A Master Work

A contested Vincent Van Gogh landscape that is unsigned and undated is the real thing, the Research Laboratory of French Museums said Friday. To determine whether the 19th-century master painted “Jardin a Auvers” (Garden at Auvers), lab workers performed extensive tests on the canvas, using ultraviolet, infrared and fluorescent photos, X-rays, powerful microscopes and chemical tests. Researchers determined that the way the canvas was prepared, the kind of pigment and varnish used and even the nails that attached the canvas to its frame were similar to those used in nine other Van Gogh paintings to which it was compared. The work is not a typical Van Gogh. The abstract perspective and brush strokes lack the artist’s usual realistic touches, like a fence, a rooftop or a church spire, and it is painted in a pointillist style. Top Van Gogh scholars have insisted that the artist painted the landscape in the creative finale that led up to his 1890 suicide.