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Hanspeter Born and Benoît Landais, two specialists of Vincent Van Gogh's works, have claimed that Paul Gauguin's friend Emile Schuffenecker had forged many of his works, including the famed "Sunflowers" sold for a world record price by Christie's in 1987.

In a well-documented book titled "Schuffenecker's Sunflowers and other Van Gogh forgeries", the two authors also asserted that several Van Gogh paintings were in fact by the hand of the French artist who did not bother to betray the famous Dutch master who himself feared to be the victim of forgers notwithstanding the fact that he considered that the trade in art objects had become a kind of bankers' speculation like the tulip trade in the 17th Century, as he wrote in one of his letters in December 1883..

The sale of Van Gogh's Sunflowers on March 30, 1987 was regarded as a spectacular coup as the result exceeded the most optimistic expectations. Those in charge of the meticulous planning and execution of the sale could be pleased with themselves considering what had just become the most expensive work of art in the world.

For a start, Christie's had had to persuade the heirs of the late Mrs Helen Beatty to give them preference over their rival Sotheby's, the then leading auction house

In the race for the Beatty Van Gogh, Christie's outsmarted and outbid Sotheby's. Apparently the trustees of the Beatty estate were particularly impressed by Christie's producing a mock-up catalogue within a short week. Once the picture had been secured, a definite catalogue, tasteful and scholarly, was made. Charles Roundell, Christie's main Impressionist expert, who edited the text, called upon Professor Ronald Pickvance, the world's foremost authority on van Gogh, and the Zurich art dealer Dr. Walter Feilchenfeldt for advice and assistance.

Feilchenfeldt, himself a diligent investigator and well-known Van Gogh scholar, was able to draw on the research of his associate Dr. Roland Dorn, an up-and-coming star in the field of Van Gogh studies. Dr. Dorn's important contribution to the catalogue concerned the history of the painting, its provenance. Previously, the French painter Emile Schuffenecker was believed to have been the first owner of the picture, but Dorn had discovered that, in fact, Schuffenecker had bought the painting from Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, Vincent's sister-in-law.

On the day of the sale, the atmosphere in Christie's venerable auction room in St. James's – known as the Great Room – was electric. Christie's had managed to cram five hundred bidders and onlookers into the Great Room, with an overflow crowd of six hundred watching the proceedings on closed-circuit television in adjacent rooms. For the benefit of a wider public, the bidding was broadcast live on the BBC's popular Terry Wogan Show.

Then came the moment everybody had been waiting for. Young men wearing white gloves placed lot 43, Van Gogh's Sunflowers on a huge easel and biddings roared up in steps of £500,000, and within ten seconds had easily passed the previous world record for a painting of £8.1 million. Within a minute, with the price passing £13 million, the only bidders left were those on the end of four telephones calling their enormous offers through four black-dressed Christie's employees at the side of the room. There was no stopping them. The mere lifting of a finger signalled another £500,000. By then there were only two telephone bidders left. When the anonymous loser finally bowed out at £22.5 million and Mr Allsopp's hammer came down, the  room exploded in a burst of applause. Above his head the electronic scoreboard told the remarkable tale: $36,292,500 or 228,150,000 French francs or
54,675,000 Swiss francs. All that was known at that very moment was that the new owner of the Sunflowers, who paid a total of £24,750,000  with premium, was private and foreign.

The Sunflowers had become the most expensive picture ever sold. The previous record price paid at auction for a painting – £8,100,000 for Mantegna's Adoration of the Magi, two years before – had been well and truly smashed. Noticing that the painting, despite its full title Fourteen Sunflowers in a Vase, actually depicts fifteen flowers, the Daily Telegraph would later calculate that the price worked out at £1,650,000 per flower.

A week after the sale Christie's announced that Yasuda Fire and Marine, Japan's second largest insurance company, was the lucky new owner of the Sunflowers,

Newspaper reports had mistakenly named the Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos as the loser in the bidding war. The man who had thrown in the towel when the bidding went beyond 22 million pounds was the flamboyant Australian beer and property magnate Alan Bond. Thwarted in his own quest for the gold of the Sunflowers, he would try again eight months later, when the magnificent Irises came up for sale at Sotheby's in New York.

