed to him, and the makers personal find-
ings are no guarantee of its competence.
o:
There were some who expressed
the opposite opinion, however, such as the art dealer Cassirer: He [De la
Faille] is the most authoritative expert in the field of Van Gogh canvases,
so his certificates of authenticity are decisive.
o,
Others had similar positive
things to say. But Bremmers reaction was prompt and resolute: some of the
Wacker Van Goghs were forgeries and others were definitely from Vincents
hand. Which was which, he didnt say. [De la Faille] is not capable of judg-
ing the authenticity of a painting by Vincent van Gogh, Bremmer wrote.
If he were, he would not have revised his opinion of ,c paintings all at the
same time, nor would he have had to ask for my insight again and again on
the question of authenticity while working on his catalogue. Bremmer did
not deny the value of his contribution as author of the Van Gogh catalogue,
but [...] putting together a catalogue like this does not make one an art
expert. Trying to prove the authenticity of a work of art by tracing its prov-
enance is a job for a detective. An art expert ought to know whether a work
is genuine or not by looking at the work itself, without knowing anything
about its provenance.
o
Bremmer left no doubt as to who had the eye and
who did not. De la Faille, he said, was completely unqualified.
o,
He re-
peated his point of view in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of :c December,
which the NRC reprinted in translation on :: December.
oo
In response, De la Faille, while expressing his respect, played down the
contribution Bremmer had made in the creation of the catalogue and dis-
tanced himself: I have always regarded Mr. Bremmer as an authority on
Van Gogh, but he does not have a monopoly on the subject.
o;
This reply
A Real Van Gogh.indd 54 29-5-2010 15:23:55
rui air ioii ,,
was not enough to soften his opponents heart: Bremmer an authority
one among others? Bremmer was the art pope, and he would not allow
anyone to topple the tiara from his head. In a revealing turn of events,
Bremmers position was confirmed in December :,: by several people who
began purchasing Wacker Van Goghs. De la Failles Supplment came out
on :c December, but in what can only be seen as an acknowledgement of
authority, Willem Scherjon, publisher of Bremmers magazine Beeldende
Kunst, bought a Wacker Van Gogh on :: December at Bremmers advice
for ::,,cc guilders: F o,,, La route dans les Alpilles (henceforth to be re-
ferred to as Two Poplars).
o
On :; December, the Krllers bought La mer
Saintes-Maries (henceforth Seascape) on Bremmers recommendation via
the dAudretsch gallery in The Hague for :,ccc guilders.
o,
Krller-Mller
wanted to buy two more F o:, Des Cyprs (henceforth Cypresses), and
F ,,, Portrait de lui-mme (henceforth Self-Portrait) but she thought the
prices were too high.
;c
She told an associate in Berlin that buying these
canvases was intended as an act of support for Bremmers opinion that some
of the works regarded as false by De la Faille were quite genuine: anyone
who believed in Bremmer put his money where his mouth was. She also saw
this affair as an opportunity to buy Van Goghs at a low price and thought
Bremmer should wait with his opinion on the authenticity of the Wacker
Van Goghs. At the moment these were scarcely marketable, she wrote, so
she could acquire them for very little. If Bremmer were to pronounce judg-
ment, she believed the price would undoubtedly go up.
;:
Eight months earlier, both Krller-Mller and Bremmer had turned down
membership in the organization Friends of Vincent Van Gogh, founded by
De la Faille: she with the argument that there were enough works by Vin-
cent in Dutch collections, and he that it would be better to buy works by
living Dutch artists. Now Bremmer, like Krller-Mller, overruled his own
admonition. To be consistent, he himself bought a contested Van Gogh
for ,ccc guilders: F o:,bis, Les meules au lever de la lune (henceforth Hay-
stacks). The purchases made by Scherjon, Krller-Mller, and Bremmer
show how much they were intended as an action to discredit De la Faille as
a Van Gogh expert.
A copy that has been preserved of the Haystacks purchase agreement
between Wacker and Bremmer, dated January :,:,, offers an intriguing
glimpse into Bremmers interests. It was always very important for him to
A Real Van Gogh.indd 55 29-5-2010 15:23:55
o ax i\i ioi ax i\i
conceal his own financial interest in the works of art he recommended, but
according to the agreement, both Wacker and Bremmer were free to sell the
painting to any third party within a two-year period ending ,: December
:,,c.
;:
Later Bremmer would explain that the money was intended as a
loan to Wacker.
;,
There was another dimension to this purchase, however,
which will be revealed in the next chapter. The fact remains that Bremmer
bought a Wacker Van Gogh for much less than Scherjon and Krller-Mller
had paid for Two Poplars and Seascape. From Bremmers point of view (he
believed Haystacks was definitely a genuine Van Gogh) he actually had not
taken any risks. Indeed, if Wacker were unable to pay back the loan, the
canvas could be resold at a profit. Here Bremmer was revealing himself not
only as a collector but also as a dealer. It was an aspect of his professional
conduct that would not be discussed openly in the newspapers until many
years later, in :,,;.
After :c December :,:, Bremmer would no longer condescend to refute
De la Faille in writing. In his magazine Beeldende Kunst he wrote positive
pieces about Seascape (The splendor of this work lies in its serenity
;
) and
Two Poplars without any mention of his opponents arguments, and he left
it at that.
;,
He was conspicuously absent from the polemics and discussions
on the Van Goghs of the Wacker gallery, but he did not stand aloof: the
commercial and idealistic interests were too big for that, and interference
was necessary. He acted behind the scenes, not so much as an organizer
but as the instigator of the rising struggle in the Netherlands against De la
Faille. Others took center stage, defending Bremmers views and attempting
to preserve and expand his authority. It happened with his own encourage-
ment but, probably more often, it also happened without his having to urge
anyone to defend the authenticity of the Wacker Van Goghs. They acted
almost the way a zealot serves the pope or a courtier his prince: not at his
order but in his spirit.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 56 29-5-2010 15:23:55
,;
: True colors
At the time of writing the beginning of the twenty-first century there
isnt a single expert who is willing to speak out in defense of art dealer Otto
Wackers Van Gogh paintings. The generally accepted opinion is that they
are all fakes and that most of them were made by the same person, most
probably Ottos brother, the painter and restorer Leonhard Heinrich Wacker
(born :,,). For a good part of the twentieth century, however, some of
these paintings managed to pass for works by Vincent van Gogh, much to
the astonishment of chroniclers of the Wacker affair. They point out the
questionable aspects of Otto Wackers career: earlier charges of dealing in
forged paintings, the art collection of a Russian nobleman who was never
identified, an unfinished Van Gogh found by the police in Leonhards
studio, and other incriminating evidence. Why did dealers and experts fail
to heed these warnings? What made them take a chance on a man like this?
The only possible answer, the chroniclers claim, is that they were corrupt,
incompetent, or gullible. Seen from this perspective, the account of the
affair is a history of wisdom by hindsight. The chronicler knows how the
battle is going to end, sees the role that people and objects have played, and
writes about how they were swept along by the current of the times. If only
they had been more attentive, they never would have become such willing
prey to Wackers deception! This kind of chronicler is a prophet of the past.
Contradicting this theory that they all acted exclusively out of either
corrupt or noble motives and that the Wacker brothers would have been
easy to unmask are scores of other intriguing aspects to the Wacker affair.
Until January :,:, no one openly expressed any misgivings about Otto
Wackers Van Goghs. It is important to note that nothing about the dark
side of his wheelings and dealings ever appeared in the newspapers. The
discovery of four of his fake Van Goghs at the Cassirer gallery was kept from
A Real Van Gogh.indd 57 29-5-2010 15:23:55
8 riui coiois
the public eye. A few weeks later in February and March :,: a sales
exhibition was held at art dealer M. Goldschmidts Berlin branch at which
at least seven of the nine Van Goghs were from Otto Wacker.
:
In July of that
year, Wacker sold a drawing by Van Gogh to the Nationalgalerie in Berlin
for ,,ccc reichsmarks. In Wackers correspondence with this museum, not
a word about forgeries is mentioned.
:
If malicious stories about Wacker had
been making the rounds in the German art world, his colleagues would
have dismissed them as gossip and slander. After all, every dealer has had
the experience of making a bad buy and knows how easily a presumed
golden purchase can turn into a white elephant. If a dealer like Wacker had
found himself entangled in an unfortunate transaction, none of his col-
leagues would have cried foul.
So the unsympathetic reports that were heard about Otto Wacker start-
ing on : November :,: smack strongly of ex post facto assessments: once
the affair surrounding the fake Van Goghs hit the newspapers, many people
actually appeared to have known all along that Wacker was a crook and that
his merchandise was of dubious content. It is not very likely, however, that
they entertained such views in earlier years, since until the summer of :,:
Wacker was still known as someone who had a way with people. The fact
that so many prominent dealers and collectors, plus the Nationalgalerie,
agreed to do business with him suggests as much. When the falsity of a
few of his Van Goghs was pointed out to him in early :,:, he showed no
indignation toward his critics. During all those years, and even until long
after :,:, De la Faille, Meier-Graefe, and others insisted that he had al-
ways treated them properly. Clearly, Wacker played his role as a bona fide
dealer with flair. And topping it all off is the fact that dealers and collectors
were hungry for works by Vincent van Gogh. This made them less criti-
cal toward the Van Goghs that Wacker was offering: stylistic peculiarities,
material deficiencies, and ambiguities regarding their provenance were all
shrugged off. In the world of art sales, the certificates of authenticity issued
by experts such as Bremmer, De la Faille, Meier-Graefe, and others were the
deciding factor.
This chapter deals with the dispute over the authenticity of the Wacker
Van Goghs in Germany in :,: and :,:,. We have seen how the controversy
played out in the Netherlands and Germany in :,:, so some overlapping
of dates and events is to be expected. The dispute in Germany does feature
A Real Van Gogh.indd 58 29-5-2010 15:23:55
rui ciixax siiiir ,
the same elements: great financial loss and damaged reputations. And here,
too, the focus is on acquiring authority, maintaining it, expanding it, and
undermining it. But the persons and institutions are different. The main
difference is that Otto Wackers Van Goghs ended up in a drama where art
that of Van Gogh in particular played a role that is difficult to imagine or
understand today. The question of the fake Van Goghs was pushed along by
a complex conflict of interests in the German art world, following a course
quite different from that in the Netherlands. In this drama, the art dealer
Otto Wacker, art critic Julius Meier-Graefe, and museum director Ludwig
Justi all occupied places of prominence.
Te German spirit
From the late nineteenth century onward, a host of artists, dealers, col-
lectors, and critics in Germany were involved in bringing Vincents work
to the attention of the art-loving public, but they met with a great deal of
resistance. Germany was strictly divided about the significance of art. There
were those who felt that arts function was purely aesthetic. Others insisted
that the purpose of art was at least closely allied with if not identical to
pedagogical, moral, philosophical, religious, racial, or political goals.
,
For
many in Germany, the love of art was the test of a persons convictions and
a barometer of the cultures superiority, ascendance, or downfall or, in
the idiom of the age: of the Geist, the spirit. One person might argue that
Van Gogh had destroyed French art, while another would contend that he
had brought it to untold heights. Van Gogh was variously regarded as a
northerner, a Frenchman, a Fleming, and a Teuton. There were those who
did not know where his roots lay, but based on an assumption of his eth-
nic origins they did not hesitate to ascribe to Vincent characteristics that
were seen as either praiseworthy or reprehensible, as part of Germanys
Geist or a challenge against it. This debate stems from the centuries-old
misconception that the beautiful and the good are essentially interchange-
able. It is beyond the scope of this book to report on the diversity of views
that were held in Germany concerning the non-autonomous aesthetic of
the works of Van Gogh,
Moreover, for a whole year he and his wife had heard nothing but
praise for Self-Portrait at the Easel from both American and Dutch critics.
Dale, who remained childless, once said that he loved his paintings, that
they were his family. Admitting that one of these children was actually a
bastard particularly after months of approbation would undoubtedly
have been very painful.
Revealing the truth about the painting would have been made even more
difficult by the fact that in the :,:cs the dust stirred up in the American
art world by modern European painting had yet to settle. There were nu-
merous critics who made no secret of their distaste for the works of the
Post-Impressionists among them Van Gogh. In :,:o, for example, the
year in which the Dales bought a large number of modern French works,
the Boston Herald wrote: Cezanne was a poor painter, one with bad eye-
sight... Van Gogh was a crazy galoot, who cut off his ear to spite a woman
and who painted for years in an insane asylum at Arles... At their worst [his
paintings] resemble the crude, elemental expressions which nit-wits affix to
sidewalks, fences, barn doors, and elsewhere especially elsewhere.
,
A Real Van Gogh.indd 100 29-5-2010 15:23:57
wuo iisi xxiw: 1o1
In :,,: both Maud and Chester Dale abruptly ended their collaboration
with the French Institute in New York she had worked as a curator, he as
a member of the board because of the organizations lack of enthusiasm
for Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, who had judged them to be
nothing more than passing fashions. In the eyes of these critics, the Dales
had bad taste. Were it now to appear they were the owners of a Van Gogh
forgery, they would have become a laughing stock. It was thus a stroke of
eminent luck that Self-Portrait at the Easel returned to New York in :,:,
without a public scandal. After all, the Van Gogh exhibition in Voor de
Kunst had been a success, and the work had been widely praised in the
Dutch press by both critics and connoisseurs; De la Failles critique was
the only one to be reported in the American press, in December :,:. In
:,:, Dale and the American critical community could still argue that his
opinion had turned out to be negligible. For the Americans, the uproar over
the pictures authenticity must have seemed little more than a tempest in a
teapot.
Who E|se Knew?
Did anyone else besides Dale, De Wild, and Scherjon know the outcome
of the analyses that had been carried out on the Self-Portrait in The Hague?
Perhaps someone from Scherjons circle, such as De Gruyter, Bremmer, Van
Deventer, or Krller-Mller?
,c
Nothing in De Gruyters publications at the
time or in his estate papers indicate he knew anything about the affair. The
information was probably kept from him. Bremmer, on the other hand,
must have known something. The seven vials containing paint samples
from the Wacker Van Goghs certainly point in this direction. The first two
columns in Table : reproduce De Wilds notes; the second two identify the
titles of the paintings and their owners.
Bremmer, owner of Haystacks by Moonlight, is the link between the chem-
ist De Wild and the collectors Krller-Mller, Dale, Wacker, and Scherjon.
As Table : indicates, De Wild had also analyzed Haystacks, again with a
negative result. We do not know exactly when he was asked to examine the
work. In November :,: De Wild looked into Seascape at Saintes-Maries-
de-la-Mer and Two Poplars. In December he read De la Failles recipe for
quick-drying paint, and in February :,:, he could have become aware of
A Real Van Gogh.indd 101 29-5-2010 15:23:57
1o: uusuixc ui
the analyses carried out at the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, which had revealed
the addition of hardeners to the paintings in question. My contention is
that in the course of :,:,-,c, De Wild focused his attention on precisely
this issue, even discovering resin in the remaining five Wacker pictures.
Taking samples from nineteen works belonging to Vincent Willem Van
Gogh all of them in April and May :,:, during the exhibition at Voor
de Kunst provided him with a clear basis for comparison. Resin, added
to make paintings dry faster, is present in large quantities in the Wacker
Van Goghs. Van Gogh, on the other hand, as mentioned above, never added
anything to the paint to help it dry.
Did Bremmer, with his disdain for scientific analysis in matters of art,
pay any serious attention to De Wilds conclusions regarding his Haystacks?
It seems unlikely that they made much of an impression on him. At the
beginning of the public scandal surrounding the Wacker paintings he as-
cribed only a modest, subordinate role to chemical analysis. Empathy with
Tab|e z Notes on the via|s containing paint samp|es from the Wacker Van
Goghs, as we|| as the identication of the paintings and their owners.
G=
genuine
F= fake
F
number
Title Owner in :):)-:),o
G F : Seascape at Saintes-
Maries-de-la-Mer
H. Krller-Mller
G F ? (possibly
F o,,)
Two Poplars W. Scherjon
G F ?? F ,, Self-Portrait Matthiesen Gallery
F F ,:: Self-Portrait Hugo Perls Gallery
Sir Robert Abdy (Paris)
F F ,:, Self-Portrait at the Easel Chester Dale
F F o:,bis Haystacks by Moonlight O. Wacker H.P. Bremmer
F F o,: The Sower Matthiesen Gallery Gertrud
Wolowsky G. Schweitzer
Sources for the owners: De la Faille :,:, :,,c, :,,,, :,;c; De Wild n.d. (:,,:);
Feilchenfeldt :,,; Koldehoff :cc:b; Zentralarchiv der Deutsche Museen zu
Berlin.
,:
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the artist and the experience of what he called artistic emotion were for
him what determined if something was genuine or not. Nonetheless, the
results of De Wilds examination must have made things difficult for him,
as he soon undertook several attempts to dispose of the picture in question.
On o December, namely, Wacker offered the work first to Maud Dale, and
then five days later to Helene Krller-Mller.
Bremmer, as Wackers secretary Max Renkewitz wrote to Dale, could
not really afford the painting; Wacker therefore wanted to make use of
his contractual right to sell it to someone else. He wrote that both Meier-
Graefe and Bremmer would guarantee its authenticity. Could there be any
better recommendation for a work than that it came from the collection
of Bremmer, the greatest connoisseur of Van Gogh? Moreover, Renkewitz
wrote, Dr. A.M. de Wild had provided written technical evidence that it
was genuine. Krller-Mller received an identical letter, but with two ref-
erences that had not been included in the letter to Maud Dale. Renkewitz
hoped very much that Krller-Mller would acquire the canvas so that it
would remain in Europe rather than fall into the hands of American specu-
lators. Even the Wacker gallery was able to recognize a moral dilemma. In
addition, the letter to Krller-Mller unlike the one addressed to Dale
gives the pictures price: ;,,cc dollars.
,:
Here one should remember that
only two years earlier Bremmer had paid ,ccc guilders (around ,,,cc dol-
lars) for it.
Neither Dale nor Krller-Mller were interested in Wackers offer. In
the case of Krller-Mller, this may well have arisen from the fact that she
already had a work purchased some twenty years earlier that might
be considered the Haystacks twin, namely Rising Moon: Haycocks (F ;,,).
The mention of De Wild in the letter raises the question as to whether
Wacker was simply unaware of his analyses, or that it had been suggested
to him that the results had been positive. There is another possibility: De
Wild had hoped to spare Bremmer and had never told him the unwel-
come news regarding his Haystacks. This seems quite unlikely, however,
as De Wilds positive judgment on both the Seascape and Two Poplars had
been widely reported in the press. An affirmative outcome in the case of
Haystacks would have been a great help to Bremmer and his supporters in
their polemic against De la Faille, Justi, and others. The letters provide no
certainty about who knew the truth regarding Haystacks. What is certain
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1o uusuixc ui
is that Bremmer wanted to get rid of it, and that the offers made to Dale
and Krller-Mller were not his only efforts in this direction. In June
:,,: the Hague Gallery dAudretsch, a regular partner of Bremmers, put a
canvas by Van Gogh up for sale entitled Moonlit Landscape, which was the
Haystacks by Moonlight under another name.
,,
In :,,: Huinck & Scherjon
held a sale exhibition of works by Van Gogh.
,
The catalogue comprised
six drawings, three watercolors, and thirteen paintings, all listed as being
from a private collection. Half of these certainly belonged to Bremmer:
four drawings, one watercolor, and six paintings among them Haystacks,
which once again failed to find a buyer. In :,: Bremmer again tried to sell
it through dAudretsch, offering it for ,c,ccc guilders to the Rijksmuseum
Krller-Mller.
,,
Did Krller-Mller and her secretary and confidante Sam van Deventer
know about the negative results of De Wilds analyses of the Wacker Van
Goghs? As far as Van Deventer is concerned, there are no documents to
indicate he had any knowledge of the affair. It is possible that his personal
archive, which is not yet open to the public, might provide more infor-
mation. Four years after Krller-Mller was offered Haystacks, namely in
:,,,, he became the owner of a Van Gogh self-portrait (F ,,), and some
insight into his knowledge about that picture could tell us more about
the role the various experts played in his decisions. It seems to me, how-
ever, very unlikely that he knew anything about De Wild and his exami-
nations.
Helene Krller-Mller certainly received no direct information in the
matter. She trusted Bremmer implicitly and relied entirely on his judg-
ment: I have never known him to make a mistake.
,o
His struggle for the
recognition of some of the Wacker pictures was also hers, and she lent
her support by actually acquiring one of the controversial canvases and by
showing interest in purchasing two others. At the same time, she believed
the Berlin police merited her full cooperation, thereby ignoring Bremmers
advice. She was thus not the exactly the right person to entrust with the
sensitive information garnered through De Wilds examinations. She could
not, however, have been entirely unaware of the schemes cooked up by
her advisor, restorer, and art dealer. At a certain point she must have had a
creeping feeling of being shut out, of being hoodwinked, as is indicated by
her statements in Van Deventers book Krller-Mller, de geschiedenis van
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een cultureel levenswerk: Forgeries are a topic of discussion, and for the
time being there is nothing but confusion among both laymen and con-
noisseurs. What is genuine according to one, is fake according to another;
contradictory opinions are defended with the utmost tenacity and, what is
worse, one always suspects an ulterior motive...
,;
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1o;
For arts sake
By November :,:,, De la Faille had a year of turmoil behind him, all of it
having to do with Otto Wackers Van Goghs. The distribution of the Sup-
plment had not been greatly appreciated, although his published works
and letters do not suggest that this caused him undue suffering. On the
contrary, they reveal a certain intransigence quite in keeping with a man
who is sure of what he is doing and is seeking to redress the fraud of which
he has been such an unwilling instrument. His behavior was consistent
with the basic attitude he had shown earlier in articles about conflicts
of interest, forged Rembrandts, and expertise bureaus articles that had
made him a controversial figure in the art world. His newest dmarche, the
open struggle against fake Van Goghs, reinforced his reputation for being
headstrong.
There were experts and dealers who condemned his behavior and others
who praised it. One art dealer, who wished to remain anonymous, said the
following to a journalist upon the publication of the Supplment in No-
vember :,:: I find Mr. De la Failles attitude to be forthright and in full
accordance with the high reputation he enjoys in the field.
:
De la Failles
detractors seized on the Supplment as proof of his incompetence: first he
includes the Wacker Van Goghs in a prestigious catalogue raisonn, then
he writes them all off within scarcely a year. This did not indicate serious
study or a firm grasp of the facts. The same people used his about-face to
cast doubts on his trustworthiness, pointing out that he had made financial
gains by providing the Wacker Van Goghs with certificates of authenticity.
In his own defense, he said he asked the same modest sum of :, guilders for
each certificate, regardless of whether his assessment was positive or nega-
tive. There was no evidence of a conflict of interest, he claimed.
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Les faux Van Gogh
De la Failles aim in publishing the Supplment in December :,: had been
to do a service to the buyers and sellers of Otto Wackers paintings while
securing his reputation as a trustworthy advisor. The unintended effect of
all the publicity was that sellers and buyers became timid. In :,:, he grew
increasingly convinced that as a Van Gogh expert his role was not limited
to the art trade. So he made up his mind to devote a book to the fake Van
Goghs, prompted by a desire to protect Van Goghs oeuvre. This blunt deci-
sion to call a spade a spade is a clear indication that idealism had entered
the fray. De la Faille had assigned himself the task of guarding this corner
of the cultural heritage from contamination. With the publication of his
Les faux Van Gogh (The False Van Goghs) in January :,,c, which included
:; works that he regarded as definite forgeries, De la Faille was violating
an unwritten law of the art trade: that where questions of authenticity were
concerned, one should remain discreetly noncommittal.
De la Faille saw the book as inseparable from the rest of his Van Gogh
research. Its proportions, typography, layout, and illustrations were identi-
cal to those of the catalogue raisonn. Like the catalogue, it was published
in French, which assured him of an international readership. De la Faille
wrote that Les faux Van Gogh did not meet the goal of purifying Van Goghs
work. He had looked at so many false works that it was impossible to list
them all. He also mentioned a certain opposition to his efforts: the own-
ers were not eager to have their property publicly labeled as fake. But De
la Faille felt it was his duty to guard the work of the great master.
:
In the
copy presented to the Engineer, he called the book a written challenge
to purify the oeuvre of the great master Vincent van Gogh, which meant
that it bore all the marks of the polemics from the year before. Neither
the content nor the tone seemed aimed at calming the Van Gogh experts,
for although De la Faille tactfully omitted the names of the owners of the
forged works, he made an exception for those belonging to Scherjon and
Krller-Mller. They must have been less than pleased to see how often
they were mentioned in the book.
By publishing this work, De la Faille set out to defend an ideal with the
hope of restoring his reputation as a trustworthy advisor. But he was also
trying to make himself look good by comparison. Those who were familiar
with the history of Otto Wackers Van Goghs knew that Ring and Feilchen-
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iis iaux vax cocu 1o
feldt of the Cassirer gallery in Berlin were the first to discover the forgeries.
In Les faux Van Gogh, De la Faille went overboard, making it seem as if he
had discovered the forgeries all by himself, although in his reports in Het
Volk and De Telegraaf of November :,: (see Chapter :) and Das Kunstblatt
in March :,:,, he had noted that Feilchenfeldt was the first to doubt the
works authenticity.
,
Les faux Van Gogh is not limited to the Otto Wacker gallery, about which
De la Faille had been publishing for a year. He also writes about forged
paintings that he had come across during his search for works by Van Gogh
in Western Europe but are not included in the catalogue raisonn, such
as those owned by Thodore Duret, author of the prestigious Histoire des
peintres impressionnistes (:;) which went through many printings and
translations and a monograph about Van Gogh.
His
guns were aimed not only at De la Failles judgments but also at the man
himself. Veth criticized his vanity, his love of France, and his untrustworthi-
ness, and called him a liar. Veth was outspokenly biased and painted De la
Faille in the most somber colors, while his opponents were in many respects
shining examples of refinement: More than any collector, any museum, or
perhaps any writer, Mrs. Krller-Mller and her advisor H.P. Bremmer have
secured the proper appreciation and the continued fame of Vincent van
Gogh.
,
De la Failles material interest in the sale of the Wacker Van Goghs
made his arguments dubious in Veths eyes, while he turned a blind eye to
the material interest of Krller-Mller, Bremmer, Scherjon, and others.
Veth failed to mention which canvases he regarded as genuine in Schoon
schip!, but he included a facsimile of a handwritten statement by Bremmer.
Thus Bremmer ascended the podium and, for the first time since December
:,: after more than three years of silence openly passed judgment on
sixteen paintings from the Otto Wacker gallery: half were forgeries, the oth-
er half were definitely from the hand of Vincent van Gogh. Bremmer listed
the canvases by name but omitted the names of the owners. Five of the eight
genuine paintings were Self-Portrait (F ,,), Self-Portrait at the Easel (F ,:,),
Seascape (F :), Two Poplars (F o,,) and Haystacks (F o:,bis). Bremmers
brief comment on Haystacks is interesting: Truly a work by Vincent him-
self. Saw it in my own home.
o
This last sentence was Bremmers clever way
of concealing the fact that the work was part of his own collection, enabling
him to continue to pose as a disinterested party.
At the end of March, De Wild received a copy of Schoon schip! The
brochure featured full-page reproductions of Self-Portrait at the Easel, Self-
Portrait, Seascape, and Two Poplars, which were presented as genuine Van
Goghs. De Wilds handwritten declaration that the paint used in Two Pop-
lars was c years old was printed in facsimile. The negative outcome of his
analyses of Chester Dales Self-Portrait at the Easel (F ,:,) and the Matthie-
sen gallerys Self-Portrait (F ,,) was not mentioned, nor that of Bremmers
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Haystacks, which was also featured as a full-page reproduction. Self-Portrait
(F ,,) is shown opposite F ,::, another canvas that Wacker had put on
the market as a self-portrait of the master. What went through De Wilds
mind when he opened this booklet? Satisfaction, because the secret he had
shared for so many years with Dale, Bremmer, and Scherjon concerning
Self-Portrait at the Easel, Haystacks, and Self-Portrait had been kept so well?
Remorse, because the favorable results were so strongly highlighted and the
unfavorable ones concealed? We dont know. All we know is that he did not
speak out against this selective use of his findings.
