Styles époques

In his letter published on November 19th 1998, Benoit Landais, who has been carrying out a campaign to strike off over a dozen Van Gogh paintings from the catalogue raisonné of his works, said that two paintings showing corn harvesters in the region of Arles were fakes produced by French painter Claude-Emile Schuffenecker whom he claimed was one of the main Van Gogh forgers.

The Millet-Van Gogh exhibition held at the Orsay Museum between September 1998 and January 1999 is aimed at showing the influence of Jean-François Millet over Van Gogh.

The Harvest painting, loaned by the Jerusalem museum, is stiff and flat without the usual coulour shades found in Van Gogh's paintings. In addition, the rather mechanical vertical lines around the harvester are neglecting a constraint to which Van Gogh knew how to face, that is to say reduce the size of the trait when it came to showing a certain distance.

The second Harvest painting, loaned by theToledo (Ohio) Museum of Art shows a man, or a woman ?, with disproportionate shoulders and a clumsy attitude harvesting in a field. Benoit Landais said Schuffenecker experienced some difficulties when it came to paint silhouettes and hands as shown in this painting where one arm, somewhat twisted, seems to hold a sickle whereas the other seems to be equipped with a hook.

The lines in this Toledo painting are unusual and the perspective is clumsily painted if not absurd as a building on the left behind the city seems out of proportions.
Benoit Landais stressed that these paintings were not in the possession of the widow of Van Gogh's brother Theo.

The Harvest canvas from Jerusalem was reputedly painted in June 1888 in Arles. Van Gogh did send two drawings of a similar scene to his friend Emile Bernard and one contained sheaves of corn as in this painting. It is however known that one of these drawings was in the possession of Amédée Schuffenecker, Claude-Emile's brother.

It is therefore probable that Claude-Emile used this drawing for his forgery with the addition of two badly disposed houses.
The case of the Toledo harvest is also as much intriguing since there has been a replica, now in the Stockholm museum, which has been turned down by most experts who presently believe it was painted by Schuffenecker.

Landais backed his opinion regarding the stacks on the painting. The corn was cut on a small surface near the harvester but at least ten stacks are shown on the painting.

The forger did not know that stacks are assembled for a few days and Van Gogh could not make a confusion between corn, hay or straw as he wrote in a letter dated June 21st 1888 that he had to face two days of torrential rain which changed the aspect of the field and forced harvesters to store the corn in covered compounds.

Van Gogh produced some 60 drawings and sketches regarding all the subjects he painted during his Arles period but he never made any mention about the two studies shown at the Orsay Museum.
In the exhibition catalogue it has been indicated that between June 13th and June 20th 1888 Van Gogh painted at least ten paintings. "This is a sheer misinterpretation because his rythm of production seems twice too high and this is more than certain since Van Gogh's letters, including one sent to Emile Bernard on June 24th 1888, tell us that he painted seven corn or harvest studies. At least 15 drawings enable us to identify these paintings and not any one else," he pinpointed.

Benoit Landais has been active detecting faked Van Gogh paintings during the past three years but the chore of his analysis rests on stylistic comparisons and on the reading of the artist's letters. However, Landais has never been recognized as an authority on Van Gogh whose letters to his brother Théo or his friends do not list in addition all his works.
The fact that many newspaper have accepted to publish Landais' letters denouncing certain works as fakes has been destabilising the art world especially as most Van Gogh experts have not often felt inclined to repudiate his opinions.

Now Landais has rallied a group of people to back his claims. He recently carried out a campaign against Van Gogh's Garden in Auvers, bought for 55 million French francs by a French banker in 1992 and whose heirs are now trying to cancel its sale.
Such campaign has caused considerable damage regarding this painting for which the French government was sentenced by a Paris court to pay 145 million francs in damages to its previous owner, collector Jacques Walter, after the painting was refused an export licence before the 1992 sale, thus the low price it fetched at auction.

Landais has been centering his attacks on Schuffenecker, a good French painter who never reached fame, a fact that apparently led him to take revenge on the world of art. Still, Schuffenecker was known to have collected many genuine Van Gogh paintings at the turn of the century and it remains to be proved that he did produce those fakes attributed as by his hand. The same can be said of Dr gachet, a close friend of Van Gogh, who possessed a remarkable collection of his works.
Yet again Landais has claimed that the gentle doctor had forged half a dozen paintings listed in the Van Gogh catalogue raisonné.