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jeweller.  I wouldn't try to find it in a third-class auction.  If I want a Cezanne, I'd go to Wildenstein or Knoedler or one of those places. I know, I see 'em all.  But funny thing about art buyers...

"Once a painting of a nude on a couch signed 'Renoir' came through with a certificate by a Belgian authenticating it.  I phoned the lady and told her it was a fake.  She didn't want to believe me so I called her down here.  Two days before that we'd gotten another picture--same nude on the same couch also signed Renoir and a certificate from the same Belgian.  I showed her the two together.  She had to believe me, but she didn't want to."

The most notorious case of a collector who did not want to believe what a board of experts said against his painting is that of William Goetz, then president of Universal-International Pictures and his painting "Study by Candle-Light" by Van Gogh.  This is also a fascinating instance where T-men overruled the experts, reassured the owner and, to all intents and purposes "cleared" the picture.  This is what happened:

In 1949, art dealer Reeves Lewenthal, until that time more conspicuously associated with merchanting American painters, sold the alleged Van Gogh painting to film executive William Goetz for a reported $50,000.  It is an unfinished self-portrait with an aureole cast by a candle surrounding the head.  On the exposed ground are a monochrome brush drawing of a Japanese head [[line crossed on comma]] in the manner of Japaneseprints, some Japanese-looking characters, an inscription saying "etude a la bougie" and, although unfinished, the signature "Vincent 88".

Lewenthal's earlier romantic story of how he "discovered" the painting in a little bistro near Deauville in 1946 [[strikethrough]] (first told to and received with skepticism by this reporter) [[/strikethrough]] 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. It is an interesting point that although the dealer's press release of 1950 says "the painting had been accepted at the time of its original importation as being an authentic work of art by Vincent Van Gogh" and