To Bond the Irises was the ultimate painting. He had to have it – at any price. When he made his winning bid – $49 million, world record beaten – he had got his revenge. And so had Sotheby's. Alas, it was to be a bitter one. Two years later, an article by Geraldine Norman revealed that the world record was not what it appeared to be. It had been cooked up by Sotheby's and Bond. Sotheby's had sweetened their terms to the extent of lending Bond half of the sale price. When soon afterwards the tycoon's empire collapsed, the auction house was forced to take the picture back. In 1990, it quietly sold the Irises to a more solvent buyer, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

The Yasuda Sunflowers – now in the Seijy Togo Memorial Sompo Japan Museum of Art in Shinjuku – would hold on to their world-record until May 1990, when Vincent's Portrait of Dr. Gachet was sold, by Sotheby's in New York, for a staggering $82,5 million.

That the Japanese had captured the Sunflowers seemed logical. Their domination of the most important auction sales reflected the country's economic power. In the heady spring days of 1987 nobody imagined that three years later the Japanese financial bubble would burst.

Mr. Yasuo Goto, the chairman of Yasuda Fire and Marine, had now taken possession of the only version of the famous Sunflowers that was still in private hands and ever likely to come on the open market. The year 1889, in which – according to the leading van Gogh scholars – the Sunflowers were painted, happened to be the year in which the Yasuda insurance company was founded. Vincent, who himself had admired Japanese art, copied it and borrowed from it, was by far the most popular Western artist in Japan.

A quite original Still Life: Vase with five Sunflowers (on dark blue background) had already found its way to Japan in 1920, but was destroyed during a bombing raid in February 1945. It was only justice that the lost icon should now be replaced by an even more celebrated Sunflowers painting. Roland Dorn would later point out that the acquisition of the painting by Yasuda Fire and Marine was not about money but about something higher, something nobler.

As always there were grumblers. Munich's Weltkunst was shocked at the way the picture had been market and suggested that, the damage done to the art trade and to public collections was obvious while two distinguished West End dealers told a London newspaper that they considered the Sunflowers sale price obscene. Other people outside the art world agreed. 

After the breath-taking auction of March 30, 1987 not a single newspaper, radio or television station wondered whether the Sunflowers sold by Christie's were the work of Vincent van Gogh. When the Sunflowers still belonged to Mrs. Beatty they hung for a time near an almost identical picture in London's National Gallery. A few attentive visitors noticed a difference in quality between the two paintings.

The National Gallery Sunflowers, known as F 454, from which Christie's future world record painting had been copied, is far more forceful than its curiously muddy-looking replica. By the time of the sale a handful of people privately began to suspect that the world record Sunflowers were not Vincent's work. It took these doubts a full seven years to find their way into the public prints. On January 27, 1994, Milan's leading newspaper Il Corriere della Sera published a half-page article under the headline Ma questi Girasoli non sono di Van Gogh (But these Sunflowers are not by Van Gogh). The article reported the findings of a land surveyor and art enthusiast, Antonio de Robertis, who after studying the painting and its provenance, came to the conclusion that the Sunflowers was a copy painted by Paul Gauguin.

As a young man, de Robertis was struck by the beauty of Vincent's paintings. Ever since, he had spent his spare moments investigating the life and work of his favourite artist. The vast knowledge he accumulated was to stand him in good stead. When taking part in the popular Italian TV quiz show Lascia o Raddoppia, he chose van Gogh as his subject. He won. De Robertis invested his prize money in further research and eventually came up with the sensational theory that the Yasuda Sunflowers were a forgery.

Nobody in the art world took the quiz-winner seriously. His wild claim just seemed to confirm that the sunny Italians were a breed apart.

One of the few people who had early doubts about Christie's Sunflowers was the Paris dealer Alain Tarica. Art forgery fascinated him and he was writing a book about it. The journalist Geraldine Norman, by all accounts one of the world's leading specialists of the art market, had already published a book about an art forger. The two were in the habit of sharing information on a topic that interested them both.

One day in March 1987, Tarica had just opened his mail and was looking at the glossy colour photographs in the auction catalogue Christie's had sent him, when Norman called from London. Before she could get a word in, Tarica blurted out: "These Sunflowers are fake". Norman asked Tarica to repeat what he had just said. He was sure that the painting was a forgery. When studying the colour reproductions in the catalogue, he had felt it.

After the auction, Norman asked Christie's whether she could have another look at the Sunflowers before the painting shipped off to Japan. She got permission to view the world record painting at the National Gallery, where it was in storage.

