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14

In 1949, art dealer Reeves Lewenthal, until that time more conspicuously associated with merchanting [[strikethrough]] such [[/strikethrough]] American painters, [[strikethrough]] as Benton, Lucioni and Dehn, [[/strikethrough]] sold the alleged Van Gogh painting to film executive William Goetz for [[strikethrough]] more than [[/strikethrough]] a reported $50,000." It is an unfinished self-portrait, painted [[strikethrough]] by candlelight, with a black which contained on the unfinished canvas [[/strikethrough]] brush drawing of a Japanese head, [[strikethrough]] a la [[/strikethrough]] in the manner of Japanese prints, some Japanese-looking characters, [[strikethrough]] and [[/strikethrough]] an inscription saying "etude a la bougie" & [[?]] [[?]] the signature "Vincen 88"



Lewnethal's earlier romantic story of how he "discovered" the painting in a little bistro near Deauville in 1946 (first told to and received with skepticism by this reporter) was later abandoned when it turned out the picture had been in the hands of a dealer in Paris and had been offered to many New York dealers previously. At any rate, Lewenthal furnished with the picture not a customs receipt of its originality but an unequivocal authentication by J.B. de la Faille, the Dutch Van Gogh authority who has written several authoritative books on the artist and had also at one point disclosed a series of Van Gogh fakes in which he also courageously retracted some of his previous opinions. All seemed well.

W.J./H.B. Sandberg, director of the Municipal Museum in Amsterdam and the Enginneer Vincent W. van Gigh, the painter's newphew, however, voiced their doubts of the paintings authenticity of the basis of photographs. All this occured just as the Engineer and a large number of his uncle's paintings were about to sail here for a big Van Gogh exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum. Hearing rumors that he