A Paul Gauguin self-portrait whose authenticity has repeatedly come into question is a true work by the French painter, said its owner, Switzerland’s Kunstmuseum Basel.
The painting, which is commonly thought to be one of the artist’s final ones before his death in 1903, is formally titled Portrait de l’artiste par lui-même and has been held by the Kunstmuseum Basel since 1945.
Even before the painting entered the storied museum’s holdings, however, its authenticity was already being scrutinized. According to the Kunstmuseum Basel, concerns about its attribution were raised as early as 1924, when the painting appeared at auction. When it was shown four years later, in 1928, at the Kunsthalle Basel, it was labeled a “mutmassliches Selbstporträt,” or a “putative self-portrait,” the Kunstmuseum said.
Fabrice Fourmanoir, whom Artnet News once described as an “amateur art sleuth,” resurfaced this debate earlier this year. In an interview with Le Quotidien de l’Art, Fourmanoir claimed that the painting’s true maker was Ky-Dong Nguyen Van Cam, a friend of Gauguin who had produced the work after that artist’s death. The work had already been off view by the time that article ran.
The Kunstmuseum Basel told Artnet News that it took Fourmanoir’s claims “very seriously” and promised an investigation. Now, the museum has done so—and revealed the results.
In a release on Tuesday, the museum said it sent off tiny bits of the painting to a laboratory at the Bern Academy of the Arts for analysis. The painting also underwent radiography, infrared reflectography, and other scans.
These scans revealed that the work’s pigments were available roughly around the time it was painted, suggesting that it was produced around the time of Gauguin’s death. But the scans also revealed a twist: “the findings also revealed that the sitter’s face—specifically, the areas of the forehead, eyes, nose, chin beard, and throat—was later revised by overpainting,” the Kunstmuseum Basel’s release said.
Perhaps that overpainting really was done by Nguyen Van Cam, the museum said, but the scans were “inconclusive” when it came to attribution on that front. The overpainting may have been executed between 1918 and 1926.
Still, the museum was definitive in one regard: “There is no indication of an intentional forgery.”
The portrait is listed as a bona fide Gauguin in a catalogue raisonné compiled by the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, which worked with the Kunstmuseum Basel on its research. It has now returned to view at the Swiss institution.
Paul Gauguin, Portrait de l’artiste par lui-même, 1903.
Photo Max Ehrengruber/Kunstmuseum Basel
