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Vincent van Gogh’s paintings and drawings are fabulously expensive. Millions of people admire his work, but are those masterpieces all genuine? To this day, the international art world struggles to separate the real Van Goghs from the fake ones, and the key question addressed in this book is what may happen to art experts when they publicly voice their opinions on a particular Van Gogh (or not). The story starts with art expert J.B. de la Faille who discovered to his own bewilderment that he had included dozens of fake Van Goghs in his 1928 catalogue raisonné. He wanted to set the record straight, but met with strong resistance from art dealers, collectors, critics, politicians and others, marking the beginning of a fierce clash of interests that had seized the art world for many decades of the twentieth century.

Despite all the setbacks, De la Faille's faith in his own convictions remained unshaken, at least in the eyes of the world. At the end of 1930 he smugly stated that no one, except for Bremmer and his circle, still believed in the authenticity of art dealer Otto Wacker's Van Goghs - neither in the Netherlands nor in Germany. \"J. Meier-Graefe and the other German experts have also come over to my side,\" he wrote in the NRC. 1 Meier-Graefe had told him in a letter that he had retracted his certificates of authenticity - at least that is what De la Faille claimed. This letter has not been found, but whether Meier-Graefe would so readily admit his error is highly debatable. In any case, the Berlin art expert Hans Rosenhagen (1858-1943) is not known to have retracted any of his fourteen certificates of authenticity, and in 1932 it would emerge that he still regarded eight of the works as thoroughly genuine. De la Faille's self-assured pronouncement was probably based on the judgment of duped German art dealers and the Nationalgalerie (not the least important parties in the conflict, it must be said), and in the Netherlands he may have received support behind the scenes from Engineer Van Gogh and a few friendly dealers and critics. The Dutch press, however, continued to stick with the story of a core of genuine works around which a larger group of forgeries had been collected. In fact, that was Bremmer's view. Actually, De la Faille's take on the situation - consensus in Germany and the Netherlands, disrupted by a few Bremmerians - was wishful thinking more than anything else, as the case against art dealer Otto Wacker would soon reveal.

In the first decades of the twentieth century, Martin de Wild (1899-1969) belonged to a select circle of restorers with a lively interest in scientific investigation. He was trained by his father, Derix de Wild († 1932), but eventually came to regard his more practical approach as inadequate. In De Wild Junior's opinion, the métier needed to be professionalized. He believed restorers needed to have knowledge of chemistry, the science most suited to understanding the material properties of paintings: which chemical and physical processes occur in pigments and mediums, in panels and canvas? De Wild thus decided to take a degree in chemistry at the Technische Hogeschool (Technical University) in Delft. It was precisely during this period - the early 1920s - that controversy began to arise surrounding the authenticity of a number of works of the Dutch Golden Age. Stories of forgeries were reported in the press year in and year out. The art world was divided as to the role scientists could play in determining whether a work was genuine or fake. A scandal regarding a painting discovered by Hofstede de Groot and attributed to Frans Hals led in 1924-25 to a notorious lawsuit that was eventually settled on the basis of both stylistic and scientific arguments. The picture was not by Frans Hals, but was in fact a twentiethcentury forgery - a conclusion Hofstede de Groot refused to accept. 1 The title of the pamphlet he wrote on the case is telling: Echt of onecht? Oog of chemie? (True or False? The Eye or Chemistry?). For Hofstede de Groot, the answer was simple: \"In painting the eye must always be the final judge, just as in music the ear - not the tuning fork or the test tube.\" 2

\"The walking wounded\" is what the critic Albert Plasschaert called Bremmer and De la Faille after their performance in Berlin. According to Plasschaert, Bremmer had been toppled from his pedestal. He had unreservedly sided with a dealer who came to admit that some of his goods were fakes, had ignored the vague provenance of the disputed canvases, and had based his assessment on aesthetics alone. It was a game with high stakes, and even after all those years he had been forced to defend himself to the hilt. But his performance had been less than convincing. For Plasschaert it was patently obvious that Bremmer had not traveled all the way to Berlin just to separate the genuine Van Goghs from the fakes: It had to do with gaining authority over a docile herd. For Bremmer it was all about the purpose of his life and to a certain extent his future (which was connected to that of Scherjon and others). For if this commercial aesthetician were to lose his advisory position, how he would tumble in the eyes of all those who willingly accept his pedantic analysis and despotism just for the sake of the purchasing power he represents! It was all about that authority, which has clearly lost some of its power, and that was why Van Gogh only seemed to be of primary importance to Bremmer at this trial. Actually he was secondary.

