A painting purported to be by Vincent van Gogh is now embroiled in a dispute over its authenticity. Last week, New York–based data science company LMI Group, which works to authenticate previously unattributed artworks, claimed that the painting—a thick, impastoed portrait of a fisherman holding a pipe—is an authentic work by the famed Post-Impressionist painter. To support its claim, the group released a 456-page report based on the research of 20 experts, ranging from patent lawyers to chemists.
The painting in question, known as Elimar, was purchased by an antique collector for $50 at a Minnesota garage sale in 2016. It was then acquired by LMI Group in 2019 for an undisclosed sum. As part of its report, the firm claims that the work was painted in 1889 during Van Gogh’s stay at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France—where the artist also created The Starry Night (1889).
However, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam—the authority on works attributed to the Dutch artist—has twice rejected the attribution. The first time, in 2019, the museum cited discrepancies in technique and color choice that diverge from the artist’s signature style. On January 31st, in response to LMI Group’s new report, the museum again denied the painting’s authenticity. The museum wrote in an email to ArtDependence Magazine: “Based on our opinion, which we previously expressed in 2019 regarding the painting, we maintain our view that this is not an authentic painting by Vincent van Gogh.”
In a press statement on January 31st, LMI Group responded to the second dismissal, saying it was “puzzled” that the museum had “invested less than one working day to summarily reject the facts presented in our 456-page report without offering any explanation, let alone studying the painting directly rather than looking at it reproduced as a JPEG.”
The firm’s study makes several claims that it describes as “data-based” to support the painting’s authenticity. One test dated the pigment used in the painting to the 19th century and identified an egg-white glaze on the surface, a technique Van Gogh used to protect rolled canvases. Another finding, offered by the president of the art authentication company Scientific Analysis of Fine Art, asserted that the canvas’s thread count matched those of canvases produced during Van Gogh’s time. Additionally, the report claims that a human hair embedded in the painting underwent DNA analysis and was identified as belonging to a redheaded man.
LMI Group named the painting Elimar, a word painted on the canvas’s bottom-right corner. The firm says that both the title and the thematic inspiration for the piece are derived from a character in Hans Christian Andersen’s 1848 novel The Two Baronesses. The painting’s subject and composition, meanwhile, are claimed by the firm to be inspired by a painting by the Danish artist Michael Ancher.
However, the authenticity of Elimar has also been challenged by other art experts, who have noted significant differences in the painting’s brushwork and impasto technique compared to Van Gogh’s known works. Some, including Wouter van der Veen, former scientific director of the Institut Van Gogh, suggested the painting could be by Henning Elimar, a relatively obscure 20th-century Danish artist.
Still, LMI Group has not withdrawn its claim. “Although the Van Gogh Museum holds itself as the pre-eminent authority on Van Gogh’s oeuvre, even the Museum is fallible, as evidenced by its history of reversing opinions on the authenticity of Van Gogh’s works,” the firm wrote in its January 31st statement. “There have been at least four instances in which the Museum reversed its own prior opinion on the question of authentication of a Van Gogh work…”
If the painting is confirmed to be a real Van Gogh, LMI Group estimates that it will be worth $15 million, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
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