Tarica joined her on her expedition and once they were in the vaults of the National Gallery, the French dealer pointed out what was wrong with the painting. His list of weaknesses and blunders grew as he spoke. These Sunflowers were unworthy of Vincent! In the end Norman was convinced by Tarica's arguments. Being convinced was one thing, writing about it in The Times another. There was no evidence, just Tarica's opinion. The world's most expensive painting, a fake? Nobody would believe it. Geraldine Norman dropped the matter.

Tarica continued to insist: The Sunflowers sold by Christie's were not by Vincent Van Gogh. How did he know? A great painter always paints the same way. The subject of a painting does not count. The only thing that counts is how it is painted. Having looked at two hundred paintings by an artist, explained Tarica, one gets to know him. When you receive a letter from your mother, you at once recognise the handwriting on the envelope. There is no way someone imitating your mother's handwriting could fool you.

Like his Paris colleague Tarica, the Zurich art dealer Feilchenfeldt relied on experience and intuition, when investigating the authenticity of a painting. He told the Swiss Tages-Anzeiger: This is just like when a doctor gives his diagnosis. He first has to call up all his knowledge and then proceed to his diagnosis.

The more he knows, the greater the likelihood that his diagnosis is the right one. It is the same when looking at art. One has to keep in mind the whole oeuvre of an artist, and not look at single works in isolation, as what is now happening with Van Gogh. And at the origin of every diagnosis there is an intuition. With a very similar approach Tarica and Feilchenfeldt had come to opposite conclusions. For Tarica the Yasuda Sunflowers were a forgery, for Feilchenfeldt they were genuine.

By 1997 the question of the authenticity of the Sunflowers had split the small world of top Van Gogh experts into two camps. Among those sharing Tarica's view were Dr. Matthias Arnold, Dr. Jan Hulsker and Dr. Annet Tellegen. Arnold, the author of a two volume biography of Van Gogh, Hulsker, the editor of the latest Van Gogh catalogue raisonné, and Tellegen, who had dne the preparatory work for the revised De la faille catalogue, concluded that the Yasuda Sunflowers had not been painted by Vincent – as did Benoit Landais, the co-author of this book. On Feilchenfeldt's side, defending the Yasuda Sunflowers, were Prof. Ronald Pickvance, Dr. Roland Dorn and the curators of the Van Gogh Museum, Louis van Tilborgh and Sjraar van Heugten. All of them had vouched for the painting's authenticity in the auction catalogue and all remained convinced that it was Vincent's work. Also defending its authenticity was Dr. Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, an art historian at the university of Toronto.

Both sides could not be right. While it is possible to have one's doubts and stay on the fence, the answer can only be yes or no. Either the Yasuda  Sunflowers were painted by Vincent or they were not. Either the painting was genuine or it was not.

Controversies about the authenticity of Van Goghs have arisen in the past. They were decided when one side was able to marshall strong enough arguments to convince the other side.

The most famous of these controversies, which cast a long shadow on the field of Van Gogh studies, was the so-called Wacker scandal.

In the 1920s no experts had a more thorough knowledge of Vincent's work than Jacob Bart de la Faille, Hendrik Pieter Bremmer and Julius Meier-Graefe. The Dutchman Bart de la Faille, by training a lawyer and by trade an art dealer, had taken upon himself the burdensome task of compiling the first oeuvre catalogue of Vincent's works. Bremmer, an equally enthusiastic early admirer of the great painter, was one of the first to lecture and write about Van Gogh in Vincent's homeland. As the trusted adviser of the wealthy collector Hélène Kröller-Müller, Bremmer helped her to put together a magnificent Van Gogh collection, second only to that of the artist's family. The art historian Meier-Graefe could take credit for writing the very first Van Gogh biography and introducing the artist to the German public. If, in the decade following World War I, an art collector wanted an expert opinion on an unknown Van Gogh, he would consult De la Faille, Bremmer or Meier-Graefe. They had the knowledge, the experience, and the "eye". The three of them were prepared to guarantee the authenticity of a work with a written certificate.

All three also vouchsafed for the genuineness of the paintings offered for sale by Otto Wacker, a former professional dancer. When a Berlin court concluded that the Wacker "Van Goghs" were recently produced, the three most famous van Gogh experts had egg on their faces.

In the beginning Meier-Graefe stuck to his certificates, then hesitated, and finally retracted. Bremmer did not waver. De la Faille first took the Wacker pictures out of his catalogue, but later reinstated a number of them. In Les faux Van Gogh, a supplement listing fake Van Goghs, he included some paintings that had fooled him.