Veths brochure had an impact. Te press concurred with his thorough
aversion to De la Faille and echoed his disputable statements. De la Faille
received a comforting letter from Engineer Van Gogh, who advised him
not to take it to heart. He also spoke up for De la Faille one month later
in an interview.
;
Otherwise, all support for De la Faille in the Netherlands
seemed to have disappeared. According to Weekblad van Rotterdam, Veth
was absolutely right.
Ergo: there is no such thing as a successful forgery. The court left this im-
munization for what it was and asked him which canvases were genuine.
According to the newspapers he named eight paintings as authentic, the
same ones he had said were part of Van Goghs oeuvre the day before when
he served as a witness. Once again, the newspapers were also referring to
Veths brochure as their source and not to what he actually said; a ninth
Wacker Van Gogh, The Reaper, was not mentioned by the press.
,
Bremmer took advantage of the opportunity in the presence of the court
to compliment Justi for the purchase of Daubignys Garden, the Van Gogh
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for which Justi had been so fiercely attacked in Germany. Had Bremmer
heard about Scherjons maneuver against Justi? Bremmer and Scherjon had
collaborated in the battle over the Wacker Van Goghs and had kept compa-
ny in Berlin. It is possible that Scherjons strong-arm approach became too
sordid for Bremmer and he wanted to make a gesture to distance himself
from this attempt at blackmail.
Justi was then sworn in as an art expert and declared that the Wacker
Van Goghs were fakes, as fake as fake paintings could be. The newspa-
pers differed in their rendering of his words. The Berliner Tageblatt and
the Berliner Brsen-Courier said his statement referred to all ,c paintings
and that he would not have made any exceptions.
o
According to De Wilds
notes, his remark had to do with sixteen Wacker Van Goghs that had been
brought together in the Nationalgalerie in early :,:, at the time of the Van
Gogh exhibition. De Wild wrote that Justi expressed reservations about
Two Poplars and said that it was good, much better than the other Wacker
Van Goghs.
;
Was this Justis response to Scherjons blackmail? None of the
o. Tuesday, April 1:, 1,:. Justi, standing, provides an explanation of Te Sower.
Scherjon, center front, had warned Justi behind the scenes not to deny the authenticity
of Two Poplars (F o,) in court. If he did, Scherjon threatened to declare that three
Van Goghs in the Nationalgalerie were fakes.
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Dutch and German newspapers mentioned Justis reticence with regard to
the authenticity of the canvas. De Wilds account is probably correct: Justi
limited himself to sixteen canvases.
De la Faille then named the paintings whose authenticity had been estab-
lished and expressed the hope that the artists who had been approached
would take legal action against Chanterou. He himself bore no guilt, he
felt, because an auctioneer is not a salesman and need not concern himself
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1o8 rui ixiiir raxii
with properly documented statements of provenance: Many people hand
their goods over to agents so they can remain anonymous. I do my best to
avoid anything that does not strike me as authentic.
,
He argued that with
a profit of ten percent, an auction house could not be held responsible for
the full purchase price. The journalist responded by pointing out that the
buyer assesses his risk by going to an auction house with a good name. De
la Faille concurred, which was why he prevailed upon Dr. L. Joux to annul
the entire sale.
Anarchy
Het Volk urged the Dutch judicial authorities to take action: did De la Faille
actually make an effort to convince himself of the paintings provenance,
or did the French painters perhaps lie to him because of the publicity in-
volved and in order to drive up the prices had they in fact declared their
own work to be forgeries? On : November :,,:, the member of the Lower
House of parliament for the Social Democratic Labor Party, J.H.A. Schaper,
urged the government to intervene. The reputation of the Netherlands in
the art world was in danger. He asked the Minister of Education, Arts, and
Sciences, Jan Terpstra:
Has the minister followed the events concerning the falsication of paintings,
etchings, etc., at the Wacker trial in Berlin and the art sale conducted by the rm
of A. Mak in Amsterdam?
If so, is the minister not of the opinion that our countrys good name in the realm
of art and commerce is being seriously damaged internationally by the practices
of so-called experts and dealers in art who are motivated more by the love of
gain than by any actual love of art?
Is the minister prepared to launch an investigation of this matter, in consultation
with his colleagues at the Ministries of Foreign Aairs and Justice if need be, to
provoke legal action if necessary and if possible, and to publish the results?
,c
In late December, the minister let it be known that while any repetition
could indeed be harmful to the reputation of the Netherlands, a single case
did not require immediate attention. He also said that he and his colleague
at the Ministry of Justice were considering taking legal action. The Dutch
A Real Van Gogh.indd 168 29-5-2010 15:24:00
axxus xisiianiiis 16
and Belgian legal authorities then got in on the act. The case dragged on for
months and finally died out.
De Telegraaf then seized on all the commotion arising from the Chan-
terou case. It asked dealers and auctioneers if they should not be held legally
responsible for the authenticity of the art and antiques that they sell as
agents or owners. The responses exposed a sharp disagreement in legal in-
terpretation: De la Faille thought the auctioneer or commissioning author-
ity was not legally responsible, and he was backed by the cream of the crop,
including J. Goudstikker, J.H. De Bois, and A. Vecht. There were also art
dealers who wanted to see some regulation in the question of liability but
wanted to limit it to a period of one year, since no one can be held liable for-
ever. According to the newspaper, very different provisions applied in dif-
ferent parts of the country, provisions that protected the seller and not the
buyer. The firm of Huinck & Scherjon took a sly dig at De la Faille: [We]
consider it desirable that something be done about the so-called third-rate
and stage-managed auctions, where usually not a single painting sold with
a big name attached is actually genuine. As De Telegraaf concluded, [...]
full-blown anarchy has been unleashed in the Netherlands in this regard.
,:
This modest questionnaire conducted by De Telegraaf was one of the few
times during the period between the wars that dealers openly reflected on
their responsibility toward buyers.
Annus miserabi|is
By the end of :,,: De la Faille was a pitiable man. It was his annus misera-
bilis. In the art world he was known as the genuine-fake-genuine Van Gogh
expert, and his judgment had come full circle within the space of four years.
For a few days in April at the start of the Otto Wacker trial he oscillated
between following his conscience and denying it, but in the end he decided
to go along with those who in countless ways had opposed him: Scherjon,
Krller-Mller, De Gruyter, Veth, and many others. In doing so, he was in
fact recognizing the authority of the one expert who had not deigned to
involve himself in the discussion at all: Bremmer. There was the repudiation
of the Berlin court, the moribund existence of his brainchild Friends of
Vincent van Gogh the open distancing by his former partners and, to top
it all off, the Chanterou affair.
,:
He was the subject of derision, the target of
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ad hominem attacks, the focus of indignation in the Lower House, and the
cause for action by the legal authorities.
It was a tragic aspect of his personality that he energetically launched his
struggle for a cause, pursued it with full conviction, increased the tempo,
defied all sneers and criticism, and even appeared to take some pleasure in
defending his own opinions against the prevailing current then after four
years he abruptly called to a halt his open battle against forged Van Goghs
and adopted the attitude of a convert to the position he had once so vigor-
ously opposed. If De la Faille had only been an egotistical and calculating
personality, someone out to protect his own interest or to save his own
skin, he would have dropped the case of art dealer Otto Wackers fake Van
Goghs. But his principles, impulsiveness, and pugnacity pushed him along,
far past the point at which he could have left the field of battle with minor
personal and professional injuries.
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1;1
o Retaliation
The walking wounded is what the critic Albert Plasschaert called Brem-
mer and De la Faille after their performance in Berlin. According to Plass-
chaert, Bremmer had been toppled from his pedestal. He had unreservedly
sided with a dealer who came to admit that some of his goods were fakes,
had ignored the vague provenance of the disputed canvases, and had based
his assessment on aesthetics alone. It was a game with high stakes, and even
after all those years he had been forced to defend himself to the hilt. But his
performance had been less than convincing. For Plasschaert it was patently
obvious that Bremmer had not traveled all the way to Berlin just to separate
the genuine Van Goghs from the fakes:
It had to do with gaining authority over a docile herd. For Bremmer it was all
about the purpose of his life and to a certain extent his future (which was con-
nected to that of Scherjon and others). For if this commercial aesthetician were
to lose his advisory position, how he would tumble in the eyes of all those who
willingly accept his pedantic analysis and despotism just for the sake of the pur-
chasing power he represents! It was all about that authority, which has clearly
lost some of its power, and that was why Van Gogh only seemed to be of primary
importance to Bremmer at this trial. Actually he was secondary.
And what about De la Failles unexpected change of heart as he stood be-
fore the judges? Either De la Faille is a man whose judgment is overly
dependent on feelings it simply floats around and is so mercurial that it
almost resembles opportunism or there is a visual ignorance in his criti-
cism that makes it easy for him to move in the opposite direction, and at
the most critical moment! Actually, said Plasschaert, all the Dutchmen
returned from Berlin in a damaged state, with one exception: the chemist
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De Wild, who only had to repeat his investigations and the conclusions he
had drawn.
:
Plasschaerts comments about Bremmer and De la Faille in De Groene
Amsterdammer of :, April :,,: contained a great deal of truth, yet today,
after so many years, we can say that he was wrong in his assessment of De
Wild. He was right to point out that it all boiled down to Bremmers au-
thority. For this reason it has been argued that the Wacker affair was Brem-
mers Waterloo as an expert; if so, Plasschaert must have been a fortune
teller.
:
Can his comments be taken as a serious prophecy? Did Bremmer
really suffer a loss of authority as a result of the Wacker affair, and if so, in
what respect and to what extent? But more particularly: was he deposed as
a Van Gogh expert? And De la Faille? Plasschaert degraded him as a Van
Gogh expert, and according to some writers the Wacker trial did irreparable
damage to his reputation. But is this true?
,
In this chapter we will examine
the effect that the trial in Berlin had on these two leading figures Brem-
mer and De la Faille based on a few Wacker Van Goghs. As we shall see,
retaliation trumped reason when the authenticity of Bremmers Wacker Van
Gogh Haystacks (F o:,bis) was called into question.
Patronage
Did Bremmer suer a loss of authority after Wacker? Yes, but by no means
as abruptly as Plasschaert expected: not in all the roles he played, and not as
a result of the Wacker aair. As the thirties passed he steadily lost inuence
as a patron, dealer, and critic, but for dierent reasons. Bremmer derived
much of his power in the Dutch art world from his position as advisor to
the Krllers, which until :,,: was a very protable activity. Bremmers in-
voices for the years :,,c and :,,: are stored in the archives of the Krller-
Mller Museum. He enjoyed a xed annual income of ,,ccc guilders (about
:,,ccc at todays price level). He also received an allowance of about the
same amount to cover attendance at art sales and other expenses.
No small
sum at the time. At least as important for him were the indirect benets.
Being the Krllers advisor made him an esteemed guest among dealers and
artists. Although the terms of his agreement with the Krllers prevented him
from accepting any commission from dealers for purchases made on behalf
of their collection, Balk calculated that the Paris art dealer Paul Rosenberg
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ixiaiiinii 1;
systematically charged less for works of art that Bremmer kept himself than
for works paid for by the Krllers. For every :cc guilders that they paid to
Rosenberg, Bremmer paid ,c to ,c guilders for a comparable work.
,
Other
than this, few sources have survived that might contain evidence of the in-
direct benet Bremmer enjoyed as advisor to the Krllers. Te agreements
with Wacker for :,:-:,:,, however, also show that Bremmer paid consider-
ably less for a Wacker Van Gogh than Krller: ,ccc as opposed to :,ccc
guilders respectively. In :,,: the Krllers stopped buying art for nancial
reasons, and Bremmers position as paid advisory came to an end.
In their agreement with the Dutch state, the Krllers made it clear that the
painting collection formed a complete whole: no works could ever be added
to it. Tat made the collection eectively a personication of Helene Krller-
Mller, with the Dutch state acting as guardian of the works of art and ultimately
of her memory. Tis arrangement was the crown of Bremmers work. Now his
ideas and taste would assume a denite shape, and the state would never sell o
the collection. But this recognition also had its drawbacks. Since no one like the
Krllers oered to employ him after :,,:, he ceased being the kind of broker in
money and favors that he had been for dealers, artists, and others.
There was a more general basis for Bremmers shrinking role as patron,
however. The Netherlands remained in the grip of the Depression much
longer than other capitalist countries, which had a prolonged negative ef-
fect on the art trade. Bremmer was not able to sell as much of his artists
work to course participants and collectors during the thirties, and conse-
quently his visits to art sales, art dealers, and studios became less relevant.
For example, Bremmer had dozens of paintings in stock by one of his pro-
tgs, Henri Daalhoff, which he could no longer sell at twenties prices.
Finally he was forced to sell them far below the purchase price. Nor was he
getting any younger: in :,,o he passed his o,th year. His plan was to enlist
his younger brother-in-law to teach the courses in practical aesthetics that
had kept him traveling around the country for so many years.
Infa||ib|e
Bremmer was not finished as a Van Gogh expert after the Wacker affair.
German and Dutch journalists did not drop him, either during the first
trial or during the appeals in October and November :,,:. Sly digs such
A Real Van Gogh.indd 173 29-5-2010 15:24:01
1; iiraiiariox
as those made by cartoonist Piet van der Hem could be seen as amusing
and probably did little to upset him or his associates. In her unpublished
biography H.P. Bremmer, dienaar der kunst, Bremmers wife wrote that the
essence of the trial had had little impact on the crowds. Bremmers infal-
lible insight into Van Gogh the man and artist had held its ground, she
wrote, a fact that was fully acknowledged by Meier-Graefe and the press.
o
The biography constitutes the reflections of an almost uncritical, admiring
wife, which gives it a definite bias, but as far as I can tell it is consistent with
what was being written about her husband at that time.
;
Art critics, with
the exception of Plasschaert, did not try to knock Bremmer down. In a :,c
retrospective of the Wacker trial, De Tijd praised Bremmers performance:
The total impression was that the Dutch experts were more forewarned
and cautious in their assessment than the German.
For these museums, dealing with a collector like Chester Dale was like
running the gauntlet. Some of them maintained the stipulation that only
works by artists who had been dead for more than twenty or fifty years
could be displayed or enter the collection. The reaction of Chester Dale in
Time: You dont suppose that I would give my collection of Picassos, for
instance, so they could bury them in the cellar until :c years after Picasso
dies.
,
The National Gallery worked under this regulation and the board
was well aware that it prevented them from acquiring works that could form
a bridge to the contemporary world. In order to be able to acquire Chester
Dales collection, the museum waived this rule in :,c.
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iaiis riuxi caii 1;
At the opening of the National Gallery in :,:, Chester Dale was given
three galleries for the permanent display of his collection. He gave seventy-
one paintings on long-term loan, among them three Van Goghs: La Mousm
(F ,:), Olive Orchard (F o,o), and Self-Portrait at the Easel (F ,:,). The
works were much praised in the press: The self-portrait in it is one of
the best of the series that Van Gogh did of himself; some say that it is the
best. (...) It is a burning, thrilling thing and, as in all Van Gogh, it is a
perfect treatise in color.
o
Dale provided the museum with information on
all his pictures, but failed to mention the controversy surrounding the self-
portrait: there is no mention of De la Failles Les faux Van Gogh, nothing on
De Wilds negative findings on the make-up of the paint, and not a word
on the devastating report by the anonymous Paris restorer. Moreover, Dale
altered the provenance. In previously published catalogues of his collection,
,. Diego Rivera, Chester Dale (1,). 1oo x 1:o cm. On the table is the catalogue
Masterpieces of the National Gallery of Art, opened to the page showing his cherished
possession: the Wacker Van Gogh Self-Portrait at the Easel (F :).
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1,8 ax uxias\ iicac\
the provenance is given as O. Wacker, Berlin; in French Paintings from the
Chester Dale Collection, however, which appeared in :,: under the auspices
of the National Gallery with a foreword by John Walker, the picture is listed
as Mme J. van Gogh-Bonger, Amsterdam. Her name was a guarantee of
authenticity, while Otto Wackers was not.
;
Dale thus turned the museum
ignorant of the scandal surrounding it into an accomplice in his quest
for the pictures legitimation. The painting had the honor, together with
La Mousm, of being illustrated in the National Gallerys first catalogue of
its collection, Masterpieces of Painting, published in :,. This folio-format
publication, illustrated with costly color reproductions, quotes a letter from
Vincent to his brother Theo from : that ostensibly supported the at-
tribution. The invented provenance, Mme J. van Gogh-Bonger, Amster-
dam, was reiterated in all the museums catalogues published until :,.
There is no indication that in :,: Finley and Walker knew anything about
the affair surrounding the Wacker Van Goghs that had played itself out ten
years earlier in the Netherlands and Germany. In :,,c, however, everything
changed.
Washington, : March :),o
On : March :,,c, Vincent Willem van Gogh sent a letter to Finley protest-
ing against the provenance of Self-Portrait at the Easel, which in Masterpieces
of Painting was given as Mme J. van Gogh-Bonger, Amsterdam. He wrote
that the canvas had never been in his mothers collection, and that he had
never seen it at her home. He could only assume, he wrote, that the mu-
seum was unaware of the Wacker affair, and suggested Finley consult De la
Failles Les faux Van Gogh. He emphasizes that it was not his intention to
make a claim for the painting one way or another he was well aware of the
risk of suggesting to a collector that one of his pictures might not be genu-
ine but the reference to Les faux Van Gogh can only have been intended
to prompt the museum to look into the question of the works authenticity.
The management hesitated, but Vincent Willem remained undaunted: in
:,,: (and again in :,o: and :,;:) he urged the National Gallery to correct
the provenance.
He, too,
kept his opinion to himself and did not reveal it until the trial. The Duveen
firm was complying with the unwritten rule of the art trade: to remain
discreetly noncommittal when it comes to questions of authenticity. And
Van Regteren Altena? Was it simply a matter of not wanting to be bothered
to take up his pen, or was his silence an expression of collegial solidar-
ity? Whatever the answer, this discretion coupled with the unrestrained
enthusiasm of experts and critics meant that the forger and his accomplices
were able to carry on undisturbed. The lesson that the judicial authorities
1. According to Bremmer, Self-Portrait
with Straw Hat was Vincent van Goghs
own work. Current location unknown.
o. De la Faille attributed Study by
Candlelight (F ;oa), 81 x oo cm, to
Vincent van Gogh in 1,8. Current
location unknown.
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learned from the case was that more should be done to catch the forgers, but
actually carrying this out proved far from simple.
In May :,, the National Criminal Intelligence Division (CRI) began
an investigation of a painting that had been presented as a Van Gogh and
submitted to the Stedelijk Museum for authentication. The work was un-
signed and the owner made no attempt to sell it as genuine and unfalsi-
fied. For this reason the CRI concluded that no crimes had been com-
mitted and suspended the investigation.
,
Shortly thereafter, a few more
paintings popped up that the owners attributed to Van Gogh and that had
never been shown in any exhibitions or mentioned in any catalogues. This
case did seem to have indictable aspects. Although De la Faille had declared
one of them Study by Candlelight (which had been sold for a great deal
of money to an American millionaire) to be a genuine Van Gogh, and
Bremmer had confidently asserted that another painting Self-Portrait with
Straw Hat was from Van Goghs own hand, it had come to the attention
of B. Kist, Amsterdam public prosecutor, that the directors of the Stedelijk
Museum were convinced the paintings were fakes. The museum was backed
by Engineer Van Gogh.
Te Engineer
In :,, Vincent Willem van Gogh was the owner of the largest number of
works by Vincent van Gogh: about :cc paintings and ,c drawings. He also
owned Vincents correspondence with his father, Theo van Gogh, who died
in :,: when Vincent Willem was scarcely one year old. Those who asked the
Engineer why he had not chosen a profession in the art world like Vincent
van Gogh and other family members (three of his fathers uncles were also
art dealers) was told that his mother, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, and her
second husband, the critic and artist Johan Cohen Gosschalk (:;,-:,::),
had conveyed very little to him about art that he found worthwhile. This
is a surprising statement. After all, he had been surrounded by hundreds of
works of art as a child. Paintings and drawings by Van Gogh had hung on
all the walls of his parents home in Bussum and, after :,c:, in Amsterdam.
He had also become acquainted with many people through his mother and
stepfather, including the artists Richard Roland Holst, Jan Pieter Veth, and
Marius Bauer as well as men of letters such as Willem Kloos, Frederik van
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Eeden, and Lodewijk van Deyssel. A rich breeding ground for developing a
grasp of art as a child, it would seem. By his own admission, however, it all
passed him by. As a kind of explanation, he said that anything having to do
with art at home had been surrounded by an aura of rapture and worship,
which he heartily disliked.
Vincent Willem did embrace the socialist ideals of his mothers circle,
which remained with him all his life. Johanna was one of the initiators
in establishing the Social Democratic Womens Association. Her youngest
brother, the lawyer Willem Adriaan Bonger (:;o-:,c), whom she greatly
admired, was an original thinker. His pioneering dissertation on the eco-
nomic basis of crime, written in French in :,c,, was influenced by Marx-
ism and purported to be a synthesis of scientific and social doctrine. He
became the first professor of sociology and criminology in the Netherlands
in :,:: and was a prominent and active member of the Social Democratic
Labor Party (SDAP).
o
The Engineer was also a member of the SDAP, but
not nearly as active as Bonger. Describing the extent of his activity, his son
Johan van Gogh (:,::) said in :cc,, He scribbled election slogans on the
street and spent Sunday mornings teaching VARA subscribers [the socialist
broadcasting company] how to build radios.
;
Within the Engineers social circle, art and socialism were inextrica-
bly linked. His first marriage in :,:, was with Josina Wibaut (:,c-:,,,),
daughter of F.M. Wibaut (:,,-:,,o), Amsterdams influential social-demo-
cratic alderman. His nickname was The Mighty One. After the Van Gogh
exhibition in :,,c, she successfully urged her husband to give his collec-
tion to the Stedelijk Museum on loan.
What about the rest? Did it all just disappear? Was it destroyed, or was some
of it saved? And if it was saved, had it become the property of Marijnissen?
,
Johanna van Gogh-Bonger had already tried to track down these lost works
during the :,:cs and to gain possession of them, but without success.
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iosr woixs i
Sandberg asked Hans Jaff to examine Marijnissens drawings and paint-
ings. Jaff was the acting director of the Amsterdam city museums who had
done some writing on Van Gogh, including an almost completed disserta-
tion that had gone missing during the war. Sandberg also asked the restorer
Maurits van Dantzig for his opinion. Jaff and Van Dantzig found the ques-
tion interesting, but the conclusion they reached in late :, must have
been disappointing for Marijnissen: a fairly large number of the drawings
and paintings were not by Van Gogh. Some of the drawings had been made
on paper that dated from after :,cc, and they suspected the signatures had
been forged. Van Dantzig was not yet ready with his investigation of the
paintings, but after six months (the question of Study by Candlelight was
receiving full media attention) Jaff wrote to Marijnissen and told him that
not a single drawing or painting was from the hand of Vincent van Gogh.
The newspaper reports of Dutch forgery factories in the south of the
country were undoubtedly referring to the Marijnissen collection.
o
8. H.L.C. Ja, W. Sandberg and Engineer V.W. van Gogh setting up the exhibition
of the Teo van Gogh Collection in the Stedelijk Museum in 1,oo.
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State of emergency
In :,, the Engineer and Sandberg began pressing for the establishment of
a central expertise bureau: an authoritative organization that would oper-
ate under the auspices of the national government. The Provisional Arts
Council of the Minister of Education, Arts, and Science gave them a rec-
ommendation, thereby providing them with a sense of support. There was
little action to back it up, however, and in :,,c Sandberg went to talk to his
employer, the city of Amsterdam. He did not mince matters. They were in
a state of emergency, he said. Forgeries of Frans Hals, Vermeer, and Van
Gogh were spoiling the good name of Dutch art. Sandberg explained it this
way:
the owner of a painting that has not yet appeared in the o cial catalogues and
handbooks works his way down the list of known experts until one of them is
willing to acknowledge his picture as an original painting by a well-known art-
ist. Tis recognition suddenly increases the value of the work enormously, often a
hundredfold, so the owner can easily aord such an assessment. A piece has to be
glaringly fake not to be given an experts signature. Tis situation has caused the
prestige of certicates of authenticity to drop enormously in recent years. At the
moment there are several canvases on the world market that have been attributed
to Vincent van Gogh by experts but are unmarketable, according to their owners,
unless they bear a certicate signed by yours truly.
Sandberg was not willing to conduct assessments on his own, however, be-
cause it is almost impossible to be one hundred percent certain about the
authenticity of a work by a deceased master, while proving that a work is
false is possible in very few cases. He called for teamwork, since a paint-
ing can only be judged with a likelihood bordering on certainty when it is
examined in terms of chemistry, X-rays, graphology, stylistic analysis, and
provenance. That requires the collaboration of five specialists. [...] Each of
them issues a separate report of the research carried out in his area; if the
specialists agree, the case is simple. If they do not agree, they have to sit
down and try to reach a consensus.
;
What Sandberg did not deal with was
the problem of what to do if the experts continued to disagree.
There was no response from his superiors. Undaunted, Sandberg wrote
to the mayor and aldermen a few weeks later, describing a recent experi-
A Real Van Gogh.indd 234 29-5-2010 15:24:03
ixiiirisi ixsriruri i,
ence he had had with forgeries and thereby hoping to press home his appeal
for a central expertise bureau. At the request of the Israeli and Dutch au-
thorities he had set out for Paris with Dr. A.B. de Vries, the director of the
Mauritshuis, to look at some artistic treasures owned by a deceased Jewish
collector. The heirs were prepared to donate the collection to Israel on the
condition that a museum be built bearing the name of the deceased man.
We thought this case might be important for the young state of Israel,
Sandberg said, so with a high sense of purpose we embarked on a job that
promised to be very extensive, since the collection comprised more than
:,ccc pieces [...] with famous names such as Velzquez, Botticelli, Titian,
Veronese, Rubens, Prudhon, Corot, Daumier, Boudin, Manet, Monet, Pis-
sarro, Seurat, and Rousseau le Douanier, sometimes many from a single
master. To make a long story short, not a single one of these paintings was
of any value whatsoever; all of them were extremely crude fakes. Sandberg
ended his letter with an appropriate flair for the dramatic: Mr. De Vr-
ies and I were astonished that in Paris, among all those museums that of-
fered so many opportunities for comparison, such an improbable collection
could be put together with so little hesitation. I had seen collections like
this in South America, but I could not believe that such a thing was possible
in the center of European art.
She wanted to resign her position. Was the announcement of her departure
actually meant as a decision, or did she want to cast the matter in high re-
lief in order to provoke a discussion? There is reason to suspect the latter,
since she then met personally with a few of the board members (but not the
Engineer) and wrote that right from the start the board was gripped by
a certain unwillingness to establish a clearly defined basis and guidelines.
Perhaps this had to do with a controversy among the members themselves
(although Engineer Van Gogh was probably the only one who refused to
bear any responsibility, with all the consequences that this entails), which
is why the matter was constantly being shoved aside (it was instinctive).
,
This was followed a few days later by a long statement by chairman
Slagter concerning the vulnerable position of the Institute: It is depen-
dent on the goodwill of the Stedelijk Museum, which receives, preserves,
and transports the works of art. It builds on the work of experts who may
receive an honorarium but ultimately do the work voluntarily. Then there
are the difficult relationships between the board members and the Council
of Advocacy, and the poor attendance at meetings. The greatest handicap
was the absence of rules for dealing with assessments. The question of the
two watercolors and Les environs de Paris was what really rankled him: We
did not foresee the problems that would arise if two experts had differing
opinions. [...] If the board were to bear no responsibility toward the owner
and the Institute were only an intermediary agency, it would have to pass
contradictory reports on to the owner.
o
On : March :,,, the executive committee, consisting of the chairman,
secretary, and Sandberg, proposed to suspend assessments and observe a long
period of reection. After one year, in :,,,, a decision would then be made
concerning the continued existence of the Institute. Te obstacles of the last
years had been too big to carry on with business as usual. Te heart of the
problem was the disagreement between experts and the absence of the kind
of authority needed to force a consensus. Science was not the answer: Tere
is no objective scientic method for making assessments (the only method
that might make a claim to this area of competence is based on inadequate-
A Real Van Gogh.indd 249 29-5-2010 15:24:03
:o axoxc air ixiiirs
ly founded premises). So much for Van Dantzig. Te committee did see
quite some potential in assessments, however, if they were carried out within
a well-attended institute of art history at one or more Dutch universities
where the professor-director has the authority to supervise the research.
