Thursday, November 24th 2005, the civil room of the Court of Bordeaux will house a very unusual litigation. A Bordeaux citizen, owner of a small oil painting on wood, depicting a ploughing scene, calls the Van Gogh Museum of Amsterdam into court.

He asks the Dutch Intitute to certify that his painting is by the hand of Van Gogh or to pay him six million Euros.

"As the Van Gogh Museum discredited this painting its value is reduced to zero to nothing", as Me Armelle Coulhac-Mazérieux, the lawyer of the owner, explains. According to her; "my customer has no other choice but to attack the Van Gogh Museum if he wants to sell the painting for its right price".

At the end of 2003, the small painting was to be the highlight of an auction sale, organized in Gironde, France. A few days before the auction, the Van Gogh Museum revealed the press that it didn't accept the painting as a work of Van Gogh. This forced the Bordeaux auctioneer, Eric Le Blay, to withdraw the painting from the auction.

The owner was stunned. "This painting remains an exceptional adventure. It is undoubtedly the combat of my life".
It all started in 1991 when this man, now at the age of 47, visited the Marché aux Puces, a flea market near Paris. "I had a true blow of the heart". It took him fifteen days to raise the 1500 Euros needed to buy the painting. After the purchase he plunged several artbooks and ran into Van Goghs early work, his Dutch period. Here he also found the way of signing "Vincent" in red. The same as on his painting.

Then, in March 1992, he sent a mail to the Van Gogh Museum and added a photograph and a slide of the painting. The answer froze him : "This work is a falsification by a rather capable artist, but the style of Van Gogh is more daring than the style falsifier. The signature is not convincing."

After a few months of discouragement, the owner contacted the famous auction house Christie's. Christie's advised him to get a true expertise from the Museum. A contract of authentification was signed with the institution in January 1996.

The Van Gogh Museum carried out the examination of the panel but didn't give any answer in spite of many letters. The owner decided to call upon a French expert living in Holland, Benoit Landais, who proceeded with stylistical and historical analyses of the work. Landais discovered in an inventory, drawn up at the death of Vincent's brother, Theo van Gogh, the existence of a lost panel of ploughmen. He also found, in the correspondence which the painter held with his brother, the trace of three wood panels painted in Drenthe, in 1883.

Moreover, one analysis carried out by an Italian laboratory confirmed that the pigments are identical to those used then by the painter. In May 1999, Benoit Landais concluded in his report that "the ploughmen are by Vincent Van Gogh’s hand".

But the Amsterdam Museum, on its side, gave the opposite opinion in a laconic mail in July 1999. The owner of the painting decided, despite of everything, to organize an auction sale in the Bordeaux area where he lives. In December 2003, the sale turned to a fiasco after the declarations made to the press by the Van Gogh Museum. Revolted by the Museum attitude, the man then turned to Armelle de Coulhac-Mazérieux, specialist in the art market.

She notes that in spite of a contract in due form, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam hasn't produced an expertise yet and contented with a simple opinion.
She decided to undertake a series of complementary scientific analyses, the interpretation of which was entrusted a new expert, Laurette Thomas, who, also returned a favourable opinion.
At present, the Parisian lawyer awaits justice to decide about the elements regarding the authenticity of the painting. Armelle de Coulhac-Mazérieux explains why : "without this "sesame", no auction house would go so far as to put this work on the market again". According to the lawyer, several of its customers "run up against the same walls related to the monopoly which the various institutions enjoy, whose role are authenticating works".