As a witness in court, Meier-Graefe expressed the view, that excellent works do not need the benefit of expert opinion, and in the case of doubtful ones, only provenance can decide.

It is understandable that, after the embarrassment of the Wacker affair, Meier-Graefe should have declared provenance was the only serious criterium. In doing so, he underestimated the pitfalls of documentary evidence.

Provenance can be as unreliable as an expert's intuition. Tarica has warned connoisseurs to be wary of the alleged origins of any painting: Of course one has to look into the history of the works and the collections that harboured them, but things may have happened that we cannot imagine. A painting may have been destroyed and replaced; canvases may have disappeared, leaving their 'vacant' provenances for others. The catalogues are full of errors on formats, titles, etc.

Those who believe in provenance have to take into account the inventiveness of forgers. In his book about the dirty tricks of forgers at the beginning of the 20th century, Paul Eudel cautioned: A fake painting is like an impostor. His papers are always in order. If they are not, somebody will fabricate them for him.

The three sunflowers paintings mentioned by Van Gogh in his letters to his brother Theo can all be identified: 1. The 3 huge flowers in a green vase is Vase with three Sunflowers, F 453, and bears number 211 in the so called A.B. List, drawn up in mid-November 1890. The painting, today in a private collection, was presented by Julien Tanguy – le père Tanguy – on behalf of the van Gogh family, to Mirbeau to thank him for his article in L'Echo de Paris of March 1, 1891, which praised Vincent and gushed: Oh, how he understood the exquisite soul of flowers: How delicate becomes the hand that had carried such fierce torches into the dark firmament when it comes to bind these fragrant and fragile bouquets! 2. The 3 flowers, one flower gone to seed and having lost its bud is Vase with five Sunflowers, F 459, – there are three flowers in the vase, as described in Vincent's letter, plus two additional ones lying on the table – and bears number 95 in the A.B. List. Johanna Van Gogh sold it in September 1908. It was destroyed in Japan at the end of World War II. 3. The twelve yellow flowers and buds in a yellow vase (toile de 30) is Vase with twelve Sunflowers, F 459, it bears number 94 in the A.B. List, and was sold by Johanna van Gogh in 1905. It is in the Neue Pinakothek, Munich.

On August 26, 1888, Vincent drafted a letter to Theo: I am now on the fourth picture of sunflowers. This fourth one is a bouquet of 14 flowers, and is on yellow background, like a still life of quinces and lemons that I did back then. Only it's much bigger. It gives a rather singular effect. He did not post the letter, but the next day he wrote: The sunflowers are progressing, there's a new bouquet of 14 flowers on a green-yellow ground, so it is exactly the same effect – but in a larger format, toile de 30 – as a still life of quinces and lemons, which you already have 2 – but in the sunflowers the painting is much simpler.

This canvas, size 30 picture, 92 x 72, is number 119 in the A.B. List. Vase with 14 Sunflowers, F 458, remained in the van Gogh family and is on permanent loan to the Amsterdam Van Gogh Museum.

When Gauguin finally made it to Arles on October 23 1888, he saw the two size 30 Sunflowers, F 456 and F 458, hanging on the wall of his room. Vincent was sure that his colleague would like the paintings. Shortly after they had made each other's acquaintance, they had exchanged pictures. In return for a Martinique landscape Gauguin had chosen two smaller studies of sunflowers, F 375 and F 376, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and in the Kunstmuseum Bern.

The repetitions that Vincent painted in January 1889 of the two size 30 originals are: Vase with Fourteen Sunflowers, F 454, now in London and Vase with 12 Sunflowers, F 455, now in Philadelphia.

According to conventional wisdom, the London Sunflowers are the original painted in August 1888 and the ones in Amsterdam their January 1889 repetition. It is in fact the other way round. The original is the Amsterdam painting and the repetition the picture in London.

The two August originals, the Munich 12 Sunflowers and the Amsterdam 14 Sunflowers, were painted from nature. Vincent closely examined the flowers in the vase in front of him. He sought his touch. In the repetitions, the Philadelphia 12 Sunflowers and the London 14 Sunflowers, Vincent was no longer constrained by the bouquet. He was freer and took greater stylistic liberties. He described the background of the August 14 Sunflowers as yellow green; in the London version it is pure yellow.