;
The Engineer was not impressed by the executive committees criticism
and would not hear of suspending activities. He asked secretary De Sa-
blonire to send a memo from his hand to the board. She carried out his
instructions, but sent the memo to only a few board members interspersed
with her own handwritten comments. In the memo the Engineer suggested
turning the secretarial work over to a lawyer. With a different secretariat,
he wrote, we would have no more difficulties. Here De Sablonire added
...of another character (preferably no character). The Engineer saw noth-
ing in the idea of teamwork as proposed by Slagter: [...] teamwork usually
leads to disappointment and poor results in the most diverse cases and cir-
cumstances that is my experience as arbiter, advisor, experts, etc. [...]. He
agreed with Slagter that there was no scientific, objective method for deter-
mining authenticity. But according to the Engineer, the Institute derived its
raison dtre from the absence of such methods. He also dismissed Slagters
idea of thenceforth commissioning institutes of art history to conduct re-
search on authenticity, supervised by an authorized professor-director. The
criticism expressed by Slagter, De Sablonire, and Sandberg concerning the
Institutes lack of authority could also be read in another way: as criticism of
the authority of the Engineer that is, being an owner of his uncles paint-
ings and drawings while making statements about the authenticity of his
work. But the nephew would hear none of it. He found the results of the
Institute satisfactory, or even more than that.
Te Engineer
recommended that De Vries hire Tralbaut. Tralbaut had earned his doctorate
in :, with a dissertation on Vincent van Goghs Antwerp period and had
built up an extensive library of books and other documents. Te assump-
tion was that in exchange for being given a job with the Dutch government
he would donate this personal material to the RKD. De Vries and Tellegen
were given the opportunity to look at Tralbauts documents at his home in
Antwerp. Tellegen was not impressed. In :cc, she told me, Tralbaut had
some nice folders, each with a Faille number, but there was nothing in them.
He also had a collection of neckties that reminded him of Van Gogh. I told
De Vries that it didnt make a serious impression and I didnt think it was
worth the trouble. De Vries did not discuss this with me any further. To my
surprise De Vries ended up hiring Tralbaut for the job at the RKD. Why? At
that time things were such that you didnt ask any questions.
,
In mid-:,,, Tralbaut began working at the RKD and in :,,o he was given
an assistant, Joop Joosten (:,:o), who had recently graduated with a degree
in art history and later would make his name as one of the compilers of the
Piet Mondriaan catalogue raisonn. This is when the idea of putting to-
gether a new Van Gogh catalogue must have taken shape, since Joosten told
me in :cc: that his job was to assist Tralbaut on such a project.
o
Tralbaut
was rarely seen at the RKD, however, and the catalogue failed to material-
ize. There were frequent collisions between him and the new director, Dr.
Horst Gerson (:,c;-:,;), a specialist in the art of the Dutch Golden Age.
Gerson wanted a straight answer from Tralbaut concerning the donation
of his library and documentation, but Tralbaut refused to commit himself
in black and white. In May :,, he was given an honorable dismissal with-
out having donated anything to the RKD. In :,o, he would sell his Van
Gogh library and documentation to the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh
for cc,ccc guilders, a sum that was raised by the Dutch state, the Univer-
sity of Amsterdam, and the Vincent van Gogh Foundation.
Tralbaut was a jack-of-all-trades. He had sung opera; written art criti-
cism, plays and books; and had worked as a sports reporter. He was the very
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model of the gentleman scholar. He lived quite comfortably thanks to his
second marriage to the daughter of a wealthy entrepreneur, so he could de-
vote all his time to his passion: the life and work of Vincent van Gogh. He
acquired a reputation as an indefatigable researcher. Those who knew him
found him warmhearted, hospitable, and overflowing with enthusiasm for
Van Gogh. Tralbaut had a way with people. There were those who thought
his animated personality was quite endearing. Speaking about him in :cc:,
Hammacher said, He had a house built [in France] entirely of olive tree
wood because Van Gogh had painted olive trees so often.
;
In :,,, the
Algemeen Handelsblad politely mentioned a shadow side of his passion: A
fanatical and persevering man, this inhabitant of Antwerp is not afraid of
carrying out a hypothesis to the point of absurdity.
Tralbaut became acquainted with the Engineer after the war, and they
would remain friends for life. The Engineer appreciated Tralbauts eagerness
to make Van Gogh better known, but he was critical of Tralbauts tendency
to go off on a tangent in his books and articles about Vincent. Tralbaut
also had a habit of letting his imagination get the better of him. In :,o,
in the early years of their friendship, he wrote to the Engineer that riding
o. M.E. Tralbaut pointing out the details of Self-Portrait (F 1;8 verso) (,. x :,.
cm) during the Van Gogh exhibition of 1, at the Gemeentemuseum in Te Hague.
To his left are Douglas Cooper and Jean Leymarie.
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in the Tour de France had completely worn him out. As a reporter he had
followed the event by car, but he gave the impression that he had ridden the
whole thing on a bicycle. Mere research was not enough for him. He also
had literary ambitions, and romanticized about the relationship between
Vincent, Theo, and Johanna in a play called In de schaduw van de raven (In
the Shadow of the Ravens). The play has Vincent and Johanna fall in love at
first sight, but shes already married to Theo and had given birth to Vincent
Willem a few months before. Neither the correspondence between Vincent
and Theo nor any other historical document makes the slightest suggestion
of such a love affair. In the drama devised by Tralbaut, Vincents suicide is
the result of his realization that he cannot be Johannas lover. This, too, has
no historical basis. But in the plays dnouement Tralbaut has the dying
Vincent say to Theo, Dont forget to embrace Jo for me ... shell under-
stand everything ... Im sure of it ... and ... and ... little Vincent ... When
hes grown ... hell understand, too ...
,
Tralbauts little Vincent did not understand, however, not even o
years later. In fact he hated this kind of fantasizing and scorned the idea
that his uncles suicide was the result of his unrequited love for his mother.
:c
Initially Tralbaut decided not to have his production performed, but after
five years he changed his mind and staged it in Antwerp. He defended his
brainchild with the remark that except for the suicide everything is purely
imaginary. He never entirely abandoned his idea of the relationship be-
tween Vincent, Theo, and Jo, however, and laid it all at the doorstep of old
man Freud supposedly Vincent was jealous because Theo had started a
family, something Vincent himself had longed for but had never succeeded
in doing. In the end, though, Tralbaut came to regard the play as the prod-
uct of my mischievous fantasy.
::
Tralbaut knew how to win people over with his warmheartedness, en-
thusiasm, and zeal. They saw him as a solo flyer, someone whom no one
could work with. He was regarded as unpredictable, a trait that he revealed
to his friend, the Engineer, on more than one occasion. In :,,, Tralbaut
investigated the authenticity of a painting for the Expertise Institute and
concluded that it was not a Van Gogh.
::
Shortly thereafter the Engineer
learned, much to his surprise, that the same work had been shown at the
Van Gogh exhibition in Antwerp in May and June :,,,, but this time as a
genuine Van Gogh and with Tralbauts added note, Authenticated by the
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Expertise Institute. The board of the Institute was divided over Tralbauts
action. Supposedly the Engineers first response was to shrug it off. He
said it was a typically Belgian thing to do. But the secretary, Margrit de
Sablonire, called it dishonest and maintained that what Tralbaut had done
was contrary to the principles of the Expertise Institute. She brought the
matter to a head and threatened to step down in :,,, if the board chose to
ignore the incident. The Engineer then wrote to Tralbaut and told him that
he should at least have informed him of his reversed opinion.
:,
The Institute
decided not to ask him for any more assessments.
After being dismissed from the RKD, Tralbaut got in touch with De la
Faille. He asked him for data for a Van Gogh catalogue raisonn, which
Tralbaut said he had been working on for quite some time. De la Faille
found this initiative quite disturbing, since up until then the Van Gogh
catalogue had been his baby.
:
Ambition
When De la Faille died in :,,,, almost all his photos of Van Goghs paint-
ings and drawings were at the RKD. The copyright on the photos and text
of the catalogues had gone to the widow, but there was no sign of a completed
o. A.M. Hammacher and J.G. van Gelder in 1,o1.
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axniriox i;
manuscript that was ready to go to press, despite the proud announcements
from Librex and Nijhoff of previous years that publication was imminent.
In :,oc the Kluwer company asked the RKD for permission to publish the
catalogue. After some prodding by Tellegen, Gerson told his superiors at
the Ministry of Education, Arts, and Sciences that his bureau had begun
preparing a Van Gogh catalogue raisonn. Tellegen hoped that this un-
dertaking would add some prestige to the Department of Modern Dutch
and Belgian Art and increase awareness of the RKD both nationally and
internationally. But Tralbaut wanted to publish a catalogue raisonn, too,
and he went to visit Da la Failles widow. He thought she should turn her
husbands Van Gogh documentation over to him: it was of no use to her,
after all, and Tralbaut could use it to compile his own Van Gogh catalogue.
She made him no promises but got in touch with Hammacher, director of
the Rijksmuseum Krller-Mller.
In :cc: Hammacher told me he had spoken with De la Faille regularly
about various works of art that hopeful owners wanted to attribute to Vin-
cent van Gogh. In :,,c a version of The Potato Eaters had come to light that
was being attributed to Van Gogh by its owners, but De la Faille refused to
make a snap decision. In :,,: he arranged to meet with Hammacher and
the Utrecht art historian Jan G. van Gelder (:,c,-:,c) in the Rijksmuseum
Krller-Mller to talk about it. Hammacher told me in :cc: that De la
Faille was sincerely interested in their arguments and did not hesitate to
reveal his own uncertainty about the works authenticity.
:,
He had always
been on good terms with De la Faille despite their differences of opinion,
so it made perfect sense that his widow should ask Hammacher for advice.
When Hammacher heard that Tralbaut was trying to take control of De la
Failles legacy, he was horrified. If that were to happen, he said, the archive
would fall into the hands of someone whose excitement and more than
hundred percent adoration of Van Gogh would cause him to treat it in an
irresponsible fashion. I warned the widow, but she said she had come to the
same conclusion herself.
:o
Hammacher asked J. Hulsker director of the
Art Division of the Ministry of Education, Arts and Sciences if the gov-
ernment would be prepared to invest in the completion of the De la Faille
manuscript. He thought the final edition of the catalogue should be the
responsibility of what in :cc: he called a group of people who had been
more calmly selected.
:;
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In fact, a portion of De la Failles archive was already at the RKD in
:,oc, but Hammachers memory is a good reflection of the mood at the
time. The important thing was to prevent Tralbaut from compiling a new
Van Gogh catalogue raisonn, thereby undermining Tralbauts authority as
a Van Gogh expert.
Editoria| sta
At the start of the sixties, Abraham Hammacher was undoubtedly one of
the most important art connoisseurs in the Netherlands. Since the twenties
he had written a number of books and hundreds of articles for newspapers,
magazines, and catalogues. He was praised for his keen intellect, erudition,
and facile pen. Above all, he was known as one of the countrys experts on
the work of Vincent van Gogh, about whom he had been writing articles in
the Utrechts Dagblad, Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, and De Gids since the
oo. Discussion of Te Potato Eaters at the Rijksmuseum Krller-Mller in September
1,1. From left to right, A.M. Hammacher, J.B. de la Faille and J.G. van Gelder.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 280 29-5-2010 15:24:04
iiiroiiai sraii i81
early twenties. After World War II, he let hardly a year go by without pub-
lishing something about the admired artist. As director of the Rijksmuseum
Krller-Mller, he was able to view a magnificent collection of paintings
and drawings by Van Gogh every day. Hammachers fascination had its
roots in the collected letters Vincent wrote to his brother Theo, which he
had read at the age of sixteen. For him, Vincent was one of those artists
who lived at odds with the rest of the world. Hammacher put it this way:
art satisfies the general human craving for an image that both wounds and
heals, that can fulfill human consciousness: the magical image [...] where
the divine and the mortal meet.
:
In :,oc Hammacher could look back at
the success of his books and catalogues on the work of Van Gogh, a success
that was evident from the reprints and translations of his books and the
requests for lectures.
Hammachers knowledge of the Dutch art world was unsurpassed. He
had begun as a journalist and critic, and in the late thirties he was appoint-
ed head of the Aesthetics Department of the Dutch post office. After the
war he took charge of the Art Division of the Ministry of Education, Arts,
and Sciences, and in :,; he became director of the Rijksmuseum Krller-
Mller. He was chairman of the Commission of Exhibitions Abroad and of
numerous other bodies that brought him in contact with the administrative
and cultural elite. In :,,: he became extraordinary professor of art history
at the Delft Institute of Technology. A few years later the University of
Utrecht awarded him an honorary doctorate for his achievements. In the
laudation he was praised by the doctoral supervisor, Van Gelder, for his
profound insight into the development of contemporary art.
:,
In :,o: Hammacher formed the Editorial committee for the reissue of
the catalogue of works by Vincent van Gogh (henceforth the editorial
committee) consisting of Van Gelder, De Gruyter, Hulsker, and Gerson
all of them heavyweights in the Dutch art world. Van Gelder had been
friends with Hammacher since the twenties, and the two men had pub-
lished in Elseviers Gellustreerd Maandschrift, an important magazine for the
literary and artistically minded elite before the war. In :,: he had written a
study of The Potato Eaters.
:c
Van Gelders significance was greater than that
of a university scholar, however. As his former colleague Van Uitert char-
acterized him in :cc:, he was a great networker, an organizer,
::
someone
who could pull strings for his students and colleagues because of his con-
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nections with the government, museums, and universities. He was a mem-
ber of several consultative bodies that were responsible for shaping policy
on the arts, including the board of the Rijksmuseum Krller-Mller.
De Gruyter, along with Willem Scherjon, compiled the catalogue of Van
Goghs paintings from Arles, Saint-Rmy, and Auvers-sur-Oise in :,,;. Af-
ter the war he worked for a few years as director of the Groninger Museum
voor Stad en Lande, and in the sixties he became head of the modern art
section of the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague. In :,o; he would give
up his membership on the editorial committee for health reasons and be
replaced by Ellen Joosten ( :cc,), curator at the Rijksmuseum Krller-
Mller.
Horst Gerson served on the editorial committee as director of the RKD.
His real love was not Van Gogh and modern art, however, but Rembrandt
van Rijn; he was working on a catalogue raisonn of Rembrandts work at
the time. In :,o he left the RKD to take up a professorship at the Univer-
sity of Groningen. His successor on the editorial committee was S. Gud-
laugsson (:,:,-:,;:), also a specialist in the art of the Golden Age and with
little affinity for that of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Jan Hulsker (:,c;-:cc,) was a Dutch specialist who earned his doctorate
in :,o with a dissertation on the writer Aart van der Leeuw and who also
did research on the correspondence of Vincent van Gogh.
::
He was the di-
rector of the Art Division of the Ministry of Education, Arts, and Sciences.
When the editorial committee first met in August :,o:, no pledge had yet
been made by the minister. In fact, Hammachers initiative for the publi-
cation of the catalogue raisonn had no legal or financial basis at all. But
Hulsker, who wanted to serve on the committee as government representa-
tive, expected that the minister would give the project his financial support.
After all, De la Failles catalogue was an indispensable standard work, a
publication of great importance to the Netherlands.
:,
Conspicuous by his absence on the editorial committee was the Engi-
neer, which did not mean that his expertise was being questioned. The
editors did not invite him to join because they knew he was not in favor of
reissuing the catalogue and because, as the minutes of the editorial commit-
tee note, it is well known that he holds strong views about the authenticity
or spuriousness of many paintings that differ from those of other experts.
:
This argument has the ring of a pretext. The same could be said of De
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iiiroiiai sraii i8
Gruyter, for example, and he was a committee member. In his :,,; Van
Gogh catalogue, the Engineer upheld the authenticity of some paintings
that others had denied or doubted, and conversely he declared paintings
as forgeries that Van Gogh experts like De la Faille and the director of the
Nationalgalerie Ludwig Justi regarded as genuine. The editors had no
objection to working with him. The real difficulty probably had to do with
something else about the Engineer that had not been committed to paper:
his reputation for going his own way when it came to his uncles spiritual
legacy. The fact that he had differing views on what was genuine and what
was fake would become evident after the catalogue was published in :,;c,
when he marked the paintings and drawings in his copy with marginal
notes like Fake! and This is not Vincent. He never published his dis-
senting opinions.
The editorial committee hoped to complete its work on the reissue with-
in one to two years and to avoid questions over authenticity. Consensus was
the motto. The Engineer, they thought, would never accept any attempt to
achieve consensus. Hammacher was well aware of his firm conviction re-
garding Paul Gachets Van Goghs. There were others, too, who saw him as
a man with a mind of his own. Edy de Wilde, successor to Sandberg at the
Stedelijk Museum, made the following comment in :cc:: [The Engineer]
did listen to me, but if he didnt go along with something, it didnt happen.
He often confronted the directors of the Stedelijk with faits accomplis. If he
wanted to take the collection somewhere for an exhibition, he got it, even
if it caused problems for the Stedelijk. Compromises were out of the ques-
tion. He had a lot of charm but he rarely took other people into account.
:,
Many years later, Van Gelder would characterize him as short-tempered,
irritable, brilliant, and friendly.
:o
One of the principles of the academic enterprise is: were going to agree
to disagree, and it is quite conceivable that we will continue to disagree. Te
implicit principle of the editorial committee, however, was: were going to
agree to agree an understandable attitude. People who work on a project
together must be prepared to make compromises. Fundamental dierences
of opinion can endanger the progress and completion of a research project,
in this case a catalogue raisonn. It is also important to realize that the edi-
torial committee assigned itself a modest role at rst. Te documents keep
referring to a reissue. But the idea of a modest role would not last long.
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Scho|arship
In September :,o: the state secretary gave the editorial committee the green
light. Additional personnel were assigned to the RKD for one year to assist
the editors. On Hammachers advice, the state secretary sent a letter to Tral-
baut to inform him of the support for the reissue being provided by the Dutch
government and of the names of the persons on the editorial committee. It
had to be made clear to Tralbaut that by working independently he would
not be able to achieve what Hammacher and his colleagues were bound to
accomplish on a project commissioned and nanced by the state. Te mes-
sage got through; Tralbaut stopped working on his Van Gogh catalogue. Te
ministrys direct nancial support for issuing a catalogue of a Dutch master
was a unique event. Never before or since, as we now know had a ministry
directly commissioned the publication of a catalogue raisonn.
One crucial clause in the ministrys assignment charged the editorial
committee with this task: wherever possible, the publication of the new
edition will reflect the current state of contemporary scholarship.
:;
There
was no explanation, nor was there a plan of action for the reissue that would
serve as guidelines for the editorial committee. The ministry confined itself
to the notion of scholarship which, as it turned out, the editorial com-
mittee and the RKD each interpreted in its own way. As noted earlier, the
editorial committee envisioned a modest role for itself, and in this respect it
spoke of keeping watch over the publication of De la Failles posthumous
work. While making every effort to avoid adding divergent opinions from
any single member of the editorial committee to the catalogue, it sought
to incorporate important data that has been published since the last edi-
tion.
:
De la Failles widow, who attended the first meeting of the editorial
committee, agreed with this aim provided that these additions are not
polemical or personal in character, as she put it. Her words echo the bitter
struggle over authenticity that her late husband had fought beginning with
the Wacker affair.
:,
Two years later, the editorial committee clarified its position on the
reissue. It did not intend to look for or correct any deficiencies [in De la
Failles work] or to encourage our own investigation of any unsolved is-
sues.
,c
Only information that had been published by art scholars during
the intervening years would be used. The editorial committee realized that
it could not avoid problems of authenticity. How should it deal with De
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scuoiaisuii i8,
la Failles judgments of works by Van Gogh that were disputed by other
experts? The editors agreed that they would accept this subjective ele-
ment as unavoidable, and in doubtful cases they would cite the necessary
literature in order to give the reader the opportunity to form his own judg-
ment.
,:
At the RKD, Tellegen had a different interpretation of the state secre-
tarys instruction to bring the catalogue academically up-to-date. A reissue
that remained faithful to De la Failles work and views was an impossibility,
in her opinion. She wanted a publication that would satisfy the academic
standards she had drawn up for the Department of Modern Dutch and Bel-
gian Art. She thought it was time to conduct new and thorough research,
which would involve studying paintings, drawings, and watercolors, check-
ing the provenance of the various works with former and present owners,
documenting the exhibition history once again, etc.
Her colleague Joop Joosten told me in :cc:, We wanted to conduct
a study of provenance, and that would involve answering questions such
as: when was a painting or drawing first mentioned or described? Who
described it? What were the circumstances? When was it first exhibited,
photographed, or reproduced? We believed that answering these questions
would require historical research. We would have to collect as much infor-
mation as we could from archives, magazines, books, and in Van Goghs
letters. It seems perfectly obvious now, but back then it definitely was not.
Vincents incomplete and partly expurgated letters had been used in a slap-
dash fashion to date the paintings. De la Faille had not arranged Vincents
works chronologically, and that was one of the things that had to be sorted
out. And there were incorrect attributions and forgeries as well.
,:
In :,o:
no one could have known that differences in ambition and the interpreta-
tion of the notion of scholarship would lead to clashes between the RKD
and the editorial committee.
Te Park at Arles
In :,o, the Rijksmuseum Krller-Mller received a painting on approval
via a French art dealer with a request for an assessment. According to the
dealer it was Vincents The Park at Arles (F ;:). This work had not been
exhibited for a long time, and one of its first owners had been the Berlin
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collector Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. Hammacher, who by now had
retired, wrote the assessment. He asked the RKD to give him a photo of the
painting from De la Failles collection, which it did.
Tellegen had never seen the actual painting and went to Otterlo in early
August to study it. There she discovered something strange. The brush-
strokes in the painting at the Krller-Mller were different from those
of The Park at Arles in De la Failles :,: and :,,, catalogues. Not only
that, but the painting in the Krller-Mller was bigger. Her conclusion:
the painting was either a copy or a fake. The curator at the Krller-Mller
shared her view. Upon returning to the RKD she compared the photos of
the original piece with those of the fake, all of them from De la Failles col-
lection. Apparently De la Faille had intended to use the yet unpublished
photo of the fake in the new edition of the catalogue. The photo came from
a French art dealer, who had sent it to him in :,,. De la Faille had prob-
ably failed to notice the differences between the photos. This confirmed
Tellegens conviction that thorough research was necessary, and she wrote
to Hammacher insisting that we should proceed with the utmost caution,
even with the material from De la Faille, and that not a single detail should
be accepted without being carefully checked.
,,
The letter did not go down
well. After one month she was summoned by her superior, RKD director
Gerson, who was upset by the tone and content of her letter. It was not up
to her to decide whether a painting was a forgery or not, he said. She was
told to apologize to Hammacher, which she did.
The painting was then taken to the RKD in The Hague for inspection.
Tellegen had photos taken of the fake painting with a raking light that
closely resembled those taken of the genuine canvas, a method that most
clearly captured the differences between them. The editors agreed that the
photos revealed certain discrepancies. Were they looking at two different
paintings? Hammacher thought the photos in fact were of one and the same
painting: the one owned by Mendelssohn. The differences shown in the
photos prove nothing about the possibility of two versions, he said. The
painting could have been restored or retouched. It was a plausible explana-
tion, all the more so since the painting did not give the impression of hav-
ing been carefully painted, as copies often are. Van Gelder agreed with him.
But De Gruyter thought they were looking at two different paintings, and
like Tellegen he doubted the works authenticity.
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The editors were divided and could not reach a decision. They thought
the provenance of the Mendelssohn version ought to be looked into closely
and that Professor Froentjes of the Forensic Laboratory of the Ministry of
Justice should be asked to study the suspect work.
,
Froentjes also took
photos of the painting that approximated the older photo as much as pos-
sible, and in early December he wrote to the editorial committee, A com-
parison between the old photo and these prints shows that the original
painting has been deftly imitated, although there are still many minor
differences.
,,
A few weeks later, an investigation into the archives of an
American art dealer revealed that The Park at Arles had been re-canvased
in :,,c, which was not the case with the suspect painting. That dealer had
also compared photos of The Park at Arles with the suspect painting, which
he had had for some time on approval. His conclusion: a repeat perfor-
mance, but not by Van Gogh.
,o
These results made Tellegen more convinced than ever that the new edi-
tion should be based on thorough research. In fact this was simply an exten-
sion of her official duties, which were to verify and provide supplementary
information on the works of art and to answer questions from within the
Netherlands and abroad concerning the location, provenance, dating, or
possible authenticity of work by or attributed to Vincent van Gogh.
,;
As
a result, compiling the catalogue took longer than the editorial commit-
tee had envisioned. The editors became irritated with what they called her
perfectionism. She was urged to discontinue her time-consuming per-
sonal research and to give priority to producing numbers, i.e. the works
by Van Gogh with Faille numbers.
,
Cassandra
Tension mounted between the editorial committee and Annet Tellegen, and
by May :,o they had lost all confidence in her. The men claimed she had
made far too little progress over the past years. Her working method was
incompatible with the promise they had made to the minister to finish
the catalogue in :,o. She, on the other hand, thought it would be pro-
fessionally irresponsible to publish the revised De la Faille with merely a
few additions. At first she found a sympathetic ear in the person of her
colleague Joop Joosten. The two of them sent a memo to their superior,
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Gerson, pointing out all the problems with De la Failles legacy. He was won
over, took sides, and wrote to the committee, In making my way through
the first c numbers I have come across so many inconsistencies, incorrect
dates based on incorrect citations from the letters, doubts as to provenance,
etc., that I, too, have come to the conclusion that it makes no sense to
publish this basic information without a thorough revision. Gerson saw an
unbridgeable gap between the views of the editors and those of his institute,
which he felt could no longer bear the responsibility for the new edition.
He sent a letter to the editorial committee announcing that he was with-
drawing as a member and that he had charged Tellegen with conducting
additional research in accordance with her plans. He hoped that a new,
solid Van Gogh catalogue would emerge from this research [...] based on
modern principles.
,,
Gersons position did not go down smoothly with his fellow editors.
Van Gelder hit the roof. He accused Gerson of taking three years to come
to the conclusion that his RKD was incapable of handling the De la Faille
revision. After three years, c of the :,,cc numbers have been laid out but
are not ready for the press. Somehow weve got to find a way out of this im-
passe as soon as possible. If you ask me, it wont do to say, Im pulling out
because I prefer a different kind of catalogue. Whos going to take that on,
I wonder? Van Gelder was not confident that the RKD would be able to
carry out such a huge project on its own and asked Gerson to reconsider.
c
Gerson then made a completely unexpected about-face and demanded that
Tellegen conform to the views of the committee. There wasnt a word about
the research according to her own plans that he had urged her to under-
take earlier on. She refused, and both of them turned for arbitration to the
Ministry of Education, Arts, and Sciences, to which the RKD was account-
able.
:
For the ministry, the official response was quite straightforward:
[...] either Mrs. Tellegen does the work assigned to her by the director, or
Mrs. Tellegen must be dismissed.
:
Van Gelder exerted pressure on Gerson
to stick to his guns. His collaborators, he wrote, have no idea what sort of
official relationship they should be working under, nor do they understand
the notion of copyright or the moral obligations it entails.
,
The editorial committee arranged to meet with Joop Joosten who had
temporarily replaced Tellegen as head of the Department of Modern Dutch
and Belgian Art in an attempt to have Tellegens work on the catalogue
A Real Van Gogh.indd 288 29-5-2010 15:24:04
accoxxoiariox i8
raisonn turned over to someone else. Joosten sided with her entirely: car-
rying out the editorial plan was professionally irresponsible. Thus began a
difficult period for Gerson. To take the bull by the horns and force two staff
members to resign would exacerbate relations within the RKD. But to let
the matter slide would result in loss of face with the Ministry and the edito-
rial committee. Finally Tellegen gave in, despite the moral support offered
to her by her colleagues from the RKD. In :ccc she told me, I was in dan-
ger of being branded a troublemaker. If that had happened, I wouldnt have
been able to get a job anywhere. She realized that without the support of
her superior she did not stand a chance of realizing her ambition: to make
the RKD a distinguished Vincent van Gogh knowledge center. In March
:,o, the editorial committee drew up a document in which she declared
that with regard to the catalogue she would set aside any desire to act
autonomously.
