Self-portraits By Vincent Van Gogh - Fakes

Fakes

Almost at the same time as when his Catalogue raisonné was published, Jacob Baart de la Faille had to admit that he had included paintings emerging from dubious sources, and of dubious quality. Little later, in 1930, De la Faille rejected some thirty odd paintings, which he had originally included in his Catalogue raisonné - together with a hundred of others he had already excluded: Self-portraits - and Sunflowers - held a prominent place in the set he now rejected. In 1970, the editor's of De la Faille's posthumous manuscript brand marked most of these dubious Self-portraits as forgeries, but could not settle all disputes, at least on one:

• The Selfportrait 'a l'éstampe japonais', then in the collection of William Goetz, Los Angeles, was included, though all editors refused its authenticity.

Meanwhile, the authenticity of a second "self-portrait" has been challenged:

• The Selfportrait, 'à l'oreille mutilé', acquired in 1910 for the Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo, has been unanimously rejected by recent scholars and technical researchers for decades, until provenance research by staff members now reported pro domo the contrary. The debate is on-going.