[MSN] The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) will investigate claims one of its prized works by Dutch master Vincent Van Gogh is a forgery.

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Claims Van Gogh is a fake


British critics say Head of a Man was not painted by Van Gogh.

The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) will investigate claims one of its
prized works by Dutch master Vincent Van Gogh is a forgery.

The $20 million piece - Head of a Man - was purchased by the Melbourne-based
gallery in 1940 and is currently on loan to the Dean Gallery in Edinburgh.

Critics there have dubbed it a fake.

Their doubt stems from the fact that the 1880s portrait is horizontal and is
painted on canvas mounted on a panel - an unusual medium for Van Gogh.

But the NGV director Gerard Vaughan says the gallery will not be changing
the painting's attribution.

"So far as we're concerned we are not going to turn around and change the
attribution," he said.

"Every great Van Gogh scholar of the 20th century has accepted the
authenticity of the picture and has published it as an authentic Van Gogh. 

"However, at the same time, we are very, very open to debate and dialogue
and it is not unusual in the world of art to question an accepted
attribution and we will be very, very happy to have that debate."

Mr Vaughan admits there have been many fake Van Gogh's bought and sold in
the art world.

"In fact, entire books have been written on the phenomenon of forging Van
Gogh's. But those forgeries overall are pretty easy to tell and many of them
have been very well documented," he said.

But Mr Vaughan would not be drawn on whether his predecessors at the gallery
might have been duped.

"That depends on whether the picture is authentic or not, and that would
apply to every curator and every director ever since," he said. 

"Any painting, unless you can trace its provenance right back to the studio
of the artist and you can document every sale out of the studio of the
artist - and there are many paintings in our collection when we can do that,
in fact, so provenance research is obviously very important - but you
eventually, at the end of the day, you have to trust your sense of
connoisseurship, I suppose, your ability to judge quality in a painting." 

If the painting does turn out to be a fake, Mr Vaughan says it will lose
nearly all its value.

"If it is a fake Van Gogh - which I dispute by the way, but it has been
claimed it is a fake Van Gogh - the piece of canvas loses nearly all value,"
he said.

But Mr Vaughan says insuring against fakes is not an option for the gallery.

"Insuring against whether or not a work is a fake, you really can't do
that," he said. 

"Your best insurance is to invest in research, so that you have the best
curators, the best scholars and when you buy a work on the market - we have
a system now where at least two internationally acknowledged experts must
write a report agreeing that the work is what we say it is or what the
dealer or vendor says it is."

The Dean Gallery will not comment on the forgery claims.

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