Van Gogh Museum Rejects 65 Newly Published Sketches as Forgeries

A French publisher, Seuil, has released a book titled "Vincent Van Gogh, la bruma di Arles, il taccuino ritrovato" containing 65 previously unpublished drawings and sketches attributed to Vincent van Gogh. The sketches, purportedly found in a notebook from the Café de la Gare in Arles, are not signed. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has publicly denied their authenticity, calling them "imitations with obvious topographical errors." Museum researchers noted the style is clumsy and monotonous, the ink (brown) was never used by van Gogh in that period, and the artist would not have been familiar with the depicted locations. The book, edited by scholar Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, is being released simultaneously in France, the United States, Japan, Great Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands. This controversy follows a recent theory by Martin Bailey in his book "Studio of the South," which suggested van Gogh's ear-cutting was motivated by jealousy over his brother Theo's marriage to Johanna Bonger, rather than conflict with Paul Gauguin.