What's this ear? It'sa Van Gogh that isn't

A PAINTING billed as a Van Gogh worth £8.6 million when it was admired by thousands of Scots at an exhibition last year has been revealed as a fake.

Known as Head of a Man or Portrait of a Man, the picture aroused the suspicions of some critics when it was showcased in Edinburgh.

Now experts at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam have concluded it was definitely not painted by the Dutch master.

The picture, which had been believed to have been painted by Van Gogh in Paris in the winter of 1886, shows the head of a bearded man and at first glance is similar to other works by the artist.

It had belonged to a British collector before being sold to a gallery in Melbourne, Australia, for 1,750 in 1940.

However, its provenance can only be traced back as far as hanging in the Abels Gallery in Cologne as a Van Gogh in 1928.

The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) loaned the painting to the capital's Dean Gallery last year. But British art critics, who were able to examine it closely for the first time at the Edinburgh show, expressed doubts about its authenticity during the Van Gogh and Britain: Pioneer Collectors exhibition.

They claimed it was more accomplished than other Van Goghs from the same period. But the Australians maintained that the work was genuine.

At the time, Martin Bailey, the Australian gallery's external curator, was quoted as saying: "There is nothing to dissuade me from thinking it is a Van Gogh." And Gerard Vaughan, director of the NGV, insisted the painting was legitimate, describing it as "indeed Van Gogh's only known horizontal portrait".

But they have now been proved wrong and the NGV yesterday revealed that experts in Amsterdam had decided the picture was definitely not by the troubled painter.

It is thought to be the work of an unknown painter, who may have studied in Paris as a contemporary of Van Gogh.

Van Gogh, who is famous outside the art world for cutting off one of his ears and apparently selling only one painting during his lifetime, is now regarded as a genius.

No senior staff at the National Galleries of Scotland were available for comment yesterday, but a spokesman said: "We note with interest that, after extensive research by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the attri- bution of the painting of Head of a Man has been revised."

He accepted that the exhibition at the Dean Gallery had "clearly prompted further research on attribution and connoisseurship".

CHANCE DISCOVERY OF A MISSING