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was, according to the dealer, brought in and declared at Idlewild, the art examiner of the Port of New York had no record of it. At any rate, Lewnethal had what seemed better proof of authentication than Uncle Sam's work -- he had a certificate from J.B. de la Faille, the Dutch Van Gogh authority. All seemed well.

W.J.H.B. Sandberg, director of the Municipal Museum in Amsterdam and the Engineer Vincent W. Van Gogh, the painter's nephew, however, voiced their doubts of the painting's authenticity on the basis of photographs. All this occurred 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 might be sued for slander of title and that his paintings might be impounded, the Engineer spoke of cancelling his trip. A solution was found when Mr. Goetz agreed not to sue and to abide by the decision of a jury of experts (including two universally respected museum directors and two of the best-known museum technical research men in America) meeting at the Metropolitan.

The group examined and analyzed the picture with X-ray, infra-red and ultra-violet ray. But depending primarily on the trained "eye" they compared it with 158 undisputed Van Gogh paintings and drawings assembled at the Metropolitan for the exhibition. They put it along side a self-portrait owned by the late Maurice Wertheim, of which, amazingly, it was an exact mirror- or reverse-image. They came up with the verdict, "We are unwilling to accept it (the Goetz picture) as an original work by Vincent Van Gogh," a verdict which if it stood, would render the painting practically worthless.

Owner and dealer refused to believe the jury, claiming they might indeed be art experts but were not Van Gogh experts and insisting the report was summary and superficial and had not paid enough attention to the "handwriting." They shipped the painting off to Europe, collected five more certificates of authentication and brought it back through the Port of New York. Here, since ac-