\"The government is not a judge of science or art.\" These legendary words spoken by the Dutch statesman Johan Rudolf Thorbecke in 1862 have become the touchstone for the relationship between art and government in the Netherlands. 1 They eliminate any possibility of Dutch politicians deciding on questions of authenticity. Rulers of states whose art is inextricably linked to national identity may very well feel called to pass judgment on such questions. An example is Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was also king of Prussia. In 1909 Wilhelm Bode, chairman of the Royal Museums in Berlin, bought a sculpture - Leonardo da Vinci's Florabuste - from a British art dealer, to the great satisfaction of Wilhelm II. It fit in well with the other spectacular purchases being made by the museum and alarmed the British, not only because there were few works by this famous artist on the market or so much money was involved, but mainly because in their eyes it was an expression of German political, military, and economic expansion. But when British art experts uncovered evidence that the bust was a fake - evidence that Bode regarded as utterly worthless - the agitation gave way to gloating, Wilhelm II decided to get involved in the struggle over authenticity: the honor of Germany was at stake. 2

At the time of writing - the beginning of the twenty-first century - there isn't a single expert who is willing to speak out in defense of art dealer Otto Wacker's Van Gogh paintings. The generally accepted opinion is that they are all fakes and that most of them were made by the same person, most probably Otto's brother, the painter and restorer Leonhard Heinrich Wacker (born 1895). For a good part of the twentieth century, however, some of these paintings managed to pass for works by Vincent van Gogh, much to the astonishment of chroniclers of the Wacker affair. They point out the questionable aspects of Otto Wacker's career: earlier charges of dealing in forged paintings, the \"art collection\" of a Russian nobleman who was never identified, an unfinished \"Van Gogh\" found by the police in Leonhard's studio, and other incriminating evidence. Why did dealers and experts fail to heed these warnings? What made them take a chance on a man like this? The only possible answer, the chroniclers claim, is that they were corrupt, incompetent, or gullible. Seen from this perspective, the account of the affair is a history of wisdom by hindsight. The chronicler knows how the battle is going to end, sees the role that people and objects have played, and writes about how they were swept along by the current of the times. If only they had been more attentive, they never would have become such willing prey to Wacker's deception! This kind of chronicler is a prophet of the past.

Far away in America, Chester Dale kept abreast of what the German and Dutch press were writing about the Wacker trial. The outcome must have put his mind at ease. He may have recognized his own Self-Portrait at the Easel in the verdict of the Berlin judges, who spoke of the \"high quality\" Wacker Van Goghs outside Germany. He hung the picture in the dining room of his New York apartment. It was no longer controversial, and illustrations in French and English publications saw to it that the message - that it was indeed a genuine Van Gogh - reached the broader public. To give just one example: the publisher of Thomas Craven's Modern Art advertised the book in the New York Times with a reproduction of the work and a quote from Craven: \"His face was a thing to turn one's soul. I doubt if nature in her most audacious moods had ever before planted so unselfish a spirit and so many heroic impulses in such a repugnant carcass.\" 1 Self-Portrait at the Easel is also one of only two Van Goghs illustrated in the book.

By November 1929, De la Faille had a year of turmoil behind him, all of it having to do with Otto Wacker's Van Goghs. The distribution of the Supplément had not been greatly appreciated, although his published works and letters do not suggest that this caused him undue suffering. On the contrary, they reveal a certain intransigence quite in keeping with a man who is sure of what he is doing and is seeking to redress the fraud of which he has been such an unwilling instrument. His behavior was consistent with the basic attitude he had shown earlier in articles about conflicts of interest, forged Rembrandts, and expertise bureaus - articles that had made him a controversial figure in the art world. His newest démarche, the open struggle against fake Van Goghs, reinforced his reputation for being headstrong.