A Thai singer said yesterday that she believes a painting she bought at a Bangkok antique store for about THB1,000 (US$30) is the work Vincent van Gogh, the Dutch post-impressionist painter who ranks among the most influential figures in art history.
Rock star Haruthai “Au” Muangbunsri, 45, said that she has reached out to the Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands and requested that they verify the authenticity of the painting that has hung in her home for six years.
“We’ve had successful results from our research in Thailand. I’m confident … a million percent,” Haruthai said in a TV interview yesterday.
While she holds a degree in fine arts, Haruthai said that she had only identified the painting as being an impressionist work when she bought it in 2012 from a local store that imported antiques from Europe.
“I know it is an impressionist painting, but this is not unusual — because all of the painters in our century were inspired by him [Van Gogh],” she said.
The painting wasn’t even been bought on its own, she said, but along with a pile of other artwork she bought in bulk for about THB10,000 (US$311).
So how did she determine it was a Van Gogh?
The painting hung in her home, its creator unknown, until the day three years ago that she invited Piyasang Chantarawongpaisan, an assistant art history professor from Chulalongkorn University, to examine her collection.
When he saw the painting in question, he told her that no one other than Van Gogh himself could have achieved the particular style. But she needed to be sure.
Over the past three years, Haruthai has worked with researchers from the Synchrotron Light Research Institute and Thailand Institute of Nuclear Technology. Their inspection of the painting placed its painting in 1888. The timeline would make sense; that was just a year before Van Gogh painted one of his most famous works, “The Starry Night,” and two years before his death.
But in perhaps the cleverest — and most convincing — bit of sleuthing, the research team determined that the red paint used in its creation was linked to Arles, France, where Van Gogh painted late in life.
Dr. Sasiphan Khaweerat of Synchrotron told The Nation, “We found that the red paint was made with red earth and madder root [Rubia tinctorum], which is found only in Arles in France.”
Haruthai said that if the painting proves to be genuine, she feels that she won’t be able to care for it properly, and therefore plans to sell it to a worthy collector.
“When it’s certified… I will no longer be able to touch this painting. I won’t have the ability to own this artwork and keep it safe.”
Whether that’s true or not, a sale of a Van Gogh original would likely net her (at least) hundreds of millions of baht. Not a bad profit from a THB10,000 lot of forgotten paintings.
Reader Interactions