French auctioneer Jean-Claude Binoche who sold a controversial painting by Van Gogh, «Garden in Auvers», dimissed allegations that this work was a forgery. In a communique sent to the weekly magazine «Gazette de Drouot», Jean-Claude Binoche who sold «Garden in Auvers» in 1992 to a French banker for 55 millions FF (US $ 9,8 million) stressed that contrary to what his detractors claimed he had carefully included all possible details about its provenance in his sale catalogue.
The painting had been sold well under its value as a result of a French State decision not to allow its export from France.
Jacques Walter, its previous owner, had sued the State arguing that such decision had been detrimental to his interests. He eventually won his case in court and was awarded 145 million FF (US $ 25,9 million) damages.
The press campaign which was launched about the authenticty of this painting prevented the heirs of the banker to sell it back. They thus enacted a legal action in an attempt to get back the 55 million francs paid for it on the ground that it was longer saleable.
«I did my job with considerable attention and no one can say that the Johanna Van Gogh-Cassirer provenance has been surely established. I made no mistake,» Binoche said.
He added that the controversy arose from the de la Faille catalogue raisonné published in 1928. In fact, J.B de la Faille gave the Glaser provenance without mentioning that the painting had been bought from Bernheim. In his new 1939 edition, de la Faille considered that Glaser had acquired the painting from Schuffenecker.
«The error comes from there and those who claimed the painting was a forgery only stuck to this mention,» he stressed.
Binoche concluded that it was unbearable to see suspicion prevailing against facts and that no one can put forward the particularity of a work, not very typical of Van Gogh's paintings, to reject it.
«Alas, it always seems possible for certain people to pose themselves as experts. The best argumentr to ascertain the authenticity of the «Garden in Auvers» is the painting itself,» he said.
Rose Valland made a precise description of the painting and of its measurements in a note written on March 10th 1942 which was then kept in official archives and was thus made accessible to any curator. The heirs of Alphonse Kann are thus suing the Museum for receiving a stolen painting and such legal action , the first of its kind in France, will serve to test the will of French authorities regarding jewish-owned works of art stolen during the German occupation.
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