The unified front of incompetent, corrupt and malfuntioning functonaries of the Dutch State and
abroad against thwe honest, faithful and scientifically correct position of me, Drs.Ph.M.Silbernberg and the competent and famous French Vincent Van Gogh expert Benoit Landais
Hello here i am again. After a year of thinking and experiencing the actions of the Van Gogh Museum in 2011 , and it is time for an assessment and an explanation of whats going on behind the curtains of the modern Vincent Van Gogh research!
I use the english language because what i write is too important to keep it only in the Dutch language area.The situation is so bad that i think it necesarry to inform a public as wide as possible. English is fot that reason an important tool.
Philip Silbernberg
You can see this introduction as a first step.
I hope that as many people as possible will follow my contribution to Museumserver and i also eagerly wish that many persons react.
My enmailadress is still ph.silbernberg@quicknet.nl
The Museum lives but the Vincent van Gogh artmarket is dead!
One of the most worrying conclusions I have to
make after 13 years of study is the deep and fundamental insight that the
research of the new or unknown works of art of Vincent van Gogh from the Dutch period appearing on the free market and offered for research to the Van Gogh Museum are not studied in a proper way in scientifical sense.
In the past I already pointed out in the Dutch language what is wrong with these observations.
The first weakness of the observations and conclusions of the Van Gogh Museum is the level of their in general negative reports about the art
works offered to them by citizens who found a work of Vincent. They use as a general standard a negative ONELINER!
This superficial and intransparent way of working means that the border between "real" and "false"
becomes unclear!
The second weakness is that they make a first selection of what works are taken serious for further research on the basis of a study of pictures (photos).
This is scientifically a complete erronious path and as such responsible for the many mistakes made after the Van Gogh Museum was founded in 1973.
The result of these two combined improper ways of
research is that the artmarket of the works of Vincent van Gogh from the Dutch period is quasi dead, because the museum found from 1973 until now only 5 new works of Vincent van Gogh in the words of Louis van Tilborgh as spoken to the judge
during my case against the Van Gogh Museum.
He used this to point out that the authenticity of the two works of art of vincent, discovered and rediscovered by me could not be real.
The last year (2011) I was witnessing the living art market of Vincent-works by several persons sending me pictures of works they consider as real Vincent van Goghs. In the next contribution I will use this material to show the public the
deep and alarming crisis in the official modern Vincent-expertise.
Strange enough it seems that the experts of the Van Gogh Museum are proud of their lack of success
and lack the funds and financial means to study thesw unknown or new works appearing on the market.
Looking at their budget then the scientifical research is a very small factor, visible in their annual report of 2010. The small means are used to study the own colection !
This they do with the Shell-laboratory.
So we see two faces appearing :
a) a realistic and material study of the own collection an
b) a neglect of the propwer study of unkown or new
works.
Since 1998 I wait for a serious and scientifically correct evaluation of a painting that I found at a wellknown Dutch auctionhouse called the Eland, still existing.
It was a very nice portrait of a man with hat , beard and original signature VINCENT !
Of course I would never contact the Van Gogh Museum when I was convinced of the falseness or inauthenticity of the painting as a licensed valuer of paintings , officially recognised by the Chamber of Commerce of amsterdam since 1995!
So I expected in my naivity that the Museum would be interested and even enthousiastic.
My surprise was enormous when I encountered a complete lack of interest and even no serious attempt to vieuw the painting.
In fact i did not get any reply after bringing a professional picture to the Museum and fed up with waiting phoned the Museum the end of the year 2000 after a chat with the expert and conservator of the section paintings of the Museum, Mr.Louis van Tilborgh.
Suddenly everyting went quick and without even studying and vieuwing the interesting work I got a
oneliner within some weeks that the painting was stylistically no Vincent van Gogh !
No further explication and no scientifical research, though Mr. Louis van Tilborgh insinuated
that he carefully studied the picture !!!!
Here I began to doubt the truthfulness and legality of the judgements of the Van Gogh Museum for the first time, because this was the first time that I encountered an orininal artistic creation with no examples in the Vincent van Gogh litterature and with a beautiful and honest Vincent signature for the first time in my life.
I was then already long time active in the art business.
