Art experts have confirmed that a small still-life at a US museum once dismissed as a fake is in fact by Vincent van Gogh, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam said Wednesday.
The painting, “Still Life with Fruit and Chestnuts”, was donated by a couple to the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco in 1960 and suspected to be by the Dutch master.
Several experts had previously said that the painting dated to 1886 was not a real Van Gogh, and it was not included in previous official catalogues of works by the painter, who committed suicide in 1890.
“It is true that at the end of last year, experts from the Van Gogh Museum attributed a painting from the collection of the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco as a Vincent van Gogh painting,” press officer Milou Bollen told AFP.
“There was always a question whether the painting was or was not made by Van Gogh.”
In a further discovery, the experts found that there was a portrait of a woman hidden underneath the still life, the Van Gogh museum said.
Van Gogh often reused his canvases as he found himself working in poverty, managing to sell only a few of his paintings during his troubled life.
The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco was not…
