The experts at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam are sure: the photo of Andries van Beek from Beneden-Leeuwen does not show Vincent van Gogh. “I’m disappointed about that,” Andries responds. Earlier this week, an expert from the Vincent van GoghHuis in Zundert also ruled that it was not about Van Gogh.
The experts at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam had to provide a definitive answer. They compared the photos submitted by Andries with the photo material that the Van Gogh Museum and the Van Gogh family have. “We see no resemblance to Vincent van Gogh or his relatives here,” a spokesperson for the Van Gogh Museum told Broadcasting Gelderland.
Prepared for
The Van Gogh Museum regularly receives emails from people who think they have a photo of Van Gogh. “Of 99.9 percent of those e-mails, the museum immediately says: ‘that’s not him'”, Andries said earlier. He was prepared for the fact that it is not a photo of Vincent van Gogh: “There is hardly any photo material of him.”
Van Beek found the photo in a family album. In the same album he also found a photo of a woman who he was almost certain was the sister Wil of the famous Dutch painter. The Van Gogh Museum now also states that this is not the case.
The photographer is Dirk Jan Le Grand from Breda. On Broadcasting Gelderland Van Beek told that Le Grand lived in the same street in Breda as Vincent van Gogh’s father. The photo album is also said to belong to a family that had a restaurant or hotel in Noordwijk, where the Van Gogh sisters vacationed together.
fantastic
“It’s a disappointment that it’s not Wil, when you see that photo. You think ‘Am I becoming a fantasist?’ When I look at photos on Google, I see the exact same woman,” Andries sighs.
Van Beek continues to collect. But claim he has a photo of Vincent van Gogh? “I’m never doing this again.”
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