Tralbaut
discussed this with Hammacher and understood him to say that the paint-
ing would definitely be included in the revised De la Faille.
Tralbaut also came up with an indirect way of pressing home his posi-
tion on the painting. He suggested to Loeb that the publication be dedi-
cated to Sandberg, former board member of the Expertise Institute: It
would give the assessment an international nuance.
,
Loeb was enthusias-
tic about the idea. He was worried, however, that his commercial interest
in the publication might become known. But Tralbaut had a solution: in
the galley proofs he changed the location of the painting from Paris to
Switzerland. This way, he wrote to Loeb, [...] no one will make the
connection with you.
,c
They concealed their close collaboration as well as
the financial interest Tralbaut had procured in the sale: five percent of the
selling price.
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In November :,o; the first installment of Tralbauts Archives Interna-
tionales de Van Gogh was published under the title Comment identifier van
Gogh? One whole page was reserved for the announcement that two lead-
ing scholars Jaff and Hammacher regarded it as a work by Van Gogh.
Comment identifier van Gogh? was sent to scores of prominent figures in the
art world, and Tralbaut was praised for his discovery. He received compli-
ments from director Van Schendel of the Rijksmuseum for his extensive
research, from an art dealer for the works handsome design, and from
the Engineer for the thoroughness with which the piece was written.
,:
Flattering compliments to be sure, but obviously the letter writers had
chosen their words with great care to avoid expressing an opinion about
who the painter of Les environs de Paris actually was. It is not difficult to
imagine how Tralbaut and Loeb must have felt in December :,o;, how-
ever, for Jaff and Hammacher of the Expertise Institute had attributed
the work to Van Gogh, and Hammacher supposedly had talked about in-
cluding it in the catalogue. With Van Gelders unqualified support, Loeb
and Tralbaut were more convinced than ever that it actually was true. Van
Gelder wrote, I believe I have seen the painting once in the Stedelijk
Museum, not knowing the authorship had ever been in doubt. If there
were any doubts, they have certainly been eliminated entirely now that a
thorough analysis has been carried out.
,:
Loeb and Tralbaut had no ear for
dissenting noises.
At the RKD in The Hague, the revision of the De la Faille catalogue was
far from complete, so Tralbaut worked steadily in his attempts to carve out
a prominent place in Vincents oeuvre not only for this painting but also
for two others he had discovered: Rcolte de bl dans la plaine des Alpilles
(Grain Harvest on the Plains of the Alpilles) and Paysage aux environs dArles
(Landscape near Arles). He devoted a detailed installment of his Archives
Internationales de Van Gogh to Rcolte de bl, which he had discovered in
:,o. In the text he used the Engineers authority to underscore its authen-
ticity.
,,
The owner was not mentioned by name, but two years later Tral-
baut reproduced the painting in a publication once again and concealed the
identity of the owner with the phrase Collection particulire, Los Angeles,
Etats-Unis.
,
Here, too, Tralbaut had procured a commercial interest of
five percent of the selling price.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 292 29-5-2010 15:24:05
uxiovii i
Un|oved
The year :,o, marked the publication of Tralbauts monumental mono-
graph Van Gogh, le mal aim, which also came out in English. In it he
reviewed the life and work of his idol in ,,c pages that included hundreds
of black-and-white and color illustrations. The color reproductions of his
three discoveries were prominently featured.
,,
Engineer Van Gogh was re-
sponsible for the preface. After the first sentence What a moving book!
he sings the praises of the author, for whom (he writes) he has written
prefaces for many earlier books. Personally, says the Engineer, he finds such
prefaces unnecessary, since the author has already written over a hundred
books and articles on Van Gogh: Tralbauts reputation alone is enough to
guarantee the value of this work.
,o
With these words, the Engineer seems
to be backing Tralbauts Van Gogh discoveries with his own authority. But
although he may create that impression, the Engineer is entirely silent when
it comes to the authenticity of Tralbauts discoveries or of any other work in
Van Gogh, le mal aim. In this respect his preface is just as non-committal
as his complimentary letter of November :,o; in response to Tralbauts
publication on Les environs de Paris.
Tralbaut now believed himself to be one of the anointed. Later he de-
fended himself against criticism of the authenticity of the painting by say-
ing, Do you think that he [i.e., the Engineer] would have done that for
a book containing a reproduction of the painting if he had not been con-
vinced of it himself?
,;
Having his discoveries included in the revised De
la Faille seemed like a sure thing, all the more so since in :,o, the editor-
ial committee had asked him who should be listed in the catalogue as the
paintings owner. But he was in for a disappointment.
,
In mid-:,o, Tralbaut learned that none of his discoveries would be in-
cluded in the catalogue raisonn. The editorial committee was divided over
their authenticity. The hazy provenance of the paintings became a particu-
larly problematic obstacle to consensus.
,,
None of the works were men-
tioned in Vincent van Goghs letters, they had no exhibition history, and
the line leading back to the master via the owners was vague. Tralbaut was
aghast and demanded satisfaction in the most imperious tones. The com-
mittees answer was succinct and to the point. There would be no section in
the catalogue containing works that did not appear in De la Faille and over
which the editorial committee had not reached a consensus on authentic-
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ity or attribution.
oc
Tralbaut accused the committee of being inconsistent
because he had been told that other recently discovered work would be
included.
The editorial committee proposed a compromise. They would reproduce
Les environs de Paris in the catalogue but with a note to the reader saying
that the editors disagreed on the works authenticity. Then Tralbaut over-
played his hand. He demanded that all three paintings be included without
comment. If not, an international press conference in Paris would be
held to coincide with the publication of the catalogue, at which every-
one would be invited to substantiate his doubts with scholarly arguments,
and to which an official invitation would naturally be sent to the editorial
committee. [...] The conference would be chaired by three leading figures
from the art history sector. It would expose the editors lack of expertise:
I deem it necessary to determine once and for all who is and who is not
a Van Gogh expert. The expert, Tralbaut wrote, distinguishes between
genuine and false without hesitation, certainly when the work before him is
not merely an ordinary painting by Vincent van Gogh but a masterpiece.
o:
Tralbaut terminated his friendship with the editors and threatened to take
legal action, but the committee stood firm and rejected all three of his dis-
coveries. Tralbauts pent-up anger probably had to do with finances, one
editor sighed. A most unpalatable and dangerous gentleman. Now hes left
alone with his painting, press conference or no press conference. Its a les-
son in never putting anything down on paper, however, and in being more
distrustful of commerce than were already wont to be.
o:
Foo|
Les environs de Paris was not to be included in the Van Gogh catalogue: it
was a heavy blow for Alfred Loeb, and he urged Tralbaut to discuss it with
the Engineer. At least he had never said anything negative about the paint-
ing. He could be talked into rendering a favorable assessment, couldnt
he? Whether Tralbaut tried this or not is unknown, but in :,;: Bogomila
Welsh-Ovcharov showed up. She was one of Van Gelders doctoral students,
and she found the Van Gogh attribution erroneous.
Since :,o, Welsh-Ovcharov had been doing research on the two years
that Vincent van Gogh lived and worked in Paris: March :o to February
A Real Van Gogh.indd 294 29-5-2010 15:24:05
iooi i,
:. She had come across reviews of an exhibition organized by the Socit
des Artistes Indpendants in :o in which a particular painting, Terrains
vagues (Fallow ground), was described. Much to her surprise, the description
written by these critics corresponded with the composition of Les environs
de Paris. What the critics said, however, was that it was not a work by Van
Gogh but by Charles Angrand. The work had never been exhibited in the
twentieth century and she very much wanted to see it, so she traveled with
Loeb from Paris to the safe in Basel where it was being kept to have a look.
She also had talks with a nephew of the artist, Pierre Angrand, who told her
he had seen Terrains vagues in the company of the artist during the twenties.
Welsh-Ovcharov was sure she was right and published her findings in :,;:,
The early work of Charles Angrand and his contact with Vincent van Gogh.
Tralbaut was horrified. He had nothing good to say about Welsh-Ovcharov
and her work, and in a letter to an acquaintance he called her a show-off
and a fool.
o,
A discussion between Tralbaut and Welsh-Ovcharov never
took place.
o
In :,;o Tralbaut died and Les environs de Paris lost its standard-bearer.
Loeb did not give up, however. He had in his possession indisputable state-
ments by several experts that the canvas was from Vincents hand, and when
the :,;c De la Faille was published the editorial committee indicated they
were open to revisions and additions. No date was set for the publication
of those changes, and as we now know, no revised catalogue would ever
appear in the twentieth century. Nor is there evidence at the time of writ-
ing of any work in progress that might result in a fully documented Van
Gogh catalogue-raisonn. This would not necessarily prevent a particular
work of art from being accepted as a Van Gogh, but it would need the
unanimous agreement of authoritative experts. In the seventies and eight-
ies, however, the work was neither discussed nor depicted by any Van Gogh
expert. Welsh-Ovcharov left it out of her :,;o dissertation on Van Goghs
Paris period. In :,;;, Jan Hulsker, the former editor of the posthumous De
la Faille, published his own catalogue, The Complete Van Gogh.
o,
He com-
pletely ignored Les environs de Paris.
In :,: Loeb contacted Hammacher, the chairman of the editorial com-
mittee, and induced him to consider his painting once again. For the next
year, Hammacher and Ellen Joosten studied the painting in Paris. They were
unanimous in their opinion of the works authenticity and told Loeb that it
A Real Van Gogh.indd 295 29-5-2010 15:24:05
:,o rui uxiixisuii vixcixr
would be published in a supplement to De la Failles :,;c catalogue.
oo
They
believed Welsh-Ovcharovs Angrand attribution to be incorrect. But when
Hammachers richly illustrated Van Gogh biography came out in :,:, it
contained no mention of the painting. The experts continued to express
ambivalence about the makers identity. During the years that followed,
Jaff issued Loeb another certificate of authenticity while the RKD and a
French expert sided with Welsh-Ovcharov.
o;
Exhibition
In :,; Welsh-Ovcharov put the finishing touches on a catalogue for the
exhibition Van Gogh Paris at the prestigious and newly opened Muse
dOrsay. The aim of the exhibition was to portray the group of painters
that Van Gogh had come to know in :o-:. On pages ::-:, she wrote
about Charles Angrand and included a reproduction of Terrains vagues. The
painting itself would not be part of the exhibition. In an accompanying
statement she mentions the publications written by Tralbaut in which he
attributes the painting to Van Gogh under the title Les environs de Paris,
and she ends with [...] the author has attributed it to Charles Angrand.
o
This sounds as if Tralbaut has had second thoughts, but by the author
Welsh-Ovcharov meant herself and not Tralbaut.
The exhibition opened on , February :,, and Loebs heirs were dis-
mayed at what was written about their painting in the catalogue of Van
Gogh Paris. They immediately swung into action, and through their law-
yer demanded that the museum issue an erratum saying that Tralbaut re-
garded the work as a genuine Van Gogh. The museum must insert the er-
ratum in the catalogue, they insisted, which must then be sent to everyone
who already owned a copy. In future editions Welsh-Ovcharovs mistake
would have to be rectified.
Muse dOrsay refused to comply with this demand and asked three Van
Gogh experts and the Rijksmuseum Van Gogh to issue a verdict on the
works authenticity. Hulsker let the museum know that he had not included
it in his The Complete Van Gogh because he had been completely convinced
by Welsh-Ovcharovs study. He wrote that neither he nor his fellow editors
of the :,;c De la Faille had been persuaded that it was a Van Gogh. John
Rewald, the expert on Impressionism and Post-Impressionism; Van Gogh
A Real Van Gogh.indd 296 29-5-2010 15:24:05
rui uauiir casi i;
expert Ronald Pickvance; and the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh also as-
serted that it was not a Van Gogh but a genuine Charles Angrand. Muse
dOrsay wanted to have these statements included in the erratum as well.
The heirs decided to compromise. According to the agreement they entered
into with Muses de France, the Muse dOrsays highest administrative
authority, the contested pages :: and :, would be omitted from the cata-
logues second printing.
o,
Some experts had come out publicly for the Van
Gogh attribution and others had come out against it: Les environs de Paris
had landed in the purgatorio of controversial works of art.
As the years passed, a now familiar picture emerged. The heirs took great
pains to find experts who supported them in their attribution to Van Gogh
and their criticism of Welsh-Ovcharov. Her reading of the reviews of the
exhibition of the Socit des Artistes Indpendants of :o was fiercely at-
tacked. They had nothing at all to do with Les environs de Paris, it was
argued. Finally, via Benot Landais, they succeeded in getting Hulsker to
change his mind: he decided it was a Van Gogh. But that was not enough to
silence the criticism. In :,,, during a lecture at the Van Gogh symposium
held in the National Gallery in London, Welsh-Ovcharov made reference
to her publication of :,;: about Angrand and Van Gogh. Her statement on
Les environs de Paris reached the heirs, and they considered legal action. The
majority of experts, they insisted, had attributed the painting to Vincent
van Gogh. They did not want to deny Welsh-Ovcharov whatever freedom
of investigation she needed, but this freedom had its limits. Armed with her
academic authority, she had done serious material damage: the painting was
unmarketable as a Van Gogh or could only be sold for a much lower price.
;c
Te Hauert case
In the battle over authenticity, interested parties sometimes threatened to
take legal steps against art experts if they happened to be the bearer of un-
welcome tidings. In the battle over catalogue contents, one interested party
the French lawyer Roger Hauert was led to take an unconventional step:
he summoned the Dutch state to appear before a French court. The cause
was a painting in his possession, Sunflowers in a Green Jug, to which De la
Faille had given a certificate of authenticity. De la Faille had traveled to
Paris in October :,; especially for this purpose, and on the photo of the
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:,8 rui uxiixisuii vixcixr
painting he wrote, I see only one man who could have painted this and
that man is Van Gogh.
;:
De la Faille probably told Hauert that the third
edition of the Van Gogh catalogue was in the works and would include this
canvas. Many years later, in :,o,, a friend of Hauert at the RKD found a
photo of Sunflowers in a Green Jug in a box marked Fake Van Goghs. Hau-
ert wasted no time in his response. He demanded the address of the widow
De la Faille who, he said, as the rightful heir, should repair the damage that
De la Failles breach of confidence had caused. The RKD refused to sup-
ply the address. Hauert wanted to sell the canvas to a dealer, and the dealer
asked the editorial committee to confirm its authenticity. The committee
saw no reason to depart from De la Failles revised judgment, however. They
said the painting did not appear in his manuscript for the catalogue, and
they told the dealer it would not be included.
;:
Hammacher knew the canvas and endorsed De la Failles final judgment:
not Van Goghs work. The editorial committee concurred, and in February
:,;c, about eight months before the publication of the catalogue, they told
Hauert it would not be included.
;,
Hauert refused to take this lying down.
He instructed a Dutch lawyer to investigate the widow and the editorial
committee, and contended that De la Faille had never told him that he was
revoking his assessment of Sunflower in a Green Jug. The fact that the RKD
had found the photo of the painting in a collection of photos of fake Van
Goghs could have been coincidental. De la Faille was already in his seven-
ties when he began working on the new edition of the catalogue, Hauert
reasoned. At that age it is common for a man to make mistakes.
The editorial committee refused to relent, and Hauert decided to get
even by way of the Paris courts. He brought charges against the widow, the
RKD, and the editorial committee and demanded rectification. Speaking
about the incident in :cc:, Hammacher said, I told the Dutch government
what was happening to me. They said I could count on their support and
cooperation. I went to Paris once, for a lengthy session. The painting was
there in the courtroom with its back to the wall. It stayed there for hours.
No one was talking about the painting. The lawyers were arguing about
whether a Dutchman should be convicted in a French court. It was a serious
question, and the arguing went on and on. I thought the case would take
two years at least. Within one year the Parisian lawyer had died and the case
was dropped. Never heard anything more about it.
;
The support that the
A Real Van Gogh.indd 298 29-5-2010 15:24:05
;uici i
government extended to Hammacher initially consisted of assigning him a
lawyer who worked out of the government attorneys office. How the gov-
ernment would have acted if the case had gone forward is unknown.
Judge
After the war was over, the government did not want to set up an Expertise
Institute. The reason is unclear. Perhaps the words from the prominent :,th
century Dutch Home Secretary Johan Rudolph Thorbecke The govern-
ment is not a judge of science and art played a role. It is also possible
that the minister was going by the advice he received from the directors
of the museums, who did not want to support such a body at that time.
They probably saw it as an infringement of their autonomy, and they did
not want to jeopardize their personal relations with art donors. Perhaps the
political persuasion of Sandberg and the Engineer, as well as the commo-
tion caused by Study by Candlelight in :,,, also played a role. These are all
speculations. We will never know the exact reasons because the documents
that might provide a conclusive answer are nowhere to be found. This is
what makes the publication of De la Failles posthumous catalogue such
an interesting story: unintentionally and unwittingly, the government was
drawn into conflicts over authenticity. The departments most highly placed
official for the arts, Dr. J. Hulsker, participated in the work of the editorial
committee as the ministers representative, and there is not a single docu-
ment to suggest that he abstained from making such judgments. On the
contrary, the :,;c catalogue listed him as an editor, and in that function
he was co-responsible for the works that De la Faille had deemed genuine
but the editors had not, and vice versa.
;,
The ministerial representative did
not serve as an observer but as a participant. The direct support of the
Dutch government for the reissue of a catalogue was a unique event. Never
before or since has the government ordered the compilation of a fully
documented catalogue raisonn of a Dutch master, since that is what it all
boils down to: the Dutch government acting as a judge of science and art.
Thorbecke would have turned over in his grave.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 299 29-5-2010 15:24:05
A Real Van Gogh.indd 300 29-5-2010 15:24:05
o1
Acknowledgments
Many people have discussed the subject of this book with me, either be-
cause they are directly involved in the matters dealt with here or because
they have encountered similar situations in the art world. I have also had
regular contact with persons who are not familiar with the inner workings
of the art world but who kept me on the right track by asking critical ques-
tions. A few took the trouble to read and mark up my manuscripts as well,
and have kept me from making many mistakes, both major and minor. I
mention here H. Balk, R. Bordewijk, M. ter Borg, E. Couve, H. Ebbink, P.
van der Eerden, J. Ellemers, W. Feilchenfeldt, P. Hecht, P. Hefting, B. Jans,
J. Joosten, T. Kdera, S. Koldehoff, J. Koldeweij, F. Leeman, M. te Mar-
velde, H. van Os, W. Rappard, P. de Ruiter, E. Schrage, R. Schumacher, A.
Tellegen, E. van Uitert, P. Verschoof, B. Welsh-Ovcharov, E. van de Weter-
ing, and J. van der Wolk.
Sadly, a few of the individuals whose conversations, correspondence,
and/or comments contributed substantially to my book are no longer with
us. They are J. Hulsker, expert on Van Goghs letters and artwork; A. Ham-
macher, director of the Rijksmuseum Krller-Mller and editorial chair-
man of De la Failles posthumous Van Gogh catalogue; E. Joosten, curator
of the Rijksmuseum Krller-Mller; E. De Wilde, director of the Stedelijk
Museum Amsterdam and chairman of the Expertise Institute; W. Froentjes,
director of the Forensic Laboratory of the Ministry of Justice; and M.
Broekmeyer, the driving force behind the Foundation for Science and De-
mocracy. The last-named was responsible for providing me with financial
support for visits to Washington and Berlin. The Foundation also assisted
in the publication of the Dutch version of my book.
The families of the persons who appear in this book were also very kind
in their willingness to speak with me and to entrust documents to me or
A Real Van Gogh.indd 301 29-5-2010 15:24:05
o: acxxowiiicxixrs
let me peruse them. J. Baart de la Faille has custody of documents by and
about his uncle, making it possible for the first time to obtain insight into
his motives and actions. D. van Dantzig offered me hospitality so I could
study her fathers correspondence. J. van Gogh answered my questions
about his father and undertook to correct factual inaccuracies in my ac-
count. G. Girard-Loeb gave me permission to study her fathers correspon-
dence. J. van Es granted me access to the archives of the dAudretsch Art
Gallery.
I would like to thank the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of
Education, Arts, and Sciences for making available to me documents hav-
ing to do with the matter described in Chapter . The Stedelijk Museum
in Amsterdam granted me permission to study the archives of the Expertise
Institute. I was able to explore documents there that throw new light on
questions mainly addressed in Chapters , and . My thanks go to M. Knies
for helping track down these documents. The staff at the National Gallery
of Art in Washington opened the museum archives to me. I am grateful to
P. Connisbee, Senior, Curator of European Paintings, for giving me permis-
sion to conduct investigations there. Ann Halpern helped in the study of
the curators folders. Restorer Ann Hoenigswald provided me with details
on the Van Gogh paintings in the museum collection, and researcher J. Or-
fila shared her knowledge of Maud and Chester Dale with me. I would like
to thank B. Gtze of the Zentralarchiv Staatliche Museen in Berlin for help-
ing me make my way through the documents having to do with the Wacker
affair. The Vincent van Gogh Foundation gave me permission to study and
cite passages from the Memoranda of Engineer V.W. van Gogh. The Neth-
erlands Institute for Art History the RKD has a wealth of material on
nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, and M. Op de Coul showed me how
to navigate it. She also read and commented on my manuscripts, for which
I am very grateful. The Krller-Mller Museum has a vast archive that was
not fully open for research when I began my study. Nevertheless, P. de
Jonge and B. Mhren made every effort to obtain permission for me to read
documents that were vital to a proper understanding of many of the events
covered in this book. The staff at the Van Gogh Museum assisted me in
many ways. L. van Tilborgh, research curator, with whom I had numerous
conversations, has commented on my articles over the years and provided
suggestions for topics. C. Stolwijk, head of research, gave me many useful
A Real Van Gogh.indd 302 29-5-2010 15:24:05
acxxowiicixixrs o
tips. F. Pabst and M. Hageman offered me invaluable help in making the
museum archives and documents accessible. They also kept me from com-
mitting a number of slip-ups. A. Vriend and P. Schuil were able to turn the
museum library into one of the most pleasant places imaginable for doing
research. Id like to thank the editors of Jong Holland for commenting on
my article De Goetz-affaire, published in :cc:, of which Chapter is an
expanded and revised version. T. Meedendorp was always willing to answer
my questions on Van Goghs work. He was also very helpful at making sure
all the is were dotted and the ts were crossed. B. Landais shared his vast
knowledge of the work of Vincent van Gogh with me. He made available
to me his transcriptions of the correspondence of Paul Gachet and son, and
was helpful in many other ways.
The board of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences of Leiden
University, in the person of P. Vedder, gave me the time and opportunity
to begin this study. The Department of Political Science of the same uni-
versity proved itself an inspiring host. The gravity and jocularity of the
coffee and lunch discussions were indispensible ingredients for increasing
the pleasure of my research period. I would especially like to thank J. van
Holsteyn and H. Oversloot for their encouragement and observations on
my manuscripts. I am also grateful to the Netherlands Organisation for
Scientific Research, who subsidized the English translation. Nancy Forest-
Flier and Rachel Esner (Chapters , and ;) skillfully handled the translation
of the text.
In conducting research that extends over such a long period and deals
with the subject in a rather unconventional way, personal setbacks are al-
most unavoidable. I often asked myself whether an anthropologist was the
best-equipped person to engage in a study of the Van Gogh world. But I
found a kindred spirit in Frank Bovenkerk, who has a preference for uncon-
ventional subjects. He gave me his unwavering support, commented on my
manuscripts, and made sure that the expanded Dutch version of this book
would be presented as a dissertation. Maritte Linders fully supported my
research and writing, and mustered the patience to listen to my tales of the
Van Gogh world over and over again.
In a recently published collection of essays entitled Het gevecht met de en-
gel, over verheffende en minder verheffende aspecten van het wetenschapsbedrijf
(Wrestling with the angel: On the edifying and less edifying aspects of the
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o acxxowiiicxixrs
academic enterprise; :cc,), Andr J.F. Kbben further developed the theme
of the researcher as bearer of unwelcome tidings. A Real Van Gogh is the ex-
pression of our common interest and would not have been written without
his encouragement and support. For this reason I dedicate it to him.
Amsterdam/Leiden, December :cc,
A Real Van Gogh.indd 304 29-5-2010 15:24:05
o,
Notes
Introduction
1 This account is based on G. Poulhain, Dans le maquis des faux, Comoedia, Decem-
ber 1o, 1,1, and on J. Grard, Le crime de Julien Leclerq, manuscript, no page
numbers, undated. VGMA. Also see Van Kooten & Rijnders (eds.) :oo, :o8-:;o.
: See De la Faille 1,:8a, 1:; and De la Faille 1,,, o1.
Compare Kbben and Tromp 1,,,, 1:.
Alexander :oo.
Becker 1,8:.
o Alsop 1,8:.
; Kempers 1,,:.
8 Gibson-Wood 1,,8, Secrest 1,;,.
, Balk :ooo, De Ruiter :ooo.
1o Merton 1,; (originally 1,:). For criticism of his work, see Mitroff 1,;, Ziman
:ooo, Krimsky :oo, Kbben :oo.
11 Kbben and Tromp 1,,,, 1:-1o.
1: Kbben and Tromp 1,,,, 1.
1 Kbben and Tromp 1,,,, 1:-1o; 1o;-1o,.
1 Art historical research concerning Vincent van Gogh has traditionally been dominated
by a focus on his work and person: thousands of publications have been written on
his paintings and drawings. There is no lack of serious biographies, eitherat least
fiftyin addition to the hundreds of biographical sketches included in catalogues.
Vincents medical condition has also produced enough works to fill many bookshelves.
No museum in the world has more documentation on any one artist than the Van Gogh
Museum in Amsterdam has on Vincent van Gogh. This production still continues, and
it reflects art historys hard core: research on works of art, artists, schools, and styles. In
recent decades, however, more and more research has been conducted on others in the
art world: collectors, dealers, museums, critics, the media, and the public. This exten-
sion of the research area has also enriched research on Van Gogh. The rest of this note
comprises a brief and by no means representative summary. Carol D. Zemel (1,8o) has
written about the appreciation of art critics for Van Goghs work in the Netherlands,
France, Germany, and England; Walter Feilchenfeldt (1,88) on the role of the Berlin
art dealer Paul Cassirer in spreading Van Goghs fame in Germany; Hans Oversloot
(1,,o) on the first Russian collectors of Van Gogh. Kdera Tsukasa (1,,), editor of
the book The mythology of Vincent van Gogh, has brought together a number of articles
about the cultural significance of Van Gogh in the twentieth century and his influence
on belles-lettres, films, and the visual arts. Gerald Bronkhorst (1,,) has written on
the history of the Van Gogh Museum; Nathalie Heinich (1,,o) on the Van Gogh cult.
Cynthia Saltzman (1,,8) discusses the lives of the Dutch, Danish, German, and Japa-
nese owners of Van Goghs Portrait of Dr. Gachet to introduce the reader to 1oo years of
A Real Van Gogh.indd 305 29-5-2010 15:24:05
oo xoris
cultural change. Benot Landais (1,,,) has written about the relationship between Van
Gogh and Paul Gachet, and so have Distel and Stein (1,,,). Vincent van Gogh is an
important theme in both Peter de Ruiters biography (:ooo) of A.M. Hammacher and
Hildelies Balks biography (:oo) of H.P. Bremmer. The recent catalogue of Van Gogh
paintings in the Krller-Mller (Van Kooten & Rijnders, eds.; :oo) contains separate
chapters on early collectors of Vincent van Gogh in addition to the usual descriptive
and historical information on his works. The Van Gogh Museum publishes an annual
Journal that frequently contains articles on dealers, collectors, and exhibitions. Rood-
enburg-Schadd (:oo) has written on the importance of putting works by Van Gogh
out on loan for the collection policy of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam between
1,o and 1,;:.
1 Leune 1,;o, 1,-:o.
Chapter :
1 J.B. de la Faille, Aan een kind. Vox studiosorum, , May 1,o;.
: Letter of ATAG, dated 1; May 1,1;. De la Faille declined ATAGs offer but accepted
that of the General National Party.
Mededeling, De Telegraaf, : September 1,1; and Neutraliteit en kunsthandel, De
Telegraaf, o December 1,1.
