Helsinki’s Ateneum to begin forensic testing after art sleuth claims Gauguin is a fake

The allegations were initially made to the Helsinki Times by Fabrice Fourmanoir, a self-

proclaimed expert of the celebrated French Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin. A

former resident of French Polynesia, where Gauguin completed most of his well-known

works, Fourmanoir had previously made headlines last year when his investigation into a

$3 million Gauguin sculpture purchased by the Getty Museum in Los Angeles revealed

it to be a forgery. The Getty Museum has since downgraded the status of the sculpture.

Fourmanoir has also claimed that prominent Gauguin pieces in London’s Tate Gallery,

Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. are

forgeries, although these claims have been disputed by art historians.

The painting at the centre of Fourmanoir’s most recent allegations is Landscape with a Pig

and Horse (Hiva Oa), a prominent work in the Ateneum’s permanent collection that was

purportedly painted by Gauguin in 1903, just a few weeks before the painter’s death.

Fourmanoir claims that the painting does not follow Gauguin’s technique, that the

signature is not correct, and that it is possible that the piece is part of a series of forgeries

orchestrated after the painter’s death by Ambroise Vollard, Gauguin’s art dealer.

Fourmanoir claims that Vollard commissioned several forgeries in order to cash-in on the

skyrocketing value of Gauguin’s works in the months and years following his death. Of the

516 known Gauguin works in circulation, it has been alleged that dozens of paintings,

drawings, and watercolours are forgeries orchestrated by Vollard after the painter’s

death.

https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/culture/19343-exclusive-helsinki-s-ateneum-to-begin-

forensic-testing-after-art-sleuth-claims-gauguin-is-a-fake.html

https://www.kansallisgalleria.fi/en/object/433175

Gauguin - Landscape with a Pig and Horse (Hiva Oa)