Breaking van Gogh

Regular price €23.99
18th
A01=James Ottar Grundvig
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annenberg
art history
Author_James Ottar Grundvig
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bequeathed
blinders
brushstrokes
Category1=Non-Fiction
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Category=AGA
Category=AGB
century european
COP=United States
curators
cypresses
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deterioration
echelon
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fbis
fine art
forger
forgery
Format=BB
Format_Hardback
founder
gogh
goring
high-stakes
journalistic
Language_English
languished
metropolitan
naifeh
notebook
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Price_€10 to €20
priceless
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restorer
rollicking
shady
softlaunch
stonewalled
sunlit
textbook
treasures
twentieth-century
underbelly
wheat
wittman

Product details

  • ISBN 9781510707801
  • Format: Hardback
  • Weight: 497g
  • Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
  • Publication Date: 20 Oct 2016
  • Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Hardback
  • Language: English
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In Breaking van Gogh, James Grundvig investigates the history and authenticity of van Gogh’s iconic Wheat Field with Cypresses, currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Relying on a vast array of techniques from the study of the painter’s biography and personal correspondence to the examination of the painting’s style and technical characteristics, Grundvig proves that “the most expensive purchase” housed in the Met is a fake.

The Wheat Field with Cypresses is traditionally considered to date to the time of van Gogh’s stay in the Saint-Rémy mental asylum, where the artist produced many of his masterpieces. After his suicide, these paintings languished for a decade, until his sister-in-law took them to a family friend for restoration. The restorer had other ideas.

In the course of his investigation, Grundvig traces the incredible story of this piece from the artist’s brushstrokes in sunlit southern France to a forger’s den in Paris, the art collections of a prominent Jewish banking family and a Nazi-sympathizing Swiss arms dealer, and finally the walls of the Met. The riveting narrative weaves its way through the turbulent history of twentieth-century Europe, as the painting’s fate is intimately bound with some of its major players.
James Grundvig is an investigative journalist who has published over 100 articles on a diverse array of topics in the Huffington Post, the Financial Times, and the Epoch Times, among other media outlets. He is a lifelong Vincent van Gogh fan and has now decided to devote his passion and forensic expertise to the master artist. He lives in New York City.