Then when and where were made the fifth Sunflowers, F 457, sold in 1987 for a world record price to the Yasuda Fire and Marine in Tokyo?

From the 1970s onwards it was generally believed that Vincent painted this picture in January 1889, in addition to the two repetitions he made for Gauguin at the same time. However, a close re-examination of Vincent's correspondence has made this date untenable. The letters mention two repetitions and leave no room for a third painted in January 1889.

When then? In order to paint an additional repetition, Vincent would have needed an original. All the Arles Sunflowers had been sent to Paris by the end of April 1889. Therefore, any additional repetition must have had to be made in February, March or April 1889. The letters exclude March and April.

At the beginning of April 1889 the orchards were back in bloom and Vincent could again paint outdoors. On April, 13, he reported to Theo that he had six studies of spring, among them two big orchards. There is a lot of time pressure because these effects are transient. As usual, spring rejuvenated Vincent. He had better things to do than copy old paintings. He slept and took his meals at the hospital and did not work in his studio.

The only time window for an additional Sunflowers would have been between February 3 and February 26, 1889. Roland Dorn, in a 1999 article, thought he had found gaps, or what he called 'blank spots', both at the beginning and end of February, periods of four or five days about which nothing more is known than that Van Gogh was busy working. He suggested that the Yasuda copy would have been painted just before the crisis that first announced itself around February 4 1889 and led to the artist being forcibly taken to hospital on February 7 1889.

Like most observers Dorn saw the poor quality of the Yasuda Sunflowers. He attributed their restlessness to Vincent's approaching fit. This led him to another gap in the calendar, the time between February 22 and 25. However, on those days Vincent was working on his fourth Berceuse and, as he wrote to his brother on March 22: You will see that the paintings I made during the intervals are calm and not inferior to the others.

There was no blank spot between February 22 and 25, just as there was no blank spot between February 3 and 6.

In 2001 the Van Gogh Museum acknowledged that the 1889 date had proven incorrect. It suggested a new date for the Yasuda Sunflowers had to be found. The catalogue of the 2001/2 Van Gogh–Gauguin exhibition in Chicago and Amsterdam states that Vincent painted them circa December 1888. Subsequently, this became the new official date and was accepted by Feilchenfeldt in his 2009 catalogue: Arles, December 1888.

When trying to establish their new date, Van Tilborgh and his co-author Ella Hendriks relied on the pioneering work of a research team, led by Kristin Hoermann Lister, Cornelia Peres and Inge Fiedler, that had undertaken an extensive technical study of many of the works that Vincent and Gauguin painted in Arles.

At the beginning of his stay in Arles Gauguin bought a twenty-metre roll of jute – Vincent calls it very strong canvas and sailcloth – and both used it. The Yasuda Sunflowers are painted on jute. The research team calculated how the roll was divided up between the two artists, and put the Yasuda Sunflowers among the 12 pictures that Vincent painted on jute.

The owners of the Yasuda Sunflowers had not allowed a scientific, technical analysis of their property. However, after studying x-rays, extensive visual inspection in situ van Tilborgh/ Hendriks arrived at the same verdict as the technical research team: The fact that the Tokyo picture was painted on precisely the same kind of cloth thus provided compelling if not conclusive evidence of its authenticity.

The evidence is not compelling, let alone conclusive. If it is only the same kind of cloth, in other words, if it is not a piece from the very roll bought by Gauguin, then it is certain that Vincent did not paint this copy. If, on the other hand, the Yasuda Sunflowers were in fact painted on Gauguin's roll and if Vincent was the copyist, he would have needed to have done them before he gave up jute in mid-December, one week before Gauguin left Arles.

This is indeed the solution proposed by van Tilborgh and Hendriks. They believe that the Yasuda picture was painted in the last week of November, or during the first days of December. For them it seems to have been part of a specific artistic dialogue between Van Gogh and Gauguin. They believe that in late November 1888 Gauguin ventured into [ Vincent's] field with his still life with pumpkin and apples. Doubtless his companion wished to respond with a new painting in yellow. Choosing his favourite motif: the sunflowers.

The flowers, however had finished blooming long before, preventing him from producing a new work from nature. Evidently this resulted in the decision to paint a free repetition after the still life now in London.

The Yasuda Sunflowers are not mentioned in the letters. Van Tilborgh and Hendriks suggest various explanations for their absence: Van Gogh may have produced the painting with the intention of giving it to someone in Arles and thus saw no reason to mention it to Theo. He may also have regarded it as a less successful version of the motif, or as an experimental study that similarly required no description. Finally, one could also imagine that he simply failed to mention the work, for whatever reason. While everything is possible one thing is certain: the letters do not provide any clues as to which of the options is the most plausible.

