Fake?

In his hot and harried lifetime, Vincent Van Gogh painted some 800 pictures. Was one of them the candlelit, unfinished self-portrait in the collection of Cinemagnate William Goetz? The artist's nephew and Amsterdam Museum Director Jonkheer WJ.H.B. Sandberg thought not (TIME, June 6). On the other hand, Van Gogh Experts Jacob Bart de la Faille and Paul Gachet thought it was. To settle the matter, Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum, which had on display the most comprehensive Van Gogh exhibition ever seen in the U.S., picked a jury of American experts: Museum Men Alfred Barr Jr., James Plaut, George Stout and Sheldon Keck.

The report made public last week did not go so far as to call the picture a fake, but the jurors had refused to authenticate it, and they took seven pages to give their reasons. The jury complained that "within the time available for the study, exhaustive analytical work was not feasible," and presented its final opinion "with full recognition of its own fallibility." The portrait looked suspiciously inferior to the Van Goghs on exhibition at the Met, the jury agreed. It was "strident in color, weak in drawing and uncertain in the modeling of the head."

After reading the report, Expert de la Faille issued a passionate defense of the picture, which he considers not just a Van Gogh but one of the master's "great works." And Dealer Reeves Lewenthal, who discovered the picture and sold it to Goetz last year, offered to refund its purchase price, reputed to be more than $50,000. Owner Goetz, who still liked the picture, had not yet made up his mind about keeping it.

The controversy--one of the most celebrated of its kind in recent years--was not yet done with, but the picture's reputation was irrevocably clouded.

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