Because I had a very busy artgalery in the famous Spiegelstraat of Amsterdam I had no time to go on with the research of the painting of the man with beard and hat, but I confronted the painting with the 150 categories of the famous and until now
best scientific Vincent van Gogh researcher Maurits van Dantzig, who published a book called
" VINCENT ? ". It was the application of this book which convinced me that the work was real and authentic!
In 2002 another miracle happened when I bought the painting of Vincent van Gogh , called "la Glaneuse ", representing a gleaning woman and corresponding to number 23 from the first official Oeuvre-catalog of Vincent van Gogh from
Baart de la Faille, called F-23 .
Strange enough the painting was after a long time serving as a standard for the quality of the work of Vincent in the summer of 1883 in the Hague-period (Haagse periode) suddenly denounced as false in 1958 on the basis of a negative report of the Dutch scolar ,specialised in 17th century drawings Prof. Jan van Gelder.
The foundation of the report was the hypothesis that the signature Vincent was false and put later on ,probably in the beginning of the 20-th century in the words of Van Gelder!
When I checked the signature though under the UV-light I remarked that the signature was not false but authentic. This bizarre fact was augmenting my astonishment about the judgements of the official Vincent van Gogh expertise.
Something must be rotten there was the opinion I began to develop in my mind.
I went in 2002/2003 to my cousin , a respected lawyer, and tried to get an answer from the Van gogh Museum on my question how it is possible that a signature considered false could be authentic, but the Van gogh Museum stayed deaf and had no comment to deliver, which augmented of course my distrust in the Museum.
I even went to Dora van Dantzig, the daughter of dr.Maurits van Dantzig to apply the caracteristics of the hand of Vincent to the two paintings in that period, which proved that both paintings should be considered as real and authentic of the hand of the master. Mrs Van Dantzig even told me that the woman on the painting was Sien Hoornik , the woman with whom Vincent lived in The Hague from 1881 until september 1883, a fact which was already observed by the wellknown and respected expert of the Dutch period of Vincent van Gogh , Prof.Walter van Beselaere in 1938.
For the better understanding of the problems here
I will join now two illustrations . One of the ridiculous oneliner of the crook appointed by the Dutch State as expert for Vincent van Gogh in 1973 , Mr. Louis van Tilborg, as sent to me early 2001 as a reply to my polite request for a thorough and scientifically proper research of the beautiful portrait of the man and one of the
only painting of Vincent van Gogh representing in a clear way his beloved woman, Sien Hoornik, posing in the dunes around The Hague as a gleaning woman in August 1883 for Vincent, called la Glaneuse ( F-23 of the first Catalogue 1928).
Let me for the sake of transparancy for the reader join the illustrations of the beautiful work of Vincent, distintly representing Sien Hoornik , and the negative oneliner of Van Tilborgh from 2001
"The work cannot be attributed to the artist Vincent van Gogh. The stylistic differences support our opinion".
That is all and a schoolexample how an expertise should not be made.
The term stylistic is used to cover a complete lack of interest and knowledge , because the work is too good and too strong to be washed away in such a superficial and indistinct way.
Important is however to note how easy, lazy and sullen this conservator of the Van Gogh Museum is
responding to my enthousiastic request for a serious research and serious arguments.
This is a pure example of abuse of power of this gentleman and also an example how insane and completely worthless the level of their expertises
is and how bad the people who find possible works of Vincent van Gogh are treated by these state functonaries. Its autoritarian and not democratic
and even completely unscientifical.
In my opinion such people should be kicked out of that museum as soon as possible
wikll be contineued
To prevent misunderstandings we have to remind the reader that the ugly and senseless refutation in the form of a formulation in the form of a oneliner and bereft of any further explanation from 2001 was about the beautiful bust of the man with hat, which I bought in 1998 .
The other painting , la Glaneuse ,which I bought in 2002 was however refuted in the same period by Louis van Tilborgh with a more extensive report for the family Ras,who tried to get an opinion of the Van Gogh Museum, before definitely say goodbye to F-23 and in the case of a negative report bringing it to an auctionhouse to sell it as a worthless piece of shit, though the family Ras was owner of the interesting work since 1911 !!!
We will spend some lines to the report of Jan van Gelder from the fifties and Louis van Tilborgh from 2001 to show the hollowness and the absurdities of these reports .