Two canvases, not three. Vincent had two Sunflowers [in mid-January] not three, he did not paint a copy in December. The December 1888 date falls by the wayside, just like the November 1888, the January 1889, the February 1889 or March 1899 dates. The Yasuda Sunflowers are not just missing from the letters sent by Vincent to his brother. The letters exclude they ever existed.

When Vincent died, there were four large Sunflowers paintings in existence. How and when did a "fifth" come into being? One thing is sure: It is a copy of the London Sunflowers. Many of its features that are missing in the Amsterdam original derive from the repetition painted for Gauguin. For instance, this is the case for the red dot and the four leaves on the left of the flower in the middle. In the Amsterdam original Vincent painted five leaves.

In the London and the Yasuda paintings, the highest flower to the left has three petals, instead of two as in the Amsterdam painting. In the Yasuda picture the size and shape of the green spots in the centre of the flowers, the contours of the flowers and other details are taken from the London Sunflowers. The Yasuda painting is a copy of a copy.

It turned out to be just anybody who painted the Yasuda picture. Even with the radiating London painting in front of his eyes, the copyist was unable to grasp the force of the original. No melting of gold. Vincent's Sunflowers are larger than life, not those in the Yasuda copy. The mediocrity of the badly chosen lacklustre colours, the absence of definition, the contrast of the green of the stems make the picture look dirty, the flowers fade. The vase is pushed into the background, despite the copyist's attempt to compensate for this shortcoming by increasing the size of the vase, which, unlike all of Vincent's vases, is out of balance.

All the stems in the London picture are convincing. They are part of the flowers, they have fluid, generous, round and true forms. Vincent gave special attention to three of the stems while in the Yasuda copy the same three stems are treated carelessly. The stem furthest on the right is broken. Does the edge of the canvas hold it up? The stem to the left of it has been eaten into. Does the third stem, behind the flower with the red dot, have two leaves or are these green-tipped petals? The arched stem furthest on the left looks haggard and adds to the general confusion. And has the stem hanging down managed to grow through its own leaf?

Tracing the contours of the vase – something which, for all his four vases, Vincent did freely with a sure hand presented difficulties for the copyist. In his paintings Vincent sometimes put on a thick impasto, but then he did so consistently. In the Yasuda copy the paint is spread thickly for the lower part of the pot or for the table, where there is no design. It is as if the copyist felt able to relax. This lack of concentration makes him forget that the base of the vase needs to be shaped properly and that the Copyist vs Vincent

None of the leaves in the Yasuda painting has a realistic shape. The copyist mistreats leaves, petals, and stems, because he has no interest in flowers. Their delicate structure is of no concern to him. He is not trying to reflect their glory on a canvas. It was Vincent's business to make sunflowers come alive, to grasp what the flower is about and show the effect it has on its admirers.

Who copied? How did the opportunity arise? And how did the copy become accepted as a "Van Gogh"? Answers to these questions can be found if one takes a look at the turbulent Paris art market of la belle époque and at the career of an underestimated painter, Emile Schuffenecker who had a sad chilhood after his father died when he was two and who first worked as a trainee accountant during his youth.

Schuffenecker attended evening classes at the studio of Paul Baudry, one of the most celebrated decorative artists of the Second Empire. He then met Paul Gauguin, who became his colleague in the offices of the Bertin financial firm. 

At the beginning, painting was simply a pastime for the young stock-exchange employees Schuffenecker and Gauguin. The two clerks both knew how to hold a pencil and wield a brush.  In 1876 Gauguin sent a landscape, In the Forest, Viroflay, to the Salon des artistes français and, the next year, Schuffenecker followed his example with no 4300, Décor of a library ceiling that betrayed the influence of his early mentor, the master decorator Baudry.

Schuffenecker later would take credit for having taught Gauguin how to mix oil-colours and for having encouraged him to visit galleries and museums. Gauguin got Schuffenecker to meet less conventional painters, who were not beholden to the academy. Gauguin had creativity, curiosity and drive, Schuffenecker was diligent and eager to please. Gauguin encouraged Schuffenecker to be more enterprising, to try new styles and new techniques. Schuffenecker contributed to Gauguin's artistic development as an encouraging and sympathetic critic of his friend's work.

