IS THAT A VINCENT VAN GOGH OR A VAN GOUGE?

By THOMAS SANCTON/PARIS

What if they gave an auction and nobody bid? When Vincent Van Gogh's Jardin a Auvers went on the block at Paris' posh George V Hotel, auctioneer Jacques Tajan brought the gavel down on a supposed bid of $6.4 million. After the sale, however, Tajan admitted he had merely pretended to have a buyer; in fact, not a single real offer was made. Why no takers? As Tajan put it, the painting has "an odor of sulfur" about it. Indeed, the 25-in. by 31-in. canvas has a long, troubled history. Supposedly painted by the penniless artist just days before his suicide on July 27, 1890, the work was estimated at $40 million in the late 1980s. But in 1989 the French government declared it a "national monument" and forbade its exportation, thus torpedoing its worth on the international art market. Collector Jacques Walter auctioned it off to banker Jean-Marc Vernes for $11 million in 1992; he then sued the French government for "spoliating" its value, and, incredibly, Walter won $29 million in compensation. After Vernes died last spring, his widow put the picture up for sale.

Meanwhile, despite the assurances of the world's top Van Gogh experts, doubts about the painting's authenticity began to circulate among an international coterie of art enthusiasts. Stylistically, says Jean-Marie Tasset, art critic for the French daily Figaro, the serene canvas is "atypical" of the frenetic paintings made during the artist's last days. The central walkway is done in a pointillist manner virtually unprecedented in Van Gogh's late works.

The chain of ownership has also been the subject of considerable dispute. Some specialists trace it directly back to the painter's sister-in-law. Tasset and others claim the first owner was the art dealer Amedee Schuffenecker. That would raise serious questions: Schuffenecker was notorious for selling fake paintings, and his brother Claude-Emile, a friend of both Van Gogh's and Paul Gauguin's, was a skillful copyist of their works. Thus many doubters believe Jardin a Auvers was actually painted by Claude-Emile Schuffenecker (1851-1934). If so, its celebrity is a vindication of sorts for a painter little known in his lifetime and almost totally forgotten today.

--By Thomas Sancton/Paris