While browsing a used website last year , artnet News reports , a Belgian couple named Jan and Chris Starckx scored an amazing buy : a painting that ’s likely a long - lost artwork by Willem de Kooning , the noted Dutch - American abstractionist expressionist artist . The duet paid only € 450 ( around $ 500 ) for the work , but expert consider it could be worth around $ 113,000 .
The work depicts a young youngster with chocolate-brown hair , who ’s wearing a red outfit and holding a ball . If the painting is real , The Telegraphreports , de Kooning likely paint it in the 1920s , toward the start of his calling .
The used web site did n’t identify the artist . But harmonise toFrench newspaperLe Figaro , Jan Starckx , who purchase the painting , noticed that the signature on the canvass ’ back resemble de Kooning’strademark , magnanimous - lettered cursive scrawl .
Starckx did a picayune enquiry , and realized that the painting front like another de Kooning study , calledPortrait of Renee . To verify their hunch , the couple then get through manufacturer at the BBC’sFake or Fortune ? , a boob tube show that verify the authenticity of nontextual matter .
The show ’s fifth season finale aired on Sunday , August 21 . It followed Chris and Jan Starckx as they travel to Miami with art expert Philip Mould . There , they compared their secondhand find to one of de Kooning ’s verify work from the same time period .
The American de Kooning Foundation no longer authenticates the artist ’s paintings , so expert guide a chemical depth psychology of the pigment , and institute them to be the same in both paintings . However , some mass still have doubts , The Sunreports : One prowess regaining expert , Bruce Kaiser , point out that elemental psychoanalysis does n’t prove that de Kooning made both oeuvre .
The Starckxes ’ picture is currently stored in a banking concern vault , and a reproduction cling in their home . presently , the study will be exhibit in the Belgium municipalities of Turnhout and Molenbeek . Eventually , the painting will arrive in the U.S. , where it will be displayed alongsidePortrait of Reneeat Delaware ’s Winterthur Museum .
[ h / tartnet News ]
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