In 1873 the eligible and well-off bachelor Gauguin married Mette-Sophie Gad, a Danish visitor to Paris. Mette liked Gauguin's gentle and industrious colleague Schuffenecker. She thought he had a steadying influence on her unpredictable husband. He and Mette became enduring friends and confidants. After she had moved back to Denmark, she continued to correspond with Schuffenecker and twice visit him in Paris.

In 1879 Gauguin left Bertin's and signed up with  André Bourdon, a stock-broker who operated outside the Bourse. It was a time of feverish speculation, and in that year Gauguin raked in no less than 35,000 francs. Schuffenecker even put the sum at 40,000.

Gauguin now had the money to put together an important collection of paintings. As an artist, he made common cause with the Impressionists and invested his money in the works of his colleagues, particularly his friends Pissarro and Guillaumin. Gauguin's collection, at one time or another, included paintings by Manet, Degas, Cézanne, Daumier, Jongkind, Monet, Renoir and Vincent. When he discovered something, he wanted other people to share in his new-found enthusiasm.

Schuffenecker made less money than Gauguin and was more careful about spending it, but, unable to resist his friend's infectious enthusiasm, he also began to collect. At first this was on a modest scale, but some twenty years later Schuffenecker's collection of avant-garde art would be one of the finest in Paris.

By the end of the 1870s Schuffenecker seems to have fallen completely  under the spell of Gauguin, who was on his way to become an artist of the first order. Very early on Gauguin knew that he would succeed. Although still only a Sunday painter, he received encouragement and compliments from the best in the business. 

After he got married in 1880, Schuffenecker left Bertin's to devote himself to his painting and his investments. It was a prescient move. In 1882 the spectacular bankruptcy of the Union Générale bank led to a virtual shut-down of the bourse. The crash had a calamitous deflationary effect on the whole French economy. Widespread unemployment followed, prices fell, and it was not until 1896 that economic activity picked up again. The art market was shaken, and even an established art firm like Durand-Ruel barely skirted bankruptcy.

Schuffenecker escaped the shipwreck. Not only did his gold-plating business flourish, but he had also taken out an insurance policy against hard times: he became an accredited teacher of drawing. In October 1883 he got a job at a public boys' school. The following year he obtained a certificate that allowed him to teach drawing at higher institutions of learning.

While Schuffenecker prospered, Gauguin floundered. In 1883 he lost his job, and the following year, he took his wife Mette and four of their five children with him to Rouen, and later Copenhagen, where he hoped to make a living as sales representative of a French tarpaulin firm. From Denmark he wrote regularly to Schuffenecker, often ridiculing the official art of the Salons.

Despite his admiration for Gauguin Schuffenecker had followed a different artistic path from that of his older friend. While Gauguin was groping for a distinctive style of his own, Schuffenecker remained stuck in the academic groove. From 1877 to 1879 he showed his drawings in the architectural section of the official Salon. The Salon still reigned supreme in the Paris art world, in spite of the brave attempts of the Impressionists to challenge its predominance. It was only after the jury of the Salon had twice, in 1883 and in 1884, rejected academic works of his that Schuffenecker turned his back on the traditional style. Later, after Impressionism had become generally accepted, Schuffenecker predated his conversion to the new movement by two years.

In 1884 he became one of the founders of the Société des artistes indépendants. He participated in three preparatory meetings, and together with Odilon Redon and Albert Dubois-Pillet signed the statutes of the new society. Schuffenecker failed to pass on the news to Gauguin, who was then in Rouen.

It may have been the freezing cold weather that in December 1884 prevented the first show of the newly-founded Société des indépendants to be a success. In the following years, Schuffenecker, though he had been one of the founders of the society, gave the exhibition a miss. He probably had come around to Gauguin's view that showing one's work among hundreds of unknowns was not a very smart career move.

Instead, in 1885/86, he made a resolute effort to become a recognised member of the Impressionists who had been laughed at when they formed their group in 1874, but in the intervening decade they had won over most of the important art critics. They had even begun to sell. Success bred envy and jealousy. The leaders of the group disagreed about who should be allowed to take part in their shows.

Schuffenecker was determined to have his work included and lobbied assiduously in his own behalf. He asked Pissarro to intervene discretely in his favour but the latter politely informed him that, regrettably, he had left it too late.

