Direct from the Factory

Since his suicide in 1890, Vincent van Gogh has gradually become the world's most popular painter. Ninety thousand people visited a show of his works that toured the U.S. in 1936 and reproductions of his sunflowers and furrowed fields have topped the print market. Last week Dutchman van Gogh received a final accolade: fake Van Goghs were being forged right & left "by one or more factories," announced a Dutch art expert, and they were "flooding the market."

The expert, Jonkheer W.J.H.B. Sandberg, who is director of Amsterdam's Municipal Museum, was specifically skeptical of a "self-portrait" that he said had been sold in the U.S. for $40,000. He was referring to Study by Candlelight, bought by Cinemagnate William Goetz (TIME, Feb. 14). If Museum Director Sandberg was right, he had hit upon the biggest art scandal since Amsterdam's Hans van Meegeren was convicted of forging "almost genuine" Vermeers in 1947.

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