The Dutch section of the League was founded on :, July 1,1;. Also see J.B. de la Faille,
Het zeppelinbezoek, De Telegraaf, 1; September 1,1; J.B. de la Faille, Open brief,
Vox studiosorum, 1, October 1,1o; J.B. de la Faille, Het voorwoord van Prof. Mr. J.
Baron dAulnis de Bourouill bij het boek De voorgeschiedenis van den Oorlog door
W. Graadt van Roggen, Vox studiosorum, , December 1,1.
J.B. de la Faille, De zeevisserij, Nieuws van de dag, 1: August 1,1o.
o In 1,, the sculpture was moved to Porte Saint-Paul in Verdun.
; Political repression in the Netherlands was relatively mild during those years, but not
entirely absent. The editor-in-chief of De Telegraaf ended up in jail in 1,1 for publish-
ing anti-German articles, so fearful were the Dutch authorities of offending Prussian
sensibilities. Moeyes :oo1, ::8-:o.
8 Haffner 1,8;, 11,-1:o.
, Saltzman 1,,,, xxiii.
1o Koldehoff :oo, ;o and Dorn & Feilchenfeldt 1,,, :o.
11 (J.B. de la Faille), Kunsthandelaar of museumdirecteur, Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Cour-
ant, , September 1,:o; :o October 1,:o.
1: (J.B. de la Faille), Kunsthandelaar of museumdirecteur, NRC, , September 1,:o.
1 Museumdirecteur, geen kunsthandelaar, NRC, 1: October 1,:o.
1 Le monde nouveau, NRC, o January 1,:: and J.B. de la Faille, Les faux Rem-
brandts, Le monde nouveau, 1 January 1,::. J.B. de la Faille, Wedergevonden of
nieuw-ontdekte Rembrandts, NRC, 1 February 1,::.
1 Letter of F. Schmid Degener, 18 January 1,::. J.B. de la Faille, Remembrances from :,
September 1,18 to 1; May 1,:,.
1o J.B. de la Faille, Expertise van schilderijen en kunstvoorwerpen, De veilingbode, De-
cember 1,:. pp. o-;.
1; Among the publications that featured it were De Indische verlofganger. Officieel orgaan
van de Vereniging van Indische verlofgangers, 1 March 1,:; La gazette de Hollande,
:o March 1,:; Prger Presse, 1 January 1,:; Neue Zrcher Zeitung, , January 1,:;
Haarlems Dagblad, January 1,:.
18 Veth 1,:, :;.
1, Ibid., :;.
:o Ibid., :;;.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 306 29-5-2010 15:24:05
xoris o;
:1 J.B. de la Faille, Expertisebureaus, De Veilingbode, March 1,:. Also see J.B. de la
Faille, De valse Frans Hals, De Veilingbode, May 1,:.
:: J.B. de la Faille, De :oste tentoonstelling der Secession te Berlijn III, De Fakkel, o
June 1,1.
: In the posthumous De la Faille catalogue of 1,;o, the editorial committee put 1,1;
as the year the compiling began (De la Faille 1,;o, ,). De la Faille himself said it
started in 1,:: (Anon., Zes maal een persoonlijke kijk op Van Gogh en zijn inv-
loed, Het Vrije Volk, :8 March 1,). In February 1,:: his request for information
from owners of Van Goghs work was published in De Telegraaf and Algemeen Han-
delsblad. In Formes, December 1,:,, p. 11, he wrote that he had been working on the
catalogue for five years. The initial idea and groundwork on the catalogue could date
to around 1,18, however, because he had sold works by Van Gogh as auctioneer at
Muller & Co.
: See Feilchenfeldt 1,88, :. De la Faille knew Sternheim and had written the preface to
his Van Gogh en Gauguin (1,:).
: Stolwijk & Veenenbos :oo:, pp. ::-:;.
:o De la Faille served as curator for several exhibitions, among them: Galerie Dru (Paris),
Aquarelles, dessins et pastels de Van Gogh (18-18,o) du : juin au 1: juillet 1,:8:
Avant-propos de J.-B. de la Faille; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Tentoonstelling
van Teekeningen en aquarellen door Vincent van Gogh (1, October 1; November
1,:,); for the Rotterdamsche Kring, Tentoonstelling van Teekeningen en aquarellen
door Vincent van Gogh (:1 December 1,:, 1: January 1,o). Lectures: SMA, :o
October 1,:,, De Teekenaar Vincent van Gogh; Rotterdamse Kring, :1 December
1,:,, Introduction to the drawing exhibition; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, o Sep-
tember 1,o, Vincent van Gogh en zijn kunst; Genootschap Nederland-Frankrijk,
o October 1,o, Lecture with slides, Vincent van Gogh en zijn werk; Stedelijk Mu-
seum, : October 1,o, Vincent van Gogh; Arnhem, Mij tot nut v/h Algemeen, ::
December 1,o, Vincent van Gogh. In Germany: Hannover, Thursday, :o April
1,:8, Kestner-Gesellschaft E.V. In Austria: Vienna, :o February 1,:8, Van Gogh als
Zeichner; :; February 1,:8, Van Gogh als Maler.
:; De la Failles mediation in the sale of at least three paintings is recorded in correspond-
ence between him and Engineer V.W. van Gogh. VGM, bo,8 V/1,,o.
:8 Text on a loose sheet of paper inserted in J.B. de la Faille 1,:;, Library VGM. See:
Gazette de lhtel Drouot, 1 October 1,:;.
:, De la Faille traced his ancestry to the Huguenots who fled France in the seventeenth
century and found refuge in the Netherlands. It was an assumed identity; according to
a statement from his nephew, J. Baart de la Faille, his ancestors almost certainly did not
come from France.
o J. Zwartendijk, Een zeldzame uitgave, NRC, : February 1,:8.
1 Kasper Niehaus, J.B. de la Faille, Het werk van Vincent van Gogh, De Telegraaf, 8
January1,:8.
: The Burlington Magazine, no. o, vol. LII, June 1,:8, pp. 1:-1, and no. o;, vol.
LIII, October 1,:8, pp. :o;-:o8.
Biermann, J.B. de la Faille, Luvre de Vincent van Gogh, Cicerone, 1 July 1,:8, pp.
,-oo. R.B., Luvre de Vincent van Gogh, La revue de lart, November 1,:8, p. :1.
Balk :ooo, 1o-1;:.
Balk 1,,, :.
o See Hilhorst 1,,, and Balk :ooo, ::o.
; B. van der Leck, In Memoriam dr. H.P. Bremmer, Museumjournaal, part ,/1o, 1,o,
pp. 1o-1o.
8 See De la Faille 1,:8, vol. III, 18,, 1,.
, Stegeman 1,,, 8.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 307 29-5-2010 15:24:05
o8 xoris
o N. Eissenloeffelss Kunsthandel, Betreffende kunstexpertises (no date), RKD, Archive of
Eissenloeffels Kunsthandel. Also see Balk :ooo, o-o.
1 Ten Berge :oo, ,o.
: Balk :ooo, o.
Not to be confused with the Society for the Formation of a Collection of Modern Art
in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, formed in 18;.
Letter of H.P. Bremmer to De la Faille, 1 April 1,:8. SMA Exhibition Adam 1,o.
Letter of H. Krller-Mller to De la Faille, o May 1,:8. SMA Exhibition Adam 1,o.
o See Dirven & Wouters :oo.
; I am following De la Failles account here, which speaks of four canvases being refused.
According to Grete Ring there were three: see Ring 1,:, 1.
8 See Ring 1,:, Faille 1,o. Anon. Van Gogh-schilderijen vervalscht met fabelachtig
meesterschap, Het Volk, o November 1,:8. The four canvases are F o1, F ;1, F
,bis and F o,1. See: A.M. de Wild, Het Van Gogh proces. No date (1,:) p. ;. RKD,
De Wild Archive. Anon. Valsche Van Goghs? De Telegraaf, o November 1,o.
, Copy of letter of V.W. van Gogh to J.B. de la Faille, 1o March 1,:8. VGM bo,8
V/1,,o.
o Mr. De la Faille dient van repliek, De Telegraaf, December 1,:8.
1 Fnf Van Goghs echt? De la Faille berrascht das Gericht durch seine Zeugenaussage,
Berliner Brsen-Courier, 11 April 1,: Abends.
: Van Gogh-schilderijen vervalst met fabelachtig meesterschap, Het Volk, :, November
1,:8.
Dertig valse Van Goghs, De Telegraaf, o November 1,:8.
Vincent van Gogh, Nieuwe Courant, :: December 1,:8.
Letter of J.B. de la Faille to L. Justi, :8 May 1,:,. ZMB I/NG ;o, 1;o.
o Dertig valse Van Goghs, De Telegraaf, o November 1,:8.
; ; Van Goghs bestimmt falsch, Berliner Nachtausgabe, o November 1,:8.
8 Berliner Zeitung, Berliner illustrierte Nachtausgabe, Vossische Zeitung.
, Nieuws over de Van Goghs, De Telegraaf, :1 December 1,:8.
oo Vincent van Gogh. De vervalsingen, Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant, 1o December 1,:8.
o1 On o December 1,:8, Het Vaderland published photographs of six paintings under the
headline De zogenaamd Valse Van Goghs.
o: De valsche Van Goghs, Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant, 1: December 1,:8; Anon. De
valsche Van Goghs, De Standaard, 1: December 1,:8. For the Netherlands Art Buy-
ers Association, see Heijbroek & Wouthuysen 1,,, 1:o.
o Nieuw stadium in de Van Gogh affaire, De Telegraaf, o November 1,:8.
o H.P. Bremmer, De valsche Van Goghs, De Nieuwe Courant, 1 December 1,:8.
o Afwijkende meningen over de Van Gogh-falsificaties, De Telegraaf, : December 1,:8.
oo Vincent van Gogh, de vervalsingen: Een beschouwing van H.P. Bremmer, NRC, 11
December 1,:8.
o; J.B. de Faille, Vincent van Gogh: De vervalsingen, NRC, 1 December 1,:8.
o8 Vincent van Gogh, NRC 1o January 1,:,.
o, Copy of bill from Kunstzaal dAudretsch to A.G. Krller, 1; December 1,:8. JE.
;o Letter of Galerie Matthiesen to H. Krller-Mller, 1; April 1,:,. KMM HA 1.
For F 8, see Ten Berge et al., :oo, ,;-,8. Ten Berge assumed that Krller-Mller
had bought the canvas in 1,:, or later and had then sold or given it to her secretary,
Van Deventer. However, the canvas was sold to Van Deventer in 1, by the Mat-
thiesen gallery via the Huinck & Scherjon gallery. See Chapter o.
;1 Copy of letter from H. Krller-Mller to B. Hesse, o February 1,:,. KMM, HA
1:1.
;: Copy of letter from O. Wacker to H.P. Bremmer, 1 January 1,:,. KMM, HA;;;o:.
; Zwendel met schilderijen, De Avondpost, 1 April 1,:.
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; H.P. Bremmer, Afbeelding 8;: Visschersbooten, bij St. Maries, Beeldende Kunst, no.
11, March 1,, pp. 8o-8;.
; See Beeldende Kunst, July 1,o, figure ;1: Landscape (= F o,, Two Poplars); March
1,, figure 8;: Fishing Boats at St. Maries (= F 18, Seascape).
Chapter z
1 See Koldehoff :oo:a, 1.
: Correspondence of O. Wacker with the Nationalgalerie, see ZMB, I/NG ;o, 1o-1,.
The drawing is F 1o, Enclosed wheat field with reaper. See the provenance in De la
Faille 1,;o, oo;. Wacker would have bought it from F.M. Wibaut in Amsterdam.
See Sterns classical study of 1,o1.
For the reception of Van Goghs work in Germany, see Eckhardt 1,o, Zemel 1,8o,
Bridgewater 1,8;, Feilchenfeldt 1,88, Manheim 1,8,, Kdera (ed.) 1,,, Heinich
1,,o, and Koldehoff :oo.
Krockow :oo:, 1;;-1;8.
o See Paul 1,,, :-:;o and Paret :oo1a, ,:.
; J. Meier-Graefe, Die Zeichnung Van Goghs, Frankfurter Zeitung, :8 October 1,:;.
8 This is the most frequently mentioned figure. Other newspaper reports claimed there
were fewer (De Maasbode of 1, April 1,: put it at eleven).
, On Meier-Graefe, see Moffett 1,;, Koldehoff :oo, and Meier-Graefe :oo1.
1o J. Meier-Graefe, Der Maler mit den schwachen Stunden, Berliner Tageblatt, , Febru-
ary 1,:,. Ring 1,:, 1o. Also see Van Goghs vervalst? De Telegraaf, ; April 1,:.
11 Letter of J. Meier-Graefe to V.W. van Gogh, 1 November 1,:8. VGM, b;o:oV/1,,o;
letter of V.W. van Gogh to J. Meier-Graefe, December 1,:8. VGM, b;o:;V/1,,o;
and letter of J. Meier-Graefe to V.W. van Gogh, o December 1,:8. VGM, b;o:8V/1,,o.
1: Meier-Graefe, Die Van Gogh Frage, Berliner Tageblatt, 1 December 1,:8.
1 Anonymous [=A.M. de Wild] In en om het proces Van Gogh, Het Vaderland, 1o April
1,:. De zaak van de valsche Van Goghs, De Maasbode, 1 April 1,:. Also see the
manuscript of Bremmers wife: Bremmer-Beekhuis [1,;-1,1], ;o. Here reference is
made to the transcription of M. Straasheijm (1,,) in the library of the Kunsthistorisch
Instituut of the University of Amsterdam.
1 Otto Wacker aan het woord, De Telegraaf, o November 1,:8.
1 Letter of O. Wacker to W. Scherjon, :8 July 1,o. VGM, Archives of Kunsthandel
Huinck & Scherjon 1,o-1,,.
1o Vreemde houding van dr. Wacker, Het Volk, December 1,:8.
1; I. Goldschmidt, Der Fall Wacker, Frankfurter Zeitung, 1 January 1,:,.
18 Frau Krller kauft einen zweifelhaften Van Gogh, Vossische Zeitung, 18 January 1,:,.
1, De valsche Van Goghs, De Maasbode, 1 January 1,:,. For Russian collectors of Van
Gogh, see Oversloot 1,,o.
:o Zimmermann :oo:, 1o.
:1 On Liebermann, see Meissner 1,; and Schtz :ooo. On the Berliner Secession, see
Paret 1,81b.
:: On the other hand, Ludwig Tormaehlen, sculptor and curator of the Nationalgalerie from
1,1 to 1,, was a conrmed anti-Semite until his death in 1,o. See Blume :oo, :1;.
: Scheffler 1,:1.
: Hentzen 1,;:, :.
: Letter of L. Thormaehlen to O. Kramer, 1 December 1,:8. ZMB, I/NG ;:, 8. In
December 1,:8 identical letters were written to A. Lewin, B.E. Wolff, and C. Stern-
heim. The letters were drafted on Justis orders.
:o Matthiesen had taken back all the Wacker paintings on consignment after the publica-
tion of De la Failles Supplment, subject to repayment of the purchase price (approxi-
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1o xoris
mately 1o,ooo reichsmarks). De valsche Van Goghs: Een aanklacht tegen Wacker
ingediend, Algemeen Handelsblad, : December 1,:8; and Vincent van Gogh: Een
aanklacht tegen Wacker, NRC, : December 1,:8.
:; Copy of letter from L. Justi to Barth, January 1,:,. Te letter is erroneously dated 1,:8.
:8 At the end of January, the following works were in the Nationalgalerie: Self-Portrait (F
8), Basket with Rolls (F 8;), Cypresses (F o1), Cypresses (F o1o), Seascape (F 18),
Houses at Saintes-Maries (F :1), Peasant after Millet (F o8), Sower after Millet (F ;o),
and Landscape with Olive Trees (F ;o). The painting seized from Leonhard Wackers
studio, The Mower, is not in De la Failles Van Gogh catalogue, but it is included in De
la Failles Les faux Van Gogh of 1,o and has since been designated F(aille)F(aux) o.
:, L. Justi, Van Gogh, die Kenner und Schriftsteller, Vossische Zeitung, :o January 1,:,.
Also see Justi 1,o, 1,-1,8.
o Nasporingen in de Van Gogh-kwestie, De Telegraaf, :, January 1,:,.
1 J. Meier-Graefe, Der Maler mit den Schwachen Stunden, Berliner Tageblatt, , Febru-
ary 1,:,.
: Ring 1,:, 1o.
Letter of H. Krller-Mller to L. Justi, ; February 1,:,. ZMB, I/NG 11. Letter of L.
Justi to H. Krller-Mller, 1: February 1,:,. KMM, HA 1:8. For this incident,
also see Van der Wolk 1,,, 8:-8 and Balk :ooo, 1:.
Letter from the Matthiesen gallery to the Nationalgalerie, 1, January 1,:,, as well as a
copy of the answer from the Nationalgalerie on the same sheet of paper, dated :: Janu-
ary 1,:,. ZMB, I/NG Ausstellung 1o.
Letter from the Matthiesen gallery to H. Krller-Mller, 1; April 1,:,. KMM, HA
1.
o See the facsimile of Bremmers list of fake and genuine Wacker-Van Goghs in Veth 1,:,
;-8. He mentions Bowl with potatoes (F 8;), also known as Still Life with Rolls.
; In March 1,, four months after the court ruling on Otto Wackers appeal, the seizure
was withdrawn.
8 Letter from the Matthiesen gallery to H. Krller-Mller, 1; April 1,:,. KMM, HA
1.
, W. Bondy, Die Van Gogh-Bilder: Technisches ber die Flschungen, Die Kunstauk-
tion, 1o February 1,:,, ;-8.
o De Van Gogh-falsificaties slecht uitgevoerd, De Telegraaf, 1: February 1,:,. The
newspaper erroneously referred to Die Kunstantiquitten, a non-existent periodical.
1 De vervalste Van Goghs: Nieuwe aanwijzingen tegen de familie Wacker, De Telegraaf,
; January 1,o.
: Roepers 1,,, 1.
Houdt Wacker zich weg? De Haagsche Post, , February 1,:,.
Otto Wacker, De Maasbode, o March 1,:,.
Verergerde toestand van Otto Wacker, De Telegraaf, 1o July 1,:,.
o Copy of a letter from the Nationalgalerie to H. Krller-Mller, 1 October 1,:.
ZMB, I/NG ;o, 8;.
; Scheffler 1,:,, 1,8.
8 Copy of a letter from L. Justi to R. Mring, 1 March 1,:,. ZMB, I/NG -,.
, Justi also wanted to buy three Picassos from Rosenberg. These were sent to Berlin along
with Daubignys Garden in March, but Justi kept this information from the acquisitions
commission because he knew the commission saw nothing in Picasso. He hoped to
purchase the Picassos with funds from the Verein der Freunde der Nationalgalerie.
o On 1 June 1,:,, the Nationalgalerie obtained F o:8 from the Bernheim Jeune art gal-
lery in Paris in exchange for three paintings by Vuillard (valued at 8o,ooo francs) and
a payment of 1o,ooo francs. Copy of a letter from L. Justi to P. Ebstein, 1 June 1,:,.
ZMB, I/NG ;o, :1.
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1 Letter of J.A. Thomas to the directors of the Nationalgalerie, 1 May 1,:,. ZMB, I/
NG ;o, 1;:
: No author, no title (in manuscript Letzte Fassung), no date, , pp. ZMB, I/NG 18-
1,1. The author was almost certainly Ludwig Thormaehlen.
Een nieuwe Affaire Wacker? De Telegraaf, 1o July 1,:,. De Van Gogh-affaire, De
Telegraaf, : September 1,:,. De Van Gogh-kwestie: Hoe staat het met de beweerde
vervalsingen? De Telegraaf, 1, November 1,:,.
Chapter ,
1 Van den Brandhof 1,;,, o8-;;.
: Hofstede de Groot 1,:, .
Froentjes and De Wild 1,,.
Letter from J. Walker to A.M. de Wild, 1o March 1,o. RKD, A.M. de Wild Archive.
Letter from J.R.J. Asperen de Boer to A.M. de Wild, 1; December 1,o. RKD, A.M.
de Wild Archive.
o Invoices of D. de Wild, dated :o January 1,o, :o May 1,o, o January 1,1, Febru-
ary 1,:. KMM, booking position KMS 1,:,/1,o/1,1.
; Afwijkende meningen over de Van Gogh-falsificaties, De Telegraaf, : December 1,:8.
8 De valse Van Goghs. De advocaat van Otto Wacker spreekt, De Oprechte Haarlemmer
Courant, 1o January 1,:,.
, J.B. de la Faille, Repliek van dr. De la Faille, De Telegraaf, : December 1,:8.
1o Koldehoff :oo, 111. See also Dorn and Feilchenfeldt 1,,, :;:.
11 On Maud Dale, see Garraty 1,o1-1,o, 1o-1:.
1: Dale Arts Value over :: Million, New York Times, : May 1,oo.
1 For the people, Newsweek, 1o May 1,o.
1 Walker 1,;, 1;.
1 Letter from J. Stransky (on Wildenstein & Co, NY, letterhead) to C. Dale, 1 May
1,:8. NGAW, RG. Donor Files 1,;-1,,o Dale, Chester, Van Gogh Material Regard-
ing Authenticity [c. 1,:8-1,:,, 1,, 1,1].
1o Loan exhibition of Modern French Art from the Chester Dale Collection, for the Benefit
of the French Hospital of New York. October, 1,:8. Wildenstein Galleries, o; Fifth
Avenue, New York.
1; E.A. Jewell, Goya and Modern Art, New York Times, :1 October, 1,:8.
18 The Art Galleries, New Yorker, :; October 1,:8.
1, H. McBride, cited in French Art of Today, Literary Digest, 1o November 1,:8.
:o Miljoenen vervalsingen, De Telegraaf, 1 December 1,:8. De dertig valse Van
Goghs, Algemeen Handelsblad, December 1,:8.
:1 Expert Now Holds Thirty Van Gogh Fakes, Sold in Berlin at Prices up to 1:,oo
Each, New York Times, :, November 1,:8. N.Y. Art Gem called Fake by Authority,
New York American, December 1,:8. Chester Dale Van Gogh is Attacked, Art News,
8 December 1,:8.
:: Bremmers magazines Moderne Kunstwerken and Beeldende Kunst from 1,o onwards
by Willem Versluys (181-1,;) in Amsterdam. From 1,1 Beeldende Kunst appeared
under the names of Bremmer and Scherjon. See Balk :oo, :81.
: Scherjon wrote in the NRC of 1 January 1,:,: [...] I [...] set great store by my almost
thirty-five years of friendship with Mr. Bremmer, from whom I have learned so much
and who was also the one to kindle my enormous enthusiasm for Van Gogh.
: De Ruiter :ooo, -;.
: Minutes of the board meeting of the association Voor de kunst on :o October 1,:;.
;;;-:. UA.
:o Ebbink et al. :oo, ::.
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1: xoris
:; Letter from W. Scherjon to C. Dale, :8 February 1,:,. Transcript of a letter from M.
Dale to W. Scherjon, :; March 1,:,. NGAW, RG. Donor Files 1,;-1,,o. Dale,
Chester, Van Gogh Material Regarding Authenticity [c. 1,:8-1,:,, 1,, 1,1].
:8 F o:o, like Chester Dales F :, is now in the possession of the National Gallery of Art
in Washington.
:, Vincent van Gogh. Tentoonstelling Voor de kunst te Utrecht, NRC, 1 June 1,:,.
o Vincent van Gogh. Een echt en een valsch zelfportret op de Van Gogh-tentoonstel-
ling te Utrecht, De Maasbode, : May 1,:,.
1 Just Havelaar, Een Van Gogh vervalsing? Het Vaderland, :, May 1,:,.
: Zelfportretten Vincent van Gogh. Een der twee zou valsch zijn! Utrechtsche Courant,
:, May 1,:,.
W. Jos de Gruyter, Waar is het tweede zelfportret? Utrechtsch Provinciaals en Stedelijk
Dagblad, 1 June 1,:,.
Vincent van Gogh. Een echt en een valsch zelfportret op de Van Gogh-tentoonstel-
ling te Utrecht, De Maasbode, : May 1,:,.
J.B. de la Faille, Het zelfportret van Chester Dale, Utrechtsch Provinciaals en Stedelijk
Dagblad, :; June 1,:,. J.B. de la Faille, De z.g. valse Van Goghs, Het Vaderland, 1
September 1,:,. J.B. de la Faille, De Van Gogh zaak, De Telegraaf, 1: September
1,:,.
o Declaration signed: W. Scherjon. Place: s-Gravenhage. Date: o June 1,:,. RKD, A.M.
de Wild Archive, file o, Vincent van Gogh.
; Transcription of a letter from M. Dale to P. Rosenberg, :o March 1,:,. NGAW. RG
Donor Files 1,;-1,,o Dale, Chester, Van Gogh Material Regarding Authenticity [c.
1,:8-1,:,, 1,, 1,1].
8 Letter from W. Scherjon to C. Dale, :8 February 1,:,. Transcription of a letter from
C. Dale to W. Scherjon, :; March 1,:,. NGAW, RG Donor Files 1,;-1,,o Dale,
Chester, Van Gogh Material Regarding Authenticity [c. 1,:8-1,:,, 1,, 1,1].
, W. Scherjon, Het valse Van Gogh drama. Het schilderij Twee populieren in het
Centraal Museum, Utrechtsch Provinciaals en Stedelijk Dagblad, o July 1,:,.
o Namely Wheatfield with Sower (F o18), in 1,: in the collection of V.W. van Gogh; The
Harvest (F o:8) acquired in 1,:8 by the Nationalgalerie in Berlin); and The Sower, not
given an F number by De la Faille, but listed and illustrated in his Les faux Van Gogh
(1,o, 1:, Pl. XVIII). See also Koldehoff :oo:, 1,.
1 See Scherjon 1,:b.
: Transcription of a letter from H. Krller-Mller to J.A. Thomas, 11 July 1,:,. KMM,
HA 11.
Transcription of a letter from H. Krller-Mller to W. Scherjon, 1o July 1,:,. KMM,
HA 118
Letter from W. Scherjon to H. Krller-Mller, 1 July 1,:,. KMM, HA 11;.
Concerning the Wacker Pictures, n.p., n.d. 11 pp. In: Chester Dale Scrapbooks.
NGAW Library.
o The exception is Hugo Perls, who does mention the Wacker affair in his memoirs, al-
though without discussing his own role. See Perls 1,o:, 118-1:.
; Secrest :oo, :::-:.
8 H. Lester Cooke, A Plunger in the Market, Chester Dale and his Collection, 8. From
an unidentified magazine kept in AAA, Chester Dale papers, 18,;-1,;1, reel ,;1, no.
oo;.
, F.W. Coburn, In the world of art, Boston Herald, ; November 1,:o. Cited in Sandler
and Newman 1,8o, 1-1.
o More than twenty years later, in 1,, De Wild shared his knowledge with the secretary
of the Expertise Instituut, M. de Sablonire. She wrote to Van Gogh expert Tralbaut:
More or less in confidence: I spoke to Dr. De Wild, who was a witness at the Wacker
A Real Van Gogh.indd 312 29-5-2010 15:24:05
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trial. At the time he had examined all the forgeries and the authentic picture as well, I
think and they turned out to be all of the same workmanship. I believe it was Scher-
jon who asked him to examine the Chester Dale portrait in the same way. According
to him [De Wild] it was a fake, the same technique. Letter from M. de Sablonire to
M.E. Tralbaut, 11 May 1,. VGM.
1 According to the statements of W. Froentjes and the inscription on the box, the sam-
ples from the Wacker Van Goghs were all taken in 1,:,-1,o. (The box, as well as
Froentjes archive, has been in the possession of the Nederlands Forensisch Instituut
in The Hague since July :ooo.) We are certain only that F : was examined in early
June 1,:, in The Hague. There is no other documentation of the place or dates of the
analyses of the other samples. F 18 and F o, were probably examined in November
1,:8. F o:bis was brought to The Hague at the end of January 1,:, and was probably
examined shortly thereafter. I was unable to trace a date in 1,:,-1,o for F 8, F :1
and F o,1.
: Letter from M.H.G. Renkewitz to M. Dale, o December 1,o. NGAW, 1,o.1o.1
(181;), Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait. Chester Dale Collection. Letter from M.H.G.
Renkewitz to H. Krller-Mller, 11 December 1,o. KMM.