Snubbed by Degas, brushed off by Pissarro, most would have thrown in the towel. Not Schuffenecker. He went to pay his respects to the principal organisers of the exhibition, Eugène Manet, brother of the late Edouard Manet, and his wife Berthe Morisot. Persistence paid off and with nine of his works among the total of 246 shown by 17 artists, he was now an Impressionist. 

During a stay in  Concarneau Schuffenecker painted in the new divisionist vein. He was under the influence of Gauguin, who, initially, had also shown interest in Seurat's experiments with static forms and the division of the point. But when at the end of the summer Schuffenecker returned to Paris he discovered that his friend had made an about-turn and abandoned the little dot as he did not want to be regarded as just another member of a new school.

Schuffenecker had moved from rue Boulard to 14 rue Durand-Claye, in the area that was still called Plaisance where he continued painting in the manner of the pointillists. Most of Schuffenecker's letters are lost, but he seems to have moaned a lot about his health and his difficulty with painting as Fénéon had earlier made no secret of his contempt for his unoriginal works.

Rather ignored as an artist, Schuffenecker had however a good eye when it came to acquire works, notably by becoming one of the first collectors to acquire works by Van Gogh. Still the "Arlésienne seated before a table with two books" attributed to the latter is according Landais and Born a pastiche made by Schuffenecker after he acquired the original.

Copying was part of a 19th century artist's training. How else could an aspiring painter learn how to properly render a Corinthian column, an angel's wing or the folds of a dress? In 1879 Schuffenecker copied a Christ on the Cross by Prud'hon, which he kept in his bedroom to the end of his life.

Copies were sometimes sold as originals. But at a time when more attention was paid to the work of art rather than to the name of the artist, forgery was not considered a serious offence. Also, there were safeguards. The Louvre, for instance, had strict rules. Artists, who wanted to copy a masterpiece hanging in the august museum, had to put their names in a ledger, and they were required to use slightly different dimensions from the original.

In his solitary apprenticeship, Van Gogh himself often worked from black and white reproductions of masters he admired. At the beginning he simply copied them. Later he interpreted them in colour. As early as 1880 he wrote to his brother: I have drawn the Diggers by Millet, from a Braun photograph, which I saw at Schmidt's and which he lent me at the same time as the Angelus.

Charles Chetham, who examined The Role of Vincent Van Gogh's Copies in the Development of his Art, came up with a count of altogether five hundred and twenty copies made by Vincent, of which only sixty-four have survived. In addition, Vincent painted about fifty works after works he admired, most of them old masters. His paintings after reproductions of pictures by Rembrandt, Daumier, Doré and Millet are among the most remarkable. Vincent, in turn, would be copied by numerous enthusiastic artists; for instance in 1907 Giovanni Giacometti and Cuno Amiet had a friendly competition about who could do a better copy of his Two Children.

 For Schuffenecker, visiting museums was about painting ever more perfect copies, imitations and adaptations. It was something he had done in his spare time, when he was a worker at the stock exchange.

Jill-Elyse Grossvogel, the author of the Schuffenecker Catalogue raisonné, has discovered a sketch book with a quick drawing made by Schuffenecker from Vincent's painting of this Arlésienne. Like Vincent, when he copied Gauguin, Schuffenecker tried to be religiously faithful to the painting he was working from. Like Vincent, he took some liberties.

Landais and Born then claimed Van Gogh's "Arlésienne with books" acquired in 1951 by the Met in New York was in a fact by Schuffenecker and added that he had been the author of many other forged Van Gogh works still regarded as authentic. For instance, the iconic self-portrait of Van Gogh with his head bandaged after he cut his ear in Arles is simply a fake made by Schuffenecker, in fact a mediocre copy of the same portrait showing a Japanese print in the background on show at the Courtauld Institute in London. Such replica derives from a black and white photograph and from a pastel of this subject painted between April 1891 and the beginning of 1893 by this forger who owned it until he sold it to collector to whom he said between the lines: "It's something from me which I am giving up"...

Schuffenecker was according to Landais a scoundrel who painted some 30 fake Van Gogh, 17 of which are still listed in his catalogue raisonné (1 Holland, 3 Paris, 11 Arles and 2 Auvers). This incredible deceiver who tackled many genre paintings produced by Vincent (self-portraits, the Roulin, three harvests, two gardens, two basket-makers for instance) probably boasted in secret to have been the greatest forger of all times, notwithstanding the fact that nobody managed to discover his treachery during his lifetime.

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