Sale list of the exhibition J. Lodeizen, KA, File 1, Pricelists. The archive of dAudretsch
contains an expertise by Bremmer on the Haystacks, dated May 1,;. W. Jos. de
Gruyter discusses it in Het Vaderland, 1o September 1,1. A.M. Hammacher in the
NRC, 18 September 1,1.
Kunsthandel Huinck & Scherjon, Catalogus tentoonstelling van schilderijen door Vincent
van Gogh, J.B. Jongkind, Floris Verster. Amsterdam 1 May - 18 June 1,:.
Letter from H.P. Bremmer to S. van Deventer, :, October 1,1. KMM, HA ;:,o.
There are no indications that dAudretsch knew anything about De Wilds examina-
tions.
o Van Deventer 1,o, 1o8.
; Quoted in ibid., 18.
Chapter
1 Dertig valse Van Goghs? De Telegraaf, o November 1,:8. The anonymous art dealer
quoted in the article is probably J. Siedenburg of the Buffa gallery.
: De la Faille 1,o, .
De la Faille 1,:,, ,.
Duret was not always so lucky. In 1,1; the Bernheim-Jeune gallery issued a recall to the
owners of Durets Van Gogh, which they had published in 1,1o. Te reason: the Van
Gogh drawing on the cover was a fake, as were eight of the drawings and paintings pic-
tured in the book. Source: Laaire des faux Van Gogh, Aux coutes, 8 December 1,:8.
De la Faille 1,o, -o.
o Ibid., 1.
; Letter of F. Schmidt Degener to J.B. de la Faille, :; January 1,o. BF.
8 J. Zwartendijk, Les faux Van Gogh, NRC, 1 February 1,o.
, C.J.H., Les faux Van Gogh: Par J.B. de la Faille, Burlington Magazine, August 1,o,
,,; F. Rutter, Van Gogh and his forgers, Sunday Times, :1 September 1,o; Frank
Davis, A page for collectors: A modern picture scandal: the Van Gogh Fakes, Illus-
trated London News, :8 June 1,o, 1::8; J.H. de Bois, De valsche Van Goghs, Haar-
lems Dagblad, 1 January 1,o; Van Gogh-vervalsing, De Telegraaf, o November
1,:,.
1o K. Grant Sterne, The Van Gogh Controversy, International Studio, November 1,o,
pp. oo-o;.
11 P. Fierens, Les faux Van Gogh, Feuilleton du Journal des dbats, 8 April 1,o.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 313 29-5-2010 15:24:05
1 xoris
1: Letter of W. J. de Gruyter to J. Zwartendijk, 1; February 1,o. MBB, Dossier Verval-
singen V.v.Gogh.
1 W.J. de Gruyter, Echt of valsch? Van Goghs Twee populieren bij den Kunsthandel
Huinck en Scherjon te Amsterdam, Elseviers Gellustreerd Maandschrift, July 1,o, pp.
o-o;.
1 W.J. de Gruyter, De valsche Van Goghs, NRC, 1, February 1,o.
1 Ibid. W.J. de Gruyter, Hollandsche en Fransche kunst in den Kunsthandel Huinck en
Scherjon te Amsterdam, De Nieuwe Courant, 18 June 1,o. Also see his defence in Het
Vaderland, :8 April 1,:, Nederlandsche en Fransche Schilderkunst: Bij Huinck en
Scherjon, Amsterdam. In 1, he also reproduced Two Poplars as an example of Van
Goghs artistry in his Wezen en ontwikkeling der Europeesche schilderkunst na 1,v.
1o E. Faure, propos des Faux van Gogh, LArt vivant, o April 1,o, pp. :;-:;;. J.B. de
la Faille, Rponse larticle de M. Elie Faure, LArt vivant, 1 June 1,o, pp. 8-8.
1; Fasseur :oo1, ,.
18 See Moeyes :oo1, 18;-1,8, :8-:8.
1, Fasseur :oo1, ,8-1o1.
:o Letter of H. Krller-Mller to S. van Deventer, ; September 1,11, quoted in Van De-
venter 1,o, 8.
:1 Van Deventer 1,o.
:: See Elseviers Gellustreerd Maandschrift, 1,8, 1o.
: Begemann 1,88, 18.
: Letter from H. Krller-Mller to S. van Deventer, 1 April 1,1, quoted in Van De-
venter 1,o, 8.
: Quoted by Wennekes 1,88.
:o For A. Krller also see Haak & Hofman :oo:.
:; The first written plans for the transfer of the collection to the Dutch state date to 1,;
the definitive transfer took place in 1,;. (Ten Berge, :ooc, 8;.)
:8 De la Faille probably wanted to include the contemporaries in the exhibition in order to
encourage museums and private individuals to buy their works. At the opening of the
exhibition of drawings and watercolors by Van Gogh, organized at the end of 1,:, by the
Friends of Vincent van Gogh and His Time, he said that museums in Germany, England,
and the US were buying their work, but not in the Netherlands: Almost no one here
owns works by Manet, Toulouse Lautrec, Gauguin or Czanne, while Monet, Raphaelli,
Sisley and Pissarro are not represented at all. See Tekeningen en aquarellen van Vincent
van Gogh: In het Stedelijk Museum, Algemeen Handelsblad, :o October 1,:,.
:, Minutes of Friends of Vincent van Gogh and his Time, :; February 1,o. SMA, Am-
sterdam exhibition, 1,o.
o Letter of A. Hahnloser to the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, :o June 1,o. SMA, Am-
sterdam exhibition, 1,o.
1 Letter of D.C. Rell to De la Faille, :1 June 1,o. SMA, Amsterdam exhibition, 1,o.
: Letter of Polak to Van Dam van Isselt, :; July 1,o. GAA, Department of Art Affairs
no. 1,:, Van Gogh Exhibition.
W. Scherjon, De vermeende vervalsingen van Van Gogh, NRC, :, May 1,o. Also
see J.C.M. Garnier, (Report concerning fingerprints), Utrecht, : May 1,o. MBB,
Dossier Forgeries V.v. Gogh.
Vincent van Gogh, NRC, 1; June 1,o. Bertillonage en expertise van kunstwerken,
NRC, 1, June 1,o.
W.J. de Gruyter, Hollandsche en Fransche kunst in den Kunsthandel Huinck en
Scherjon te Amsterdam, De Nieuwe Courant, 18 June 1,o. Also see De Gruyter 1,o.
o Verver, Hollandsche en Fransche kunst bij Huinck & Scherjon, Amsterdam, De
Haagsche Post, :1 June 1,o.
; H.P. Bremmer, Beeldende Kunst, July 1,o, Landschap, ;1.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 314 29-5-2010 15:24:05
xoris 1,
8 Letter of C. Baard to the Alderman for Art Affairs, : November 1,o. GAA. Depart-
ment of Art Affairs no. 1,:, Van Gogh Exhibition.
, Huinck & Scherjon had a different reading of the events. According to Baard and Rell,
a tentative selection was made from the gallerys holdings, and they never would have
considered asking for Two Poplars for the exhibition.
o Editorial, Vincent van Gogh, De Gids, 1,o, IV, 1:-1.
1 Oprechte Haarlemsche Courant, : September 1,o.
: Vincent van Gogh, NRC, : September 1,o.
J.H. de Bois, De Van Gogh Tentoonstelling, Het Volk, 8 September 1,o.
Letter of De la Faille, :8 October, no year [1,o]. RKD.
Albert Plasschaert, Van Gogh, De Groene Amsterdammer, :; December 1,o. (Italics
in the original)
o G. Knuttel Wzn, Vincent van Gogh en zijn tijdgenoten: Tentoonstelling in het Stedel-
ijk Museum Amsterdam, o september-: november 1,o, De kunst der Nederlanden,
November 1,o, 1,o. (Italics in the original)
; Veiling van valse schilderijen, Het Vaderland, : November 1,:.
8 Letter of S.J. Mak van Waay to J. Zwartendijk, 1, November 1,o. MBB, Dossier
Forgeries V.v. Gogh.
, Letters of S.J. Mak van Waay to J. Zwartendijk, :: November 1,o and 1: September
1,1. MBB, Dossier Forgeries V.v. Gogh.
Chapter ,
1 J.B. de la Faille, Vincent van Gogh en zijn tijdgenoten te Amsterdam, NRC, 1, No-
vember 1,o, evening edition.
: Wegen der geflschten Van Goghs: Anklage gegen Kunsthndler Wacker Anfang No-
vember zu erwarten, Lokalanzeiger, :, October 1,o.
P. Westheim, Um die Van Gogh-Flschungen: Staatsanwalt erhebt Anklage gegen
Wacker, Brsen Zeitung, :1 August 1,1.
Veth 1,:a, 1.
Ibid., ::.
o Ibid., 8.
; Valsche Van Goghs? NRC, 8 April 1,:.
8 Koomen, Schoon schip, Weekblad van Rotterdam, 1o April 1,:. Schoon schip!
Algemeen Handelsblad, :o February 1,:. De zaak van de valse Van Goghs, De Maas-
bode, :, February 1,:. Schoon schip! De Telegraaf, March 1,:.
, De zaak van de valsche Van Goghs, De Maasbode, :, February 1,:.
1o J. Zwartendijk, Cornelis Veth: Schoon schip! NRC, 1, March 1,:.
11 Max Osborn, Neuer Van Gogh-Lrm, Vossische Zeitung, March 1,:.
1: Letter of Thomas to H. Krller-Mller, May 1,:,. KMM, HA 1;.
1 Echte Van Goghs bei Wacker? Eine Brochure von Cornelis Veth, Deutsche Algemeine
Zeitung, 8 April 1,:.
1 J.B. de la Faille, Veths Schoon schip, NRC, : April 1,:.
1 Max Liebermann, Justi und seine Sachverstndigen-Kommission, in: Kunst und Kn-
stler, vol. XXXI, no. III, March 1,:.
1o The dossiers of the lawyer, the prosecuting attorney, and the judges, the report of the
sessions, the attorneys plea, and the judgment have all been lost. A.M. de Wild wrote
a personal account of the trial in April 1,:. The most important sources for the re-
construction of the two trials are the more than 1oo articles in the Dutch and German
press. For the Wacker trial, also see: Arnau 1,o, :;-:1; Schller 1,,, 11-11;;
Jeppson 1,;o, ,8-1o:; Hentzen 1,;:, oo-o8; Feilchenfeldt 1,8,; Dorn & Feilchen-
feldt 1,,; :;1-:;:, Koldehoff :oo, 1o-11 and :o-:;,.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 315 29-5-2010 15:24:05
1o xoris
1; This formulation of the charge was taken from Der Proze um die Wackerschen Van
Goghs, Berliner Brsen-Courier, o April 1,:.
18 Der Tnzer Wacker: Erster Tag des Van Gogh-Prozesses, Vossische Zeitung, ; April
1,:.
1, A.M. de Wild, Het Van Gogh proces. No date (1,:) p. . RKD, De Wild Archive.
:o Valsche Van Goghs? Het proces te Berlijn, NRC, ; April 1,:.
:1 Getuigenverhoor in het proces-Wacker, De Telegraaf, 8 April 1,:.
:: Kriminalisten im Van Gogh-Prozess, Berliner Tageblatt, 8 April 1,:.
: Valse Van Goghs? Het proces te Berlijn, NRC, , April 1,:.
: Mitteilung De la Faille, 1o April 1,:. RKD. Doos Van Gogh Knipsels Tentoonstelling
Nederland tot 1,,:.
: Feilchenfeldt 1,8,, :,. Otto Wacker told the court on 1 April 1,: that Haystacks
(F ;o) would be sent back to the Russian. See A.M. de Wild, Het Van Gogh proces. No
date (1,:) p. :. RKD, De Wild Archive.
:o A.M. de Wild, Het Van Gogh proces. No date. (1,:) p. 1. RKD, De Wild Archive.
:; Letters of De la Faille to Scherjon, 1; May 1, and 1o September 1,, respectively.
Letter of Scherjon to De la Faille of : September 1,. VGM, Archief Kunsthandel
Huinck & Scherjon. Thanks to Tomoko Murayama for reports on the content of the
Japanese text of Kodera 1,,. Also see Koldehoff :oo, 1:-1:.
:8 Justi, L. :ooo, :-:. Compare Justi 1,:, 1: and Hentzen 1,;:.
:, (=A.M. de Wild), Het proces over de Van Goghs: Mr. Baart de la Faille als getuige,
Het Vaderland, 1 April 1,:.
o According to De Wild, Bremmer said the following were genuine: F 18, F o:bis, F
8, F :, F ;o, F 8:, F o1, F o, and one more Reaper. Bremmer said the fake
paintings were: F ;1bis, F :1, F 8;, F :1, F o,1, F 8:, F o8, F 81, F ,, F
;1, F ;o, F ;1. See A.M. de Wild, Het Van Gogh proces. No date (1,:) pp. 1o, 18.
RKD, De Wild Archive.
1 A.M. de Wild, Het Van Gogh proces. No date (1,:) p. 1;. RKD, De Wild Archive.
: For an illustration, see De la Faille 1,o Pl. XVIII and XIX. De la Faille called this
unnumbered version of The Reaper a fake, and compared it with F o1; and F o:8. Ac-
cording to De la Faille (1,o, 1:-1), F o:8 The Reaper of the Nationalgalerie was the
model on which the fake Wacker Van Gogh was based. In :oo, F o:8 was also deemed
a fake: in other words, the forger may have used a forgery as his model. According to
De la Faille, Bremmer issued a certificate of authenticity for this Wacker Van Gogh.
(=De Wild) In en om het proces Van Gogh, Het Vaderland, Saturday, 1o April 1,:.
De zaak van de valsche Van Goghs: Welke waarde heeft deskundigheid berhaupt
eigenlijk nog? vraagt de verdediger, De Maasbode, 1 April 1,:.
Het proces over de werken van Van Gogh: Een opzienbarende verklaring van mr. Baart
de la Faille, NRC, 1: April 1,:.
o According to a few newspapers, Scherjon mentioned eight, but De Wild noted that
Scherjon, like Bremmer, named a ninth painting, Het maaiertje the little reaper. See
A.M. de Wild, Het Van Gogh proces. No date (1,:) pp. 1;-18. RKD, De Wild Archive.
; Het proces over de werken van Van Gogh, NRC, 1: April 1,:.
8 A.M. de Wild, Het Van Gogh proces. No date (1,:) p. 18. RKD, De Wild Archive.
, Valse of echte Van Goghs? Het Volk, 1 April 1,:.
o Sachverstndigengutachten ber Wackers Bilder, Frankfurter Zeitung, 1 April 1,:.
1 (v.B.), Valsche Van Goghs, De Amstelbode, 1 April 1,:. De zaak van de valsche
Van Goghs: Welke waarde heeft deskundigheid berhaupt eigenlijk nog? vraagt de
verdediger, De Maasbode, 1 April 1,:.
: According to De Wild, Rosenhagen said the following were fakes: F ;:,, F 8:, F
:;bis, F 18bis, F ;1o, F ;1bis, ;1obis. See A.M. de Wild, Het Van Gogh proces. No
date (1,:) p. 1,.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 316 29-5-2010 15:24:05
xoris 1;
Het proces over de werken van Van Gogh te Berlijn, NRC, 1 April 1,:.
A.M. de Wild, Het Van Gogh proces. No date (1,:) p. :o. Underlining in the original.
RKD, De Wild Archive. Also see note ,.
According to De Wilds notes, he mentioned a ninth: Het maaiertje the little reaper.
Also see note 1o. A.M. de Wild, Het Van Gogh process,, pp. 1;-18. RKD, De Wild
Archive.
o Justis Gutachten, Berliner Tageblatt, 1 April 1,:. Geheimrat Justy (sic) erklrt zu
den Van Gogh-Bildern: So falsch wie nur mglich, Berliner Brsen-Courier, 1: April
1,:.
; A.M. de Wild, Het Van Gogh process, p. :o. RKD, De Wild Archive.
8 According to De la Faille (1,o, 1), the following sixteen Wacker Van Goghs were as-
sembled in the Nationalgalerie in February 1,:,: F 8, F 8;, F 18, F :1, F ,, F
o1, F o1o, F o8, F ;o, F ;1obis, F ;1, F ;:,, F ;1, F 81, F 8: and The Reaper
(Champ de bl avec le faucheur). Also see: L. Justi, Van Gogh, die Kenner und Schrift-
steller, Vossische Zeitung, :o January 1,:,.
, The approximately six paintings mentioned by the Berliner Brsen-Courier of 1: April
were probably F 8, F 18, F :, F o:bis, F o, and F ;o. Justis assessment of Two
Poplars (F o,) is unclear.
o Hat Van Gogh sich selbst kopiert? Acht Uhr Abendblatt, 1: April 1,:.
1 De zaak van de valsche Van Goghs, De Maasbode, 1 April 1,:.
: Vingerafdrukken op de Van Goghs, De Telegraaf, Thursday, 1 April 1,:.
Van Gogh vervalsingen: Het proces Wacker, De Telegraaf, 1, April 1,:.
(=De Wild) In en om het proces Van Gogh, Het Vaderland, Saturday, 1o April 1,:.
Announcement by W. Froentjes, o May :oo:.
o A.M. de Wild, Het Van Gogh process, p. ::. RKD, De Wild Archive.
; Sensation im Wackerproze, Berliner Brsen-Courier, 1 April 1,:.
8 Het proces over de werken van Van Gogh te Berlijn, NRC, 1 April 1,:.
, De valsche Van Goghs, De Maasbode, 1 April 1,:.
oo Vingerafdrukken op de Van Goghs, De Telegraaf, 1 April 1,:.
o1 (=De Wild), In en om het proces van Van Gogh, Het Vaderland, 1o April 1,:.
o: Van-Gogh-Prozess vor dem Ende, Berliner Tageblatt, 1 April 1,:.
o Wacker-Pldoyers am Sonnabend, Berliner Brsen-Courier, Friday, 1 April 1,:.
o E. Tubner, Gutachten, no date (: April 1,:), Berlin. pp. ZSM, I/NG ;:, 1o-1:.
As well as the accompanying letter of E. Tubner to L. Thormaehlen, : April 1,:.
ZSM, I/NG ;:, o,.
o Das Ende des Van Gogh-Prozesses, Berliner Brsen-Courier, 1, April 1,:. Het pro-
ces over de werken van Van Gogh te Berlijn, NRC, :o April 1,:. Also see Koldehoff
:oo, :;o.
oo Redaktion: Wie beurteilen Juristen Bilderflschungen? Urteilsgrnde der Berufungs-
instanz im Wacker-Proze, Kunst und Knstler, Vol. XXXII, no. III, March 1,, pp.
8-,o.
o; De zaak van de valsche Van Goghs, De Maasbode, 1, April 1,:.
o8 S.J. Mak van Waay and A. Mak van Waay S.J.Zn, May 1,:. RKD, Van Gogh Forgeries
box.
o, Van Gogh-vervalsingen, De Telegraaf, 1, April 1,:.
;o See Mller :oo, :-:8o.
;1 Kunst und Wirtschaft. Offizielles Organ des Reichsverbandes bildender Knstler Deutsch-
lands, May 1,:, pp. ; ff.
;: De Groene Amsterdammer, 1, November 1,:.
; F o:8 was not pictured but was mentioned as a doubtful work. See Scherjon 1,:c,
o. Four versions of The Reaper F o18, F o1;, F o1, and the Wacker Van Gogh with-
out an F number are shown. See Scherjon 1,:, pp. : - o.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 317 29-5-2010 15:24:05
18 xoris
; Justi 1,:, 1:;.
; W. Jos. de Gruyter, De zaak Van Gogh, Het Vaderland, : November 1,:.
;o J. Zwartendijk, Boekaankondiging. W. Scherjon: Catalogue des Tableaux par Vincent
van Gogh dcrits dans ses lettres, NRC, : November 1,:.
;; Demasqu: Een schotschrift van Geheimrat Justi, Algemeen Handelsblad, 1: Novem-
ber 1,:.
;8 Walram 1,, o8.
;, Ibid., oo.
8o Kasper Hauser, Expertise, Die Weltbhne, :o April 1,:, no. 1;, p. o.
81 Was wird aus den falschen Van Goghs? Die Kunstauktion, :1 April 1,:,.
8: Verhoren in het proces Wacker, Het Algemeen Handelsblad, November 1,:.
8 Ibid.
8 Andr Warnod, Un nouveau scandale, Le truquage des toiles pratiqu Amsterdam est
pure escroquerie, Comoedia, 1o November 1,:.
8 De valsche schilderijen, De Telegraaf, 1; November 1,:.
8o Ibid.
8; Een nieuwe zaak van verdachte schilderijen, De Maasbode, 1; November 1,:. Wie
is Chanterou? De Maasbode, 18 November 1,:. De verdachte schilderijen uit de vei-
ling-Mak, De Maasbode, 18 November 1,:. De Chanterou-affaire, De Maasbode,
1, November 1,:. De zaak van de valsche schilderijen, De Maasbode, :1 November
1,:. De Amsterdamsche schilderijen-affaire, De Maasbode, :: November 1,:.
88 De veiling van Franse schilderijen, Het Algemeen Handelsblad, 1, January 1,.
8, Chanterou- mysterie, De Telegraaf, 18 November 1,:.
,o Onze naam op kunstgebied in gevaar? Het Volk, : November 1,:.
,1 Na onze veilings-enqute, De Telegraaf, 1 January 1,.
,: The Friends society was dissolved in 1,1, never having realized its goal to enrich the
collection of the Stedelijk Museum with donated works by Vincent van Gogh. For the
Chanterou case, also see G. de Mir, Faux tableaux, Art Vivant, January 1,, p. :.
Chapter 6
1 A. Plasschaert, De gehavenden van het Van Gogh-proces, De Groene Amsterdammer,
: April 1,:.
: Roepers 1,,, o.
Koldehoff :oo, 1:.
KMM, Map Boekposten KMS 1,:,/1,o/1,1 Managed by G.J. van de Berg.
Balk :ooo, :o:-o.
o Bremmer-Beekhuis n.d., 1o8, 1o,. Annotation M. Straasheijm p. ;1.
; The restorer C.B. van Bohemen calls Bremmers appeal to feelings in the question of
authenticity misleading, but he does not deal with other aspects of his performance in
the Wacker case. C.B. van Bohemen, Het Wacker-proces in Berlijn of een harlequin-
ade op groote schaal, De Tooneelspiegel, May 1,:, 8-8.
8 Vincent van Gogh. De graven te Auvers: Herinnering aan het vervalschingsproces, De
Tijd, :1 July 1,o. Eight years after the trial, De Tijd was the first newspaper to write
that Bremmer judged nine Wacker Van Goghs as genuine, seventeen as absolute forger-
ies, and the rest as doubtful.
, In een valsch paradijs van de Haagsche School, De Telegraaf, : December 1,o. See
the documents on the case in the archives of the Krller-Mller Museum: HA 1;o8;,
HA 1;o, and HA 1oo1.
1o Letter of A. Anthack to the Nationalgalerie, :; March 1,. Justi followed the transac-
tion like a hawk. He wrote to a colleague that Matthiesen had succeeded in selling the
painting [...] an den merkwrdigen hollndischen Sachverstndigen Scherjon [...].
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xoris 1
Herr Scherjon hat es verstanden, zwei der Wackerstcke, die er zu verschiedene Zeiten,
jedenfalls nach Bekanntwerden der Verdchte erworben hat, an Frau Krller-Mller zu
verkaufen. Copy of a letter from L. Justi to Dr. Koetschau, 1o Augustus 1,. There is
no sales receipt in the archives of the Krller-Mller Museum, however. The purchase
was intended for 1,:8-1,:,, but it never took place because the Krllers could no
longer afford to purchase art after 1,o.
11 Exportvaluta-Erklrung. Signed by I.A. Perlwitz (Nationalgalerie), 1 March 1,.
ZMB, I/NG ;o, o8.
1: W.J. de Gruyter, Twee z.g. valsche Van Goghs: In particulier bezit en bij Huinck en
Scherjon te Amsterdam, Het Vaderland, : June 1,. An abridged version: Vincent
van Gogh: Twee z.g. valsche schilderijen, NRC, : June 1,.
1 W. J. de Gruyter, Twee z.g. valsche Van Goghs: In particulier bezit en bij Huinck en
Scherjon te Amsterdam, Het Vaderland, : June 1,.
1 Balk :ooo, :.
1 Marquis 1,8,, 1:-1.
1o Scherjon & De Gruyter 1,;: F 18, p. 1,1; F o:bis, p. :o; The Reaper (FF o), p.
::o; F :, p. :1; F 8, p. ::; F o,, p. :; F o1, p. 1;; F ;o, p. .
1; Scherjon & De Gruyter 1,;, :8.
18 Two other paintings for which Scherjon and De Gruyter provided stylistic analysis are
(F :,) Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe and the Wacker Van Gogh Cypresses (F
o1), but this was to emphasize their authenticity.
1, Scherjon & De Gruyter 1,;, ::o.
:o The catalogue was printed in March 1,,. The first review known to me is Baart de
la Failles Van Goghcatalogus: Geheel herziene en verbeterde druk, De Telegraaf, 8 July
1,,.
:1 Ibid., o.
:: Ibid., .
: Ibid., .
: Cited in Balk :ooo, :.
: W.J. de Gruyter, Een tentoonstelling van drie generaties: Jan Toorop, Charley Toorop,
Edgar Fernhout bij Nieuwenhuizen Segaar, Het Vaderland, 1 April 1,;.
:o W.J. de Gruyter, De tentoonstelling de drie generaties: De invloed van Bremmer, Het
Vaderland, : April 1,;.
:; Jan Engelman, De Gruyter contra Bremmer, De Groene Amsterdammer, 1: June 1,;.
:8 For this affair, see Vink 1,8 and Balk :ooo, :-.
:, H.P. Bremmer, Afbeelding 8;, Visschersbooten, bij St. Maries, Beeldende Kunst,
March 1,, pp. 8o-8;.
o Balk :ooo, ,8-oo.
1 Bremmer Archives, no. 8o. GAD.
: Letters from De la Faille to Scherjon dated 1; May 1,, and 1o September 1,. Let-
ter from Scherjon to De la Faille, : September 1,. VGM.
One document file is in the archives of the RKD in The Hague, the second is in the
archives of the VGM.
Auping 1,8, 1o1. The catalogue was a revised edition of the Krller-Mller Museums
pre-war Van Gogh catalogue, also issued by Auping.
Catalogus [...] 1,,, o8-o,.
o Van Dantzig 1,, ;8-8,.
; Catalogus van :;: werken [...] 1,o1, o.
8 Ten Berge :oob, ::8.
, Letter of S. van Deventer to J.M. Joosten, 1 March 1,o,. KMM.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 319 29-5-2010 15:24:05
:o xoris
Chapter ;
1 Advertisement for Simon & Schuster, New York Times, June 1,. See also Craven
1,, ,1-,:. Illustration of F : between p. ,o and ,1.
: Walker 1,;, 1o (original italics).
Simpson 1,8o, :oo-:o1.
Walker 1,;, 1;1-1;.
Dales Dilemma, Time, 8 December 1,1.
o E.A. Jewell, New Art Display by Chester Dale, New York Times, 11 April 1,:.
; The documentation regarding F : compiled by Chester Dale includes all the lit-
erature in favor of the pictures authenticity, while all the publications calling it into
question are excluded, including De la Failles Les faux Van Gogh. (AAA, Chester Dale
Papers, reel ,;o)
8 Letter from V.W. van Gogh to the director of the National Gallery of Art, 1 March
1,o. NGAW: Curatorial files. Imitator of Van Gogh, 1,o.1o.1 (181;); Memo-
randum for the files, J. Walker, 8 April 1,:. NGAW: Curatorial files. Imitator of Van
Gogh, 1,o.1o.1 (181;); Letter from V.W. van Gogh to J. Walker, : April 1,:;
Memorandum, E. Ferber, 1 October 1,o1. NGAW: Curatorial files. Imitator of Van
Gogh, 1,o.1o.1 (181;); letter from V.W. van Gogh to C. Parkhurst, 18 October
1,;1. VGM, b;oo;/1,;o.
, Letter from J. Walker to D. Finley, : June 1,o. NGAW: Curatorial files. Imitator of
Van Gogh, 1,o.1o.1 (181;). In 1,1, around a year after the discussion with De
Wild, Walker wrote that the restorer must have examined the painting shortly after the
Wacker trial. As evidenced in Chapter , however, the examination had actually already
taken place, in June 1,:,. See: Aide Memoir in re Chester Dale Van Gogh Self-Portrait,
J. Walker, :: May 1,1. NGAW: Curatorial files. Imitator of Van Gogh, 1,o.1o.1
(181;).
1o Aide Memoir in re Chester Dale Van Gogh Self-Portrait, J. Walker, :: May 1,1
and Memorandum, J. Walker, :o October 1,:. Memorandum from J. Walker to D.
Finley, :o October 1,:. NGAW: Curatorial files. Imitator of Van Gogh, 1,o.1o.1
(181;).
11 J. Rewald, Report on the Van Gogh Self-portrait from the Chester Dale Collection, 1 Sep-
tember 1,8, . NGAW: Curatorial files. Imitator of Van Gogh, 1,o.1o.1 (181;).
1: Bromic-Kollerantz von Novisancz 1,, , :: and 8:-8, and F. Erpel 1,o, o-oo.
1 Letter from J. Walker to S. Segui, , April 1,oo. NGAW, 1,o.1o.1 (181;), Vincent
van Gogh. Self-Portrait, Chester Dale Collection.
1 Transcript of a letter from D.E. Rust to P. Nimcheck, April 1,;. NGAW 1,o.1o.1
(181;), Vincent van Gogh. Self-Portrait, Chester Dale Collection.
1 Keisch 1,o8.
1o NGAW, Oral history program. Interview with John Walker. Interview ,o-1. Con-
ducted by Anne G. Ritchie. : October 1,,o. Amberley, England. See also Walker
1,;:, 1-1 and 1;-1;.
1; Letter from J. Kennedy to J. Walker, n.d. [1,o1]. NGAW.
Chapter 8
1 LEnigme Van Gogh, Connaissance des Arts, 1 April 1,:, p. 1o.
: For the Van Meegeren case, see: Van den Brandhof 1,;,, Van Wijnen 1,,o and Van
Wijnen :oo.
See Van Wijnen 1,,o, ;1 and Secrest :oo, :-:o.
Van Wijnen :oo, o1.
Strijd tegen valse Van Goghs, Algemeen Handelsblad, :; May 1,,.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 320 29-5-2010 15:24:05
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o For W.A. Bonger, see Van Heerikhuizen 1,8;.
; Conversation with J. van Gogh, dated April :oo.
8 See V.W. van Gogh 1,:, vi.
, V.W. van Gogh, Iets over de museums en hun betekenis, De Socialistische Gids:
Maandschrift der Sociaal-Democratische Arbeiderspartij, February 1,;, pp. 88-,.
1o For V.W. van Gogh as organizational advisor, see Hellema & Marsman 1,,;.
11 See Stolwijk & Veenenbos :oo:, :o.
1: Cf. Stolwijk & Veenenbos :oo:, :o. They estimate that between 1,: and 1, at least
1 works from the collection were sold or given away by the Engineer. The exact ratio of
sales to gifts is unknown. Most of these works were drawings and they were most likely
given away.
1 Conversation with J. van Gogh, dated April :oo.
1 On Sandberg, see Petersen & Brattinga 1,; and Roodenburg-Schadd :oo.
1 J.B. de la Faille, Een merkwaardig zelfportret van Vincent van Gogh, Phoenix, maand-
schrift voor beeldende kunst, September 1,8, :1.
1o Vincent by candlelight, Time, 1 February 1,,.
1; New Van Gogh find owned in America, New York Times, 18 February 1,,.
18 Ir. van Gogh over schilderijenvervalsingen: Klacht van Jhr. Sandberg kan preventief
werken, Het Parool, :; May, 1,,.
1, Jhr. Sandberg dient klacht in over valse Van Goghs, Het Parool, : May 1,,.
:o Letter of W. Sandberg to B. Kist, :, January 1,,. SMA, letter no. ::8.
:1 Ir. van Gogh over schilderijenvervalsingen: Klacht van Jhr. Sandberg kan preventief
werken, Het Parool, :; May 1,,.
:: On :8 May 1,, in Goudse Courant, Maas- en Roerbode en De Stem.
: Fake Van Goghs flood the market, Daily Telegraph, :8 May 1,,.
: Letter of Van Dantzig to H.L.C. Jaff, 1 December 1,8. CDA.
: Valse van Goghs, Overijsselse en Zwolse Courant, 1 July 1,,.
:o Rumoer over Van Gogh-vervalsingen, De Tijd, o May 1,,.
:; Copy of telegram from A.M. Grant to B. Kist, June 1,,. SMA, 1.8:.1.
:8 Letter of D.K.G. de Jong to the Mayor of Amsterdam, dated : June 1,,. SMA,
1.8:.1.
:, Letter of Sandberg to the mayor and aldermen, dated :1 November 1,,. SMA, letter
no. :oo.
o Schrijver Irving Stone verklaart: Van Goghs Zelfportret bij Kaarslicht is authentiek,
Het Vrije Volk, 8 July 1,,.
1 Leeuw Marcar :oo, :18.
: Stedelijke Arena, Elseviers Weekblad, 11 November 1,,.
Letter of H.J. Reinink to W. Cnoop Koopmans, ; July 1,,. BZ, o;o.
Letter of J.P. Bourdrez to W. Sandberg, 1o June 1,,. SMA, Incoming mail, 1o June
1,,, letter no. 1o.
Letter of T.J.H. Gusten to W. Sandberg, 1; July 1,,. BZ, o;o.
o Letter of H.J. Reinink to W. Cnoop Koopmans, ; July 1,,, BZ, o;o.
; Telegram of F.H. Taylor to V.W. van Gogh, , August 1,,, VGM, bo8:1V/1,,o-.
8 Conversation with A.M. Hammacher, dated October :oo1.
, Letter of V.W. van Gogh to A.M. Hammacher, 1 January 1,;. VGM, Correspond-
ence of A.M. Hammacher.
o Suspected Van Gogh studied by experts, New York Times, : October 1,,.
1 According to Hammachers biographer, P. de Ruiter, the painting was exhibited (De
Ruiter :ooo, :). But both the American catalogue (Van Gogh Painting and drawings
1,,,-1,,v), where the painting is not mentioned nor the owner thanked, and press
reports of the exhibitions in New York and Chicago rule out such a possibility.
: Barr et al. 1,,, 1.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 321 29-5-2010 15:24:05
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W.J. de Gruyter, Echte of valse Van Gogh? Enig scepticisme gewettigd, De Nieuwe
Courant, :8 October 1,o.
Other catalogues, such as those by Scherjon & De Gruyter (1,;), concerned only
certain periods from the life of Van Gogh and relied heavily on De la Faille.
Valse Van Gogh is vals, zeggen Amerikaanse experts, De Volkskrant, ; December 1,,.
One exception was Art Digest, 1 December 1,,, which provided arguments for and
against the painting and said the results of the Metropolitan commissions investigation
were not decisive.
o L. Dyons, The Lyons den, New York Post, December 1,,.
; Commissies in Amerika zijn het oneens over Van Gogh, Het Parool, ; November
1,o.
8 Letter of D. Serton to V.W. van Gogh, December 1,,. VGM.
, Dr. Baert handhaaft echtheid van Van Goghs Studie bij kaarslicht, Algemeen Dag-
blad, o December 1,,.
o J.B. de la Faille, Een nieuw licht op Studie bij kaarslicht, Elsevier, 1 November 1,o.
1 Goetzs o,ooo Van Gogh ruled genuine in U.S. customs inquiry, New York Herald
Tribune, October 1,o.
: The Van Gogh Mystery, New York Times, , November 1,o.
Letter from the art editors of Het Vrije Volk to the directors of the Stedelijk Museum, ;
February 1,1, SMA, Incoming mail, o February 1,1, letter :o.
Van Dantzig 1,, 11:-118, 1:-1:. Compare the comments by Phillips 1,,;, ;-,.
De la Faille was referring to W ;, now dated as Arles, , and 1o September 1888.
o De la Faille 1,;o, :1o. RKD, Box 1,:-1,;, :;.
; Letter of Prof. E.A. Nieuwenhoven Helbach to Mr. Van Hasselt, May 1,;1. RKD,
Box 1,:-1,;, :;. Letter of L.A.E. Baert de la Faille-Fransen van de Putte to A.M.
Hammacher, :; August 1,;1. VGM, Correspondence of A.M. Hammacher.
8 An exception is Denvir (1,,, 88-8,), who writes that experts are in disagreement as to
its authenticity.
, See Keyes et al. :ooo.
oo Petersen & Brattinga 1,;, ;.
Chapter ,
1 See Oosterbaan Martinius 1,,o, 8-1o;.
: Alexander 1,8, ::-::; Savage 1,;o, 1:o-1: and von Bode 1,,;, o-o.
Die falschen Van Gogh-Bilder, Kunst und Knstler, March 1,o, p. :o:. According to
the reviewer this sentence comes from Les Faux Van Gogh, but it cannot be found there.
Op de Coul :oo:.
See Wouters :oo.
o Van den Brandhof 1,8, ;.
; Copy of letter from Sandberg to the mayor and aldermen of Amsterdam, 1 June 1,o.
SMA, Correspondence of 1,o (no. 1).
8 Copy of letter from Sandberg to the mayor and alderman of Amsterdam, 1 July 1,o.
SMA, o;.;. EI (no. 1;:).
, Copy of letter from A.J. dAilly to the Minister of Education, Arts, and Science, ::
August 1,o. SMA, o;.;. EI.
1o Copy of letter from the Minister of Education, Arts, and Science to the mayor and
alderman of Amsterdam, 1o September 1,o. SMA, o;.;. EI (no. 11o::;II).
11 Letter of M. de Sablonire to W. Sandberg, 8 January 1,:. SMA, o;.;. EI.
1: Letter of M. de Sablonire to V.W. van Gogh, 1 April 1,1. VGM. I think it would
be unfortunate for it to fall into the hands of art historians, i.e. into the hands of one of
the museum directors, who have opposed an institute en bloc when they became afraid
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that people whom they were in the habit of approaching for donations would not ap-
prove. (Underlining in the original)
1 M. de Sablonire, Over echte en valse Van Goghs, Vrij Nederland, : December
1,o.
1 Letter of V.W. van Gogh to H.L.C. Jaff, 1 April 1,1. SMA, o;.;. EI.
1 Annual report of the Expertise Institute 1,:-1,, 1 June 1,. SMA, o;.;. EI.
1o Ibid.
1; Estimate made after comparing documents from and about the Expertise Institute in
the archives of the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD), the Stedelijk Museum
Amsterdam, and the Van Gogh Museum. The number of requests for assessment, the
actual assessments carried out, the number and identity of the experts per assessment,
etc., could not be precisely determined from the documents in these archives.
18 Letter of M. de Sablonire to H.L.C. Jaff, 1: December 1,. SMA, o;.;. EI.
1, During the Frans Hals exhibition held in Haarlem in 1,o:, of the paintings clas-
sified as forgeries by Van Dantzig were dismissed. See Van Dantzig 1,; and 1,;, x.
:o According to information received by telephone from J. Storm van Leeuwen. Van Dan-
tzigs wife had a different reading; see Van Dantzig 1,;, xii. Also see the criticism by
Van Wijnen 1,,o, oo-o;.
:1 On Van Dantzig, see Van Dantzig 1,;, xi-xii, Storm van Leeuwen 1,8. Additional
oral information from D.A. van Dantzig. For a criticism of pictology, see Phillips 1,,;,
;-1.
:: Letter of V.W. van Gogh to M.E. Tralbaut, February 1,,. VGM. (Underlining in the
original)
: Letter of W. Sandberg to M. de Sablonire, o July 1,. VGM.
: Onechte Van Gogh op expositie in Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Het Vrije Volk, ;
August 1,.
: Eeuwfeest Vincent van Gogh zomer 1,,, [1,], no. 8:. Compare the Engineers annota-
tion for the same painting on page :81 in his copy of De la Failles Van Gogh Catalogue
of 1,,. To the right of the photo: fake, and at the bottom of the page: Not a Van
Gogh painting. Why should this be regarded as one? VGM.
:o Letter of V.W. van Gogh to M.E. Tralbaut, 1; August 1,. VGM, b81o8V/1,,. (Un-
derlining in the original) Compare V.W. van Gogh to Wijsenbeek, 1 March 1,.
VGM, boo; V/1,,o-8: Of course I have no objection to painting F ;;, which has
got you so bogged down.
:; Letter of Altarriba to Van Dantzig, :, May 1,o. CDA.
:8 Copy of letter of Van Dantzig to Altarriba, June 1,o. CDA.
:, Letter of Altarriba to Van Dantzig, 1, November 1,o. CDA.
o Copy of letter of Van Dantzig to Altarriba, 1 December 1,o. CDA.
1 Copy of letter of Van Dantzig to Altarriba, :1 November 1,o. CDA.
: Letter of M.M. van Dantzig to the board of the Expertise Institute, 1 December 1,o.
VGM, EI.
See Van Dantzig 1,,.
Duel ontbrand in Frans tijdschrift: Is het Koollaantje een echte Van Gogh? Het Vrije
Volk, December 1,;.
Letter of V.W. van Gogh to the board of the Expertise Institute, :; March 1,8. SMA,
o;.;. EI.
o Report of A. Petersen Brioche et Fleur, 18 September 1,o. SMA, o;.;. EI.
; Letter of W. Sandberg to the Ambassador of Sweden, 1 March 1,,. SMA, o;.;. EI.
8 Report of August 1,;, J.L.C. Jaff to the Expertise Institute, SMA, o;.;. EI.
, Letter of A. van Schendel to J.L.C. Jaff, : August 1,;. SMA, Jaff, private.
o Letter of A.M. Hammacher to the Expertise Institute, : October 1,;. SMA, o;.;.
EI.
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1 Letter of the Expertise Institute to J.L.C. Jaff, January 1,8. SMA, o;.;. EI.
: L:etter of A. Loeb to the Expertise Institute, : February 1,8. GL.
Letter of M. de Sablonire to the board of the Expertise Institute, 18 February 1,8.
VGMA, EI.
Letter of M. de Sablonire to the board of the Expertise Institute, 1 February 1,8.
SMA, o;.;. EI.
Letter of M. de Sablonire to E. de Wilde, 1 February 1,8. (Underlining in the origi-
nal) SM, o;.;. EI.
o Letter of J. Slagter to the board of the Expertise Institute, 18 February 1,8. SMA,
o;.;. EI.
; Letter of J. Slagter to the board of the Expertise Institute, : March 1,8. SMA, o;.;.
EI.
8 Letter of V.W. van Gogh to the board of the Expertise Institute, :; March 1,8. SMA,
o;.;. EI.
, Letter of J. Slagter to the board of the Expertise Institute, : April 1,8. SMA, o;.;.
EI.
o Expertise Instituut Jaarverslag 1,;/8, 1o July 1,8. SMA, o;.;. EI.
1 Many years later, when the Stedelijk Museum was asked if and when the Institute had
been discontinued, it used the date the Institute closed its bank account for the sake of
convenience. It did not know whether or when the Institute had formally been termi-
nated.
: Copy of letter of V.W. van Gogh to O. Sirianen, 1: June 1,;. VGM, Correspondence
of V.W. van Gogh, EI.
Cf. Rewald 1,o:, 8o, 81 and Jaff, Storm van Leeuwen & Van der Tweel 1,;,.
Chapter :o
1 See Mauss 1,;o. Also see the essays in Komter (ed.) 1,,o and 1,,;.
: Letter of J. van Gogh-Bonger to J.B. de la Faille, 18 August 1,:. VGM.
Letter of V.W. van Gogh to M.E. Tralbaut, 18 September 1,;o. VGM, Tralbaut cor-
respondence and Notes on Paul Gachet, ; February 1,;. VGM, Memoranda of Engi-
neer Van Gogh, 1,o-1,;o.
Gachet Junior attended agricultural college, but this biographical detail is not men-
tioned in any newspaper article or catalogue from the 1,os or 1,oos.
This support was financed by the Theo van Gogh Foundation, which purchases works
by living artists and already has a number of pieces that can be found in various mu-
seums, letter of V.W. van Gogh to the mayor and alderman of Breda, 1; September
1,o. VGM, Correspondence of M.E. Tralbaut and V.W. van Gogh. In the 1,oo annual
report of the Theo van Gogh Foundation, eleven drawings and paintings are listed in
the foundations holdings, including works by Ger Lataster, Jan Voerman, Jr., Graham
Sutherland, Paul Citroen, and Henry Moore. VGM, Memoranda of V.W. van Gogh, no
date. On the Engineer and the Museumjournaal, see Schumacher :oo.
o Letter of V.W. van Gogh to P. Gachet, May 1,8. VGM.
; De la Faille 1,;o says the first exhibition of The Church at Auvers (F ;8,) was The
Hague, Otterlo. According to De Waarheid of : February 1,:, the painting was first
shown at Jeu de Paume in Paris in February 1,:.
8 For the history of the donations, see Distel & Stein 1,,,.
, Van Gogh Tentoonstelling te Parijs, De Waarheid, : February 1,:.
1o W.J. de Gruyter, Schenking Gachet aan het Louvre, Het Vaderland, : February 1,:.
11 Vier nieuwe aanwinsten voor het Louvre, De Telegraaf, :; November 1,.
1: See letter of V.W. van Gogh to P. Gachet, :8 April 1,. VGM.
1 Letter of P. Gachet to V.W. van Gogh, 1: April 1,. VGM.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 324 29-5-2010 15:24:05
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1 Ibid.
1 Museum kreeg Van Gogh cadeau, De Volkskrant, 1o June 1,.
1o The Algemeen Dagblad wrote that it was a gift of Dr. Paul Gachet, who as a 1o-year-
old boy nursed Vincent van Gogh during the last two days of his life. The Stedelijk
Museum, Algemeen Dagblad, 1; June 1,. The tendency to present Gachet Junior as
the physician is understandable, since he used his fathers stationery for correspondence
until he reached an advanced age. The editors of Arts printed a correction from Gachet
fils that was signed Doctor Gachet, probably also a result of his habit of using his
fathers stationery. The comment that Gachet fils nursed Vincent was a fabrication of
his own making, however.
1; Hendriks & Van Tilborgh :oo1, 1o.
18 Letter of J.C. Traas to V.W. van Gogh, 1 August 1,. VGM, b;,,V/1,,o.
1, For the attempts made by the Engineer to win experts over to his side, see Hendriks &
Van Tilborgh :oo1, 1-1,.
:o Letter of H.R. Graetz to W. Sandberg, : August 1,. Telegram of H.R. Graetz to W.
Sandberg, : August 1,. SMA, Van Gogh Algemeen.
:1 Memorandum (no date). VGM, Memoranda of V.W. Van Gogh, 1,o-1,;o.
:: Memorandum, Bezoek bij Tralbaut in Antwerpen, V.W. van Gogh, 8 August 1,,.
VGM, Memoranda of V.W. Van Gogh, 1,o-1,;o.
: Memorandum, December 1,o. VGM, Memoranda of V.W. Van Gogh, 1,o-1,;o.
: Personal note concerning the new Baert de la Faille catalogue on Vincent van Gogh, ,
March 1,;1. VGM, Memorandum of V.W. Van Gogh, 1,o-1,;o.
: Memorandum, Bezoek bij Tralbaut in Antwerpen, V.W. van Gogh, 8 August 1,,.
VGM, Memoranda of V.W. Van Gogh, 1,o-1,;o.
:o Tralbaut 1,o;b, ,o.
:; Letter of V.W. van Gogh to M.E. Tralbaut, : December 1,oo. (Underlining in the
original) VGM, b;8oo V/1,,o.
:8 Letter of V.W. van Gogh to A.M. Hammacher, o January 1,;o. VGM, Hammacher
correspondence.
:, Letter of V.W. van Gogh to A.M. Hammacher, :: January 1,;o. VGM, Hammacher
correspondence.
o Letter of V.W. van Gogh to A.M. Hammacher, (no date) 1,;o. VGM, Hammacher
correspondence.
1 Letter of A.M. Hammacher to V.W. Van Gogh, (no date) 1,;o. VGM.
: De la Faille 1,;o, :oo.
De la Faille 1,,, ,-o1.
The Dutch state also paid .: million guilders to cover the inheritance tax that would
be levied on the total amount and gave a million guilders to the foundation as operating
capital.
See J. van Gogh 1,8;.
o Conversation with J. van der Wolk, :o July :ooo.
; See Landais 1,,,, Distel & Stein 1,,, and Hendriks & Van Tilborgh :oo1.
Chapter ::
1 Letter of Librex N.V. to W. Sandberg, 1 October 1,:. Letter of Sandberg to Librex
N.V., November 1,:. SMA, Box 1.8:.1, Van Gogh General.
: Prospectus Martinus Nijhoff 1,8. VGM.
In 1,1 her name was A. Hoogendoorn. In this chapter I am using her married name.
See Roodenburg-Schadd :oo1.
Conversation with A. Tellegen, dated :; October :oo.
o Conversation with J.M. Joosten, dated :o March :oo1.
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; Conversation with A.M. Hammacher, dated October :oo1.
8 Van Gogh Symposion met belangrijk initiatief gesloten: Plannen voor Van Gogh-
seminarie, Algemeen Handelsblad, o March 1,.
, M.E. Tralbaut, In de schaduw van de raven: Spel in vier bedrijven. Manuscript, 8o pp.
No place or date of publication. [1,,], 8-8. VGM library, TS188.
1o Letter of N. van Gogh-Van der Goot to M.E. Tralbaut, , December 1,; letter of
M.E. Tralbaut to N. van Gogh-Van der Goot, 11 December 1,; and letter of V.W.
van Gogh to M.E. Tralbaut, 1 December 1,. VGM.
11 M.E. Tralbaut, Verantwoording van de auteur, Koninklijke Nederlandse Schouw-
burg/Nationaal Toneel van Belgi, 1,,-1,oo, 1o;th performance year, program no. ,.
In de schaduw van de raven. [No place or date of publication], pp. ;-8.
1: Tralbaut assessment, 1 January 1,. SMA, o;.;. Expertise Institute.
1 Letter of V.W. van Gogh to M.E. Tralbaut, (no date) 1,, VGM.
1 Letter of J.B. de la Faille to M.E. Tralbaut, : June 1,8, VGM.
1 Conversation with A.M. Hammacher, dated October :oo1.
1o Ibid.
1; Ibid.
18 Hammacher 1,:, 1.
1, On Hammacher, see De Ruiter :ooo.
:o On Van Gelder, see Stolwijk 1,,1.
:1 Conversation with E. van Uitert, 1o April :oo1.
:: His first articles on the subject were published in Maatstaf in 1,,, 1,oo, and 1,o1.
: Minutes of the editorial committee, 11 August 1,o1, RKD, 1,:-1,;, :;.
: Minutes of the editorial committee, 1 March 1,o:. RKD, 1,:-1,;, :;.
: Telephone conversation with E.L. de Wilde, 11 September :oo1.
:o Van Gelder 1,;8, oo:.
:; Press release of the Ministry of Education, Arts, and Sciences, 18 December 1,o:.
RKD, 1,:-1,;, :;. Letter of Y. Scholten to M.E. Tralbaut, 18 December 1,o:.
:8 Minutes of the editorial committee, 11 August 1,o1. RKD, 1,:-1,;, :;.
:, Minutes of the editorial committee, 11 September 1,o1. RKD, 1,:-1,;, :;.
o Minutes of the editorial committee, 18 September 1,o. RKD, 1,:-1,;, :;.
1 Letter of J. Hulsker to H. Gerson and A. Hammacher, March 1,o:. RKD, 1,:-
1,;, :;.
: Conversation with J.M. Joosten, :o March :oo1.
Letter of A. Hoogendoorn to A.M. Hammacher, , August 1,o. RKD, De la Faille
Archives, File F ;:.
Minutes of the editorial committee, 1 November 1,o. RKD, 1,:-1,;, :;.
Letter of W. Froentjes to H. Gerson, December 1,o. RKD, De la Faille Archives,
File F ;:.
o Letter of H. Gerson to the editorial committee, 1, February 1,o. RKD, De la Faille
Archives, File F ;:. The text in the catalogue does not say whether or not the copy is
a fake (De la Faille 1,;o, :1). The present owner of the copy is unknown.
; Job description of A. Tellegen-Hoogendoorn. RKD, 1,:-1,;, :;.
8 Minutes of the editorial committee, (no date) 1,o. RKD, 1,:-1,;, :;.
, Letter of H. Gerson to the editorial committee, 1,o. RKD, 1,:-1,;, :;.
o Letter of J.G. van Gelder to H. Gerson, : June 1,o. RKD, 1,:-1,;, :;.
1 Letter of A. Tellegen-Hoogendoorn and J.M. Joosten to F.P.T. Roling (Ministry of
Education, Arts, and Sciences), : July 1,o. RKD, 1,:-1,;, :;.
: Letter of H. Gerson to the editorial committee, : July 1,o. RKD, 1,:-1,;, :;.
Letter of J.G. van Gelder to H. Gerson, :; July 1,o. RKD, 1,:-1,;, :;.
Letter of the editorial committee to A. Tellegen-Hoogendoorn, 1 March 1,o. RKD,
1,:-1,;, :;.
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Conversation with A. Tellegen-Hoogendoorn, o September :ooo.
o De la Faille 1,;o, ,;.
; Memoire prsent Messieurs les Membres du Comit de lExpertise Institut, Paris,
no date. Author P. Crochet-Damais. GL.
8 Letter of H.L.C. Jaff to A. Loeb. GL.
, Letter of M.E. Tralbaut to A. Loeb, October 1,o;. GL.
o Ibid. In 1,o, when the editorial committee asked Tralbaut if the painting was the
property of A. Loeb, Tralbaut categorically denied it. He said it was the property of
someone who would like to remain completely anonymous because his painting left
the country without the necessary formalities having been observed. Tralbaut could
say nothing about the owner: For the time being I am bound by my professional
confidentiality. He did say that any potential buyers could report to Loeb, who was
acting as the agent. Letter of M.E. Tralbaut to S.J. Gudlaugsson, : April 1,o,. RKD,
1,:-1,;, :;.
1 Respectively, letters of A. van Schendel to M.E. Tralbaut, :; November 1,o;. GL. Let-
ter of S. Nystad to M.E. Tralbaut, : November 1,o;. GL. Letter of V.W. van Gogh to
M.E. Tralbaut, : November 1,o;. VGM.
: Copy of a letter from J.G. van Gelder to M.E. Tralbaut, 18 December 1,o;. VGM,
Correspondence of A.M. Hammacher.
In endnote ,; Tralbaut wrote, When we showed Rcolte de bl dans la plaine des Alpilles
to our friend, Doctor-Engineer V.W. van Gogh, he immediately declared it is a paint-
ing of the Arles period! He was not mistaken. Tralbaut 1,o;, .
Tralbaut 1,o,, :.
See Tralbaut 1,o,, :1, :,, and :.
o Preface by the nephew of Vincent van Gogh, Tralbaut 1,o,, ;.
; Letter of M.E. Tralbaut to B.F. Anthon, o September 1,;:. VGM. Engineer Van Gogh
did not respond to Tralbauts rhetorical question in writing as far as I can tell, and it is
not known whether they discussed it between themselves. An indication of the Engi-
neers views can be seen in the marginal comment Angrand written in his handwriting
beside the entry on Les environs de Paris on p. :1 of his copy of Tralbauts Van Gogh,
le mal aim. (VGM library, BVo, 1) It is not known when this comment was made,
however, or whether it was his final opinion.
8 Copy of letter from S.J. Gudlaugsson to M.E. Tralbaut, :: April 1,o,. RKD, 1,:-
1,;. :;.
, Minutes of the editorial committee, (no date) 1,o,. RKD, 1,:-1,;, :;.
oo Letter of S. Gudlaugsson to M.E. Tralbaut, January 1,;o. RKD, 1,:-1,;. :;.
o1 Letter of M.E. Tralbaut to S. Gudlaugsson, :; January 1,;o. RKD, 1,:-1,;. :;.
o: Letter of J.G. van Gelder to A.M. Hammacher, 18 February 1,;o. VGM.
o Letter of M.E. Tralbaut to B.F. Anthon, o September 1,;:. VGM.
o Conversation with B. Welsh-Ovcharov, 8 March :oo:.
o The catalogue is based on the revised De la Faille. It is not a fully documented cata-
logue, however, because it does not include the works provenance, owners, exhibition
history, or literary references.
oo Statement of A.M. Hammacher and E. Joosten, Brussels/Amsterdam, November 1,8:.
1 pp. GL.
o; For Jaff: letter of the RKD; letter of M.M. Op de Coul to G. Bernheim, 1 November
1,8 and letter of M.M. Op de Coul to A. Loeb, : January 1,8, respectively. GL.
o8 Welsh-Ovcharov 1,88, 18:.
o, Transaction entre les hoirs Loeb et O. Chevrillon, (no date) February 1,88. GL.
;o Letter of C. Korman to G. Girard-Loeb, :o January :ooo. GL.
;1 Declaration by De la Faille, 11 October 1,;. RKD. Cf. letter of A.M. Hammacher to
R. Hauert, 1o February 1,;o. VGM, Hammacher correspondence.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 327 29-5-2010 15:24:05
:8 xoris
;: Letter of A. Tooth to A. Tellegen-Hoogendoorn, 1 December 1,o;. Letter of S.J. Gud-
laugsson to A. Tellegen-Hoogendoorn, :; December 1,o;. RKD, 1,:-1,;, :;.
; Copy of letter from A.M. Hammacher to R. Hauert, 1o February 1,;o. VGM, Ham-
macher correspondence.
; Conversation with A.M. Hammacher, October :oo1.
; De la Faille 1,;o, ,;.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 328 29-5-2010 15:24:05
i
Archives
AAA Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington, D.C.
AF Archives of W. Froentjes in The Hague from the Netherlands
Forensic Institute in The Hague
BF Archives of J. Baart de la Faille from the J. Baart de la Faille Col-
lection in Arnhem
BZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken)
DA D.A. van Dantzig Collection in Amsterdam
GAA City Archives of Amsterdam
GAD City Archives of The Hague
GL G. Girard-Loeb Collection in Paris
KA Archives of Kunsthandel d Audretsch from the J. van Es Collec-
tion in Rotterdam
KMM Krller-Mller Museum in Otterloo
NGW National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
OKW Ministry of Education, Arts, and Sciences (Ministerie van
Onderwijs, Kunsten en Wetenschappen)
RKD Netherlands Institute for Art History (Rijksbureau voor Kun-
sthistorische Documentatie) in The Hague
RKDAW Netherlands Institute for Art History, Archives of Dr.ir. A.M. De
Wild
RM Rijksmuseum, depot Rijksarchief North-Holland
SM Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
UA Utrecht Archives
VGM Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam
ZSM Zentralarchiv Staatliche Museen in Berlijn
A Real Van Gogh.indd 329 29-5-2010 15:24:05
A Real Van Gogh.indd 330 29-5-2010 15:24:05
1
Illustrations
Aart Klein/Nederlands Fotoarchief;
Algemeen Dagblad, : May :,,;
Algemeen Handelsblad, April :,,:;
Amsterdam City Archives;
Atlas van Stolk;
Berenson Archive, Harvard College;
Bildarchiv Preuischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin;
Brooklyn Times, June :,:o;
Bhrle Collection Zrich;
Chicago Herald Tribune, : February :,,c;
Christian Gahl;
Citizen News, February :,,;
De Amsterdammer, :, October :,:;
De Haagsche Post, :o April :,,:;
De Haagsche Post, December :,:;
Harvard University, Fogg Art Museum, Bequest-Collection of Maurice
Wertheim;
Het Parool, :; March :,,,;
Hiroshima, Japan, Art Museum;
Krller-Mller Museum;
Kunst & Knstler, December :,:;
Kurashiki, Japan, Ohara Museum of Art;
Los Angeles Times, February :,;c;
National Gallery of Art in Washington;
Netherlands Institute for Art History;
New York Herald Tribune, :, October :,,;
Nieuwe Amsterdamsche Courant, April :,,:;
A Real Van Gogh.indd 331 29-5-2010 15:24:05
: iiiusriarioxs
Paris Match;
Private collection D. van Dantzig (now at the Netherlands Institute for Art
History in The Hague);
Private collection J. van Es;
Private collection W. Froentjes (now at the Netherlands Forensic Institute
in The Hague);
Ullstein Bild;
Van Gogh Museum.
A Real Van Gogh.indd 332 29-5-2010 15:24:05
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Index of names
A
Abdy, Sir R. :c:
Ailly, A.J. d ::, :,,, ,::
Alexander, E.P. ,::
Alexander, V. :o, ,::
Alsop, J. :o, ,c,
Altarriba, C. ::-:, ,:,
Anfray, L. :oc
Angrand, C. :,:,c, :,,, :,o :,;, ,:;
Angrand, P. :,,
Arnau, F. ,,,
Artaud, A. :oc
Audretsch, art gallery d ,,, :c, :;,, ,c:,
,c, ,:,, ,:,
Aulnis de Bourouill, J. d ,co
Auping, W. :, ,:,, ,,,
Avercamp, H. ::o
B
Baard, C.W.H. ::,, ::,, ,:,
Baart de la Faille, J., see Faille, J.B. de la
Bakker-Hefting, V. ::;, :,, ,,,
Baldung Grien, H. ::o, :
Balk, H. :;, ,,-,, :;:, :;o, :,, ,c:,
,c-,c, ,:c, ,::, ,:, ,:,, ,,,
Barr Jr, A.H. :;;, :c,, ::,, ,::, ,,,
Bauer, M. :c;
Becker, C.H. ;:
Becker, S. :o, ,c,, ,,,
Beckmann, M. o
Begemann, N. ,:, ,,,
Berenson, B. :;, :,:, :,,, :,,
Berge, J. ten ,c;, ,c, ,:, ,:,, ,,,
Berlage, H.P. ::,, ::;
Bernard, E. ::
Bernheim-Jeune, art gallery ,c, ,;, ,:c,
,:,
Beuningen, D.G. van :c,
Beuningen, W. van :;,, :c
Bicker Caarten-Stigter, M.A., zie Sa-
blonire, M.A. de
Blume, E. ,c,, ,,
Bcklin, A. oo, ,::, ,,
Bode, W. ,,, :,:, ,::, ,,
Bois, J.H. de ,, :::, :o,, ,:,, ,:,
Bonger, W.A. :c, :::, ,::
Botticelli, S. :,,, :,,
Boudin, E. :,,
Brandhof, M. van den ,::, ,:c, ,::,,,
Brattinga, P. ,::, ,::, ,c
Bredius, A. ,:, :c
Breitner, G.H. :;
Bremmer, H.P. ,, :;, :,, :,, ,,-,, ,-,o,
,, o-oo, ;,, ;,, ;;, ;, , ;, ,:-,,,
,,, ,, ,,, :c:-:c, ::c, :::, ::o-::,
:::, ::; ::, :,:-:,,, :,,-::, :, :,,
:;, :,-:,:, :,,-:o:, :o-:oo, :o,, :;:-
:,, :c,, :c, :co, :c;, ::,-:, ::;,
:,:, :,;, :,, :;,, ,co-,::, ,:,, ,:,
,:o, ,:, ,:,, ,,,, ,,
Bridgewater, P. ,c,, ,,
Brittner, K. :,,, :,,, :,o
Bromic-Kollerantz von Novisancz, K.
,:c, ,,
A Real Van Gogh.indd 345 29-5-2010 15:24:06
o ixiix oi xaxis
Bronkhorst, G. ,c,, ,,
Bruin, K. ,,, ,,
Buffa & Zonen, art gallery ,,:,
C
Carr, L. ::;
Cassirer, art gallery Paul ,, o, ;, ,,
,;, oc, o:, o,, ;,, :c,, :,o, :,;, :,,,
,c,
Czanne, P. ,;, oc, ;,, :cc, ::, :,o,
:oc, ,:
Chagall, M. :oo
Chanterou, R. :oo, :o;, :o,, :;o
Chirico, G. de :oo
Churchill, W. ::c
Cohen Gosschalk, J. :c;, ,,;
Colijn, H. ::;
Cordovado, N. :o
Corot, J-B.C. :,,
Coul, M. Op de :,, ,::, ,,
Cranach, L. ::o, :
Craven, T. :,:, ,:c, ,,
D
Daalhoff, H. :, :;,
Dale, C. :c, :c, , -,c, ,:-,,, ,;-:c,
::c, :::, :,:, :,:, ::, :,,, :,, :o,, :;,
:;,, :,:, :,:, :,o, :,,, :c:, :c:, :,o,
,c:, ,::, ,:,, ,:, ,:c, ,,o, ,,
Dale, M. , ,c, ,,, :c:, :c,, ,c:, ,::
Dam van Isselt, H. van ::c
Dantzig, M.M. van ::, :::, :;, ::, ::,
:,,, :,-:,, :, :,c, :,:, :,,, ,c:,
,:,, ,::-,:,, ,:,, ,,:, ,,, ,:
Daubigny, C.F. ,:
Daumier, H. :,,
David, C.
Degas, E. oc, o, c, :
Delarof ,:
Denvir, B. ,::, ,,,
Derkinderen, A. ::o
Deventer, S. van :c:, :c, ::;, :,:, :;,,
:;,, :c, :;, :, :,, ,c, ,:,, ,:,
,:,, ,,,
Deyssel, L. van :c
Dirven, R. ,c, ,,,, ,
Distel, A. ,c, ,,,, ,
Dobbenburg, A. van de :,, :
Doesburg, Th. Van ::o
Donath :,,, :,:
Dongen, K. van :oo
Dorn, R. :,c, ,co, ,::, ,:,, ,,,
Druet, E. :,
Dubois, G. :o;
Dufy, R. :oo
Duret, Th. :c,, ,:,
Dutuit, E. ,,
Duveen, J. :cc, :,,, :c,, :co
E
Ebbink, H. ,c:, ,::, ,,,
Eckhardt, W. ,c,, ,,,
Eeden, F. van :;o, :c
Eekman, N. ::,, ::o
Eisenloeffel, art gallery N. ,
Engelman, J. :, :c, ,:,
Erpel, F. ,:c, ,,,
Eyck, J. van :,,
F
Fabiani, art gallery ::, ::
Faille, J.B. de la ,, :c, :, :;, :,, :,, :,-
:,, ,:-,,, -,:, ,-,o, ,, o:-oo, ;:-
;o, :, ;, ,c, ,:, ,,, ,, ,;, ,,-:c,,
:c;-::,, ::-:,,, :,,, :,o, :,,-:, :o,
:;, :,:, :,:, :,;-:o,, :o,-:;:, :;, :;o-
:;, :c-:, :,;-:cc, :c,, :c, :co,
:c;, ::c, ::,-::o, ::, ::,, ::,-::,,
:,;, :c, ::, :, :,:, :,;, :oc, :o:,
:o,, :oo, :o, :;,-:;,, :;-:c, :,-
:o, :,c, :,, ,c,-,:;, ,:,-,:,, ,,,
Fantin-Latour, H. ,:, :;, :,;
Fasseur, C. ,:, ,,o
Faure, E. :::, ,:, ,,,
A Real Van Gogh.indd 346 29-5-2010 15:24:06
ixiix oi xaxis ;
Feilchenfeldt, W. o, o,, :c,, :,,, :,,
Feilchenfeldt jr., W. ,c, :c:, ,c:, ,c,,
,co, ,c;, ,c,, ,::, ,:,, ,:o, ,,,, ,,o
Feltkamp, W.C. ::;
Finley, D.E. :,, :,, :,,, :cc, ,,o
Francesca, P. della ,
Froentjes, W. o, ,,, ,o, :, :;, ,c:,
,::, ,:,, ,:;, ,:o, ,:,, ,,o
G
Gabril, P. ::o
Gachet pre, P. ::, :, :::, :,o-:oc, ,c,,
,co, ,:,
Gachet fils, P. ::, :::, ::, ::,, ::, :,o,
:oc, :o:-:;:, :,, ,c,, ,:, ,:,, ,,o
Gachet, M. :,o, :,,
Garnier, J.C.M. :::, ::,, :,,, :,,, :c,
:,:, :o, ,:
Gauguin, P. :,, :,, ,;, ::,, ,:
Gelder, J.G. van :,:, :,, ,:o, ,,o
Grard, J. :,-:,, :, ,c,
Gerson, H. :;,, :;,, ::, ::, :o, :,
:,
Goetz, W. ::, ::, ::o, ::-:c, :::-::,,
::, :;,
Gogh, Engineer V.W. van ,, :;, :,, ,,, ,o,
,, o, , ,:, o,, :c, :c,, ::,, ::c,
::, ::o, ::;, ::,, :,:, :,;, :,, :o,
:o:, :o, :;;, :c,, :c;-::c, :::-::,,
::, ::,, :,:-:,o, :c-:,, :,, :o,
:,-:,,, :,o-:;:, :;,-:;, :,, :,:-:,,
:,,, ,c:, ,c;, ,::, ,:,, ,:, ,:,, ,:;
Gogh, J. van :c, :::
Gogh, T. van :,, ,,, ::,, :,, :c;, :c,,
:::, :,,, :,;, :o, :;;, ::
Gogh, V.W. van ;, ,-:, :c, :, :,, :,, ,c,
,,-,,, :, :, -o, -,c, ,, ,,, ,;,
,,, o:, o:, o,, ;,, ;,, ;,, :, ,c, ,,-,;,
:c:, :c-::c, :::, ::o, ::, ::c, :::-::,
:,c, :,:, :,, :,, :,, :;, :,:, :,,, :o:,
:o, :oo, :o,, :;o, :;, ::, :;, :,
:,, :,,, :c:, :co-:c,, :::-::;, ::,,
::,, ::;-::,, :,:-:,, :,o, :,;, :,,-
::, :,-:;, :,:, :,,-:o:, :o, :oo,
:o,-:;:, :;,-:;;, :c-:,, :,, :;,
:,, :,:-:,,, :,;, ,c,, ,c,, ,co
Gogh-Bonger, J. Van ,,, ,, ,, o, :c,,
:,, :o, :,, :,,, :c;, :,:, :,;, :o:,
,:
Goldschmidt, I. oo, ::
Goldschmidt, art gallery M. ,, :c
Gring, H. :;;, :, :c
Goudstikker, J. :o,
Goyen, J. van ::o
Graadt van Roggen, W. ,co
Gradkowsky, J. :,,, :c
Graetz, H. :o,, :o
Greco, El
Grosz, G. o
Gruyter, W.Jos. de ::, ,,, ,:, ,, ,;, :c:,
:::, :::, ::;, :,:, :o,, :o,, :;,-::,
:,-:;, :,,, ::o, :oc, ::-:,, :o,
,,;, ,:
Guillaumin, A. ::o, :oc
Gutmann :c, ::
H
Haak, A.C. ,,;
Haffner, S. ,,;
Hahnloser, A. ::,, ::
Hals, F. ,, ,, ,, :::, :c, :,, :,, :,,,
,:,, ,,o
Hammacher, A.M. ,, :;, :,, :,, ,,, :,:, :,
:c,, :c, :::, ::,, ::, :,;, :,-:,
:oo-:;c, :;o, :;-:, :o, :o, :,:,
:,:, :,,, :,o, :,, :,,, ,c:, ,co, ,,;
Hannema, D. :c
Hauert, R. :,;, :,
Hauser, K. :o,
Havelaar, J. ,,, ,, :,:
Heerikhuizen, B. van ,,;
Hefting, V. see V. Bakker-Hefting
Heinich, N. ,c,, ,,;
Hellema, H.J.P. ,,;
Hem, P. van der ,c, ::, :;
Hendriks, E. :o,, ,,;
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Hentzen, A. ,:,, ,,;, ,,
Hettinga Tromp, T. :
Heydt, E. von der :
Hijmans, E. :c,
Hilhorst, C. ,,;
Hindenburg, P. Von ::, :o:
Hitler, A. :o:, :;o, ::c
Hofman, P.B. ,,;
Hofstede de Groot, C. ,:, ,,, ,, ,, ,::,
,,;
Hoogh, P. De o, :c
Huinck & Scherjon, art gallery :c, :::, ::,,
:,, :o,, :;,, :;, :c, :,-:;, ::o
Huinck, C.W. ,:, ::o, ::;
Hulsker, J. :;,, ::, ::, :,,-:,;, :,,,
,c:
J
Jaff, H.L.C. ::, ::,, ::, :,,, :,;, :,,
:,-:, :o, :,:, :,:, :,o, ,,
Jankowsky, Th. :,,, :c
Jeppson, L. ,,.
Jongkind, P. ::,, :;
Joosten, E. ::, :,,, ,c:
Joosten, J. :;,, :,, :;, :
Joux, L. :o;, :o
Justi, L. :c, ,,, o;-;;, ;,-,, ,,, :c,, ::c,
:,:-:,o, :,-:o, :,-:,:, :,, :,o-:,,
:oc-:o, :;,, :;,, ::, :, :,, :,,,
:,, ,c,, ,,
K
Karnebeek, H.A. van ::
Keck, S. ::,
Kennedy, J. :c:
Keyes, G.S. ,,
Kirchner, E.L. o
Kisling, M. :oo
Kist, B. :c;, ::o
Klimt, G. :o
Klomp, M. :o
Kloos, W. :c;
Knuttel W
zn
, G. ::o,::;, :c, ,,
Kbben, A.J.F. :, ,c, ,,
Kdera, T. ,c:, ,c,, ,,
Koldehoff, S. ,c, :c:, ,c:, ,,,
Komter, A. ,,,
Knig, L. von :,,, :,
Kooten, T. van ,,,
Kramarsky, S. :oc
Kress, S. :,, :,,
Kreuzfeld, J. :,,, :c
Krimsky, S. ,,,
Krockow, C. Von ,,,
Krller, A.G. ,, :c, ,,, :, ,, ,, ,:, ::,-
::, ::c, :;:, :;,
Krller-Mller, H. ,, :c, ,,, :, ,, ,,, ,o,
o,, ;c-;:, ;-;;, ,:, ,, :c:-:c, :c,
:c,, ::,-::,, :,:-:,,, :,, ::, :,:, :,:,
:o,, :;:, :;,, :;,-:;;, :;
L
Landais, B. :,;, ,c,, ,co, ,,,
Latour, J. :o,, :o, :o;
Leck, B. van der :, ,:, ::o
Leeuw Marcar, A. ,,,
Leeuw, A. van der ::
Leune, J.M.G. :,, ,,,
Lewenthal, R. ::, ::,
Liebermann, M. o, o,, :, :,, :,, :
Lindeman, C.M.A.A. :c,
Lippi, Fra Filippo ,
Loeb, A. :o-:, :,c, :,:, :,-:,o,
,c:
Loval, O., see Otto Wacker
Ludendorff, E. von ::
Lugt, F. :::
M
Macke, E. o, ,
Mak van Waay, S.J. ::o, ::;, :,,
Mak, A., auction house :,, ::o, ::;, :oo,
:o
Manet, . ,;, oc, o, ::o, :,,
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Manheim, R. ,,,
Mann, T. ::
Marijnissen, A. :,:, :,,, :c
Maris, M. ::o, :;
Marquis, A.G. ,c
Matisse, H. ,, :oo
Matthiesen, art gallery ;:, ;,, ;o, :c:,
::c, :,,, :,:, :,,, :,, :;,
Mauss, M. :,,, ,:
McBride, H. ,c
Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Prince Hendrik
van ::
Meegeren, H. van o, :c, :c,, :::, ::o,
:,:, ,:c
Meier-Graefe, J. :c, ,:, ,, ,,, o:-o, o,
;, ;o, :::, ::;, ::,, :,,, :,,, :,, :,
:;, :, :,:, :,:, :,;, :o,, :;, ,c
Meissner, G. ,c
Mellon, A. :,,-:,,
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, P. von :,, :o,
:;
Mendes Da Costa, J. ::o
Merton, R.K. :, :,, ::,, ,c,, ,c
Mies van der Rohe, L. ::,
Modigliani, A. ,
Moeyes, P. ,c
Moffett, K. ,c
Mondriaan, P. :, ::o, :;,
Monet, C. ::o, :;, :,, :,,, :,o, ,:
Mller, F. :,,, :,:
Murray, M. see M. Dale
Mussolini, B. :
N
Nauen, H. ,
Nieuwenhuizen Segaar, art gallery :,,
:,
Nieweg, J. :,;
O
Ohara, M. ,:, ::, :o
Oldenzeel, art gallery :,:
Oosterbaan Martinius, W. ,::, ,c
Osborn, M. :,:, :,,
Osthaus, K. :o:
Oversloot, J. ,c,, ,c,, ,c
P
Panofsky, E. ::
Paret, P. ,c
Pascin, J. :oo
Paul, B. ,c
Perls, art gallery Hugo ,:, :c:, ,c
Perugino, P. :,,
Petersen, A. ,c
Petit, art gallery Georges ,
Phillips, D. ,c
Picasso, P. ,, ::o, :,o
Pickvance, R. :,;
Pissarro, C. ::, :,o, :oc
Plasschaert, A.C.A. ,,, ::,, :;:, :;:, :;,
:;;
Plaut, J. ::,
Polak, E. ::, ::c, :::, ::,, ::
Prudhon, P.P. :,,
R
Raphael da Urbino :,,
Redon, O. ,,
Regteren Altena, J.Q. van :co
Reichan, W. :,,, :c
Renkewitz, M. :c,, :c
Renoir, P.-A. oc, o, ;,, ::o, :,o
Rewald, J. :c:, :,o, ,c
Richardson, J. :;
Rijn, Rembrandt H
zn
van ::, ,,, ,, :c;,
:::, :,,, :c, :,;, :, ::
Ring, G. o, o,, ;,, :c, :,,, :,,
Rockefeller, J.D. ,
Rodin, A. :;
Rell, D.C. ::c, :::, ::,, :c,
Roepers, N. ;, ,:
Roland Holst, R.N. ,,, ,, :c;,
Roodenburg-Schadd, C. ,:
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Rosenberg, P. c, :, :;:, :;,
Rosenhagen, H. o, ::,, :,,, :,, :o,
:, :,, :,:, :,:, :o,, :c
Rousseau le Douanier, H. :,,
Rousseau, T. ,:
Rubens, P.P. , :,,, :,;, :,
Ruhemann, H. :,,, :o, :,,, :,, ,:
Ruiter, P. de :;, ,:
Ryssel, Paul van (see Gachet pre)
S
Sablonire, M. de ::, :,,, :,o, :,, :,
:,c, :,:, :,,, :;, ,:
Saltzman, C. ,c, ,c,, ,:
Sandberg, W. ::, :c,, :::, :::, ::,-:::,
::, ::,, :,:-:,o, :,,-:,, :,, :o,
:-:,c, :o,, :o, :oo, :;,, :;,, :,,
:,:, :,,
Sandler, I., ,:
Savage, G. ,:
Schaper, J.H.A. :o
Scheffler, K. o,, ;,, ,:
Schendel, A.F.E. :c,, :,:
Scherjon, W. :c, ::,,,, ,,, ,o, o,, ;,, ;,
,c-,,, ,;, ,, :c:, :c:, :c, :c, ::c,
:::, ::,, :::, ::,, ::,, ::;, ::, :,:, :,:,
:,,, :c-:,, :o, :;, :,c-:,:, :,, :,,,
:,;, :,,, :o:-:o,, :;:, :;,-:, :,,, ::,
,:, ,:
Schinasi, M. ,
Schmidt Degener, F. ,,, :::
Schoeller, A. ::;
Schuch, C. :,
Schuffenecker, A. :,
Schuffenecker, C-. :, :,, :o
Schller, S. ,:
Schumacher, R. ,c:, ,:
Schtz, C.C. ,:
Schweitzer, G. :c:
Secrest, M. ,:
Seurat, G. :,,
Severini, G. :;
Siedenburg, J.H.H. ,:,
Signac, P. ::,, :;, :,
Simpson, C. ,:
Sjollema, J. ,:
Slagter, J. :,o, :-:,c, :,,
Smith, J. ,,
Spiro, E. :,,, :,:, :,:, :,
Staechelin, R. :o,
Stalin, J. :, :::
Stegeman, E. :, ,:
Stein, S.A. ,,,
Steinmetz, S.R. ,,, ;c
Stern, F. ,:
Sternheim, C. ,,
Steurs, C.H. de ::;,
Steyn, M.T. ::
Stolwijk, C. ,c:, ,:
Stone, I. ::,
Stoperan, T. :,,, ,:
Storm van Leeuwen, J. ,:
Stout, G. ::,
Stransky, art gallery J. , o, ,,
Stuck, F. von oo
T
Tubner, E. ;;, :,, :o,
Taylor, F.W. :c,
Tellegen, A. :;, :;,, :;,, :,-:,, ,c:
Temple, S. ::
Teniers, A. ,
Terpstra, J. ::, :o
Thannhauser, art gallery o:, :,
Thomas, J.A. ,, :,,, :,,, :,
Thomson, C. ,:
Thorbecke, R. :,:, :,,,
Thormaehlen, L. ,, :,,, :,, :,,
Tilborgh, L. van :o,, ,c:, ,,;,
Tintoretto, J. , ::o
Toorop, C. :, ,:, ::o, :,
Traas, J.C. :,:, :oc, :o, :;,, :o,
Tralbaut, M.E. ::, :c,, :o,-:;c, :;,-:c,
:, :,c-:,o, ,:, ,,
Trbner, H.W. oo
Truman, H. :::
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Tschudi, H. von oc, o:, o;-o,, :
Tucholsky, K. :o,
Tutein Nolthenius, H. ,,
U
Uelzen, H. :,,, :,,
Uhde, F. von :,
Uitert, E. van ::, ,c:, ,,
Utrillo, M. :oo, :,;, :c
V
Valentiner, W.R. ,,, ,,
Vecht, A. :o,
Veen, G. van der :::
Velsquez, D. :,,
Velde, H. van de ::,, ::;
Vermeer, J. ,, o, :::, :c, :c,, :c, :,,
:,,
Veronese, P. :,,
Verster, F. ,:, ::o, :;
Verweij, K. :;
Veth, C. :c, ,, ,,, :, :,c, :,:, :,:, :,,
:, :,, :,, :,,, :o:, :o,, :;,, :cc,
:c, :c;, ,,
Vinci, L. da :cc, :::, :,:,
Vink, H.J. ,,
Visser, P. ::c
Vogelsang, W. ,:
Vollard, art gallery A. ,c
Vosmaer, C. ,,
Vries, A. B. :c, :,,, :;,
W
Wacker, H. ,,
Wacker, L. ,;, ;,, ;o, ;, ,, :,:, :c
Wacker, O. :c, o-, ,c, ,:, ,-,,, o:-
o;, ;:-;,, ,, , ;, ,c, ,,, ,,, ,o,
:c:-:c,, :c;-::c, :::, ::c, ::;-:,:,
:,-::, :,-:o, :,:, :,o, :,;, :oc, :o:,
:o,, :o,, :;c, :;:, :;,, :;o, :;;, :,
:o, :, :,, :c,
Walker, J. ::, :,:-:,o, :,-:c:, :,o
Wehlte, K. :,,, :,, :o
Welsh-Ovcharov, B. :,-:,;, ,,
Wennekes, W. ::;, ,,
Westheim, P. ,,
Wet, C.R. de ::
Wibaut, F.M. :::, ::, :c, :c,
Wibaut, J. :c
Wijnen, H. van ,
Wijsenbeek, L.J.F. ::
Wild, A.M. de :c, ,-, ,,-:c, :c,, :::,
:::, :,:-:,,, :,,, :,;, ::, ::, :o, :-
:,:, :,,-:,o, :,,, :oc, :o,, :;:, :;,, :;,
:;,, ::, :,, :o, :,;, :,,, :c,, :, ,,
Wild, D. de ,
Wilde, E.L. de :,, ,c:
Wildenstein, D. :o
Wildenstein, art gallery ,,
Wilhelm II, emperor ,c, oc, o:, o;, o,,
;c, :,:
Willink, A.C. ::;
Wisselingh, art gallery van :,
Wolff, E. ;:
Wolk, J. van der :;:, ,c:, ,,
Wolowsky, G. :c:
Wouters, K. ,,,
Z
Zandleven, J. :
Zatzenstein, F. :,,
Zemel, C.M. ,c,, ,
Zimmermann, M.F. ,
Zwartendijk, J. ,, :::, :::, ::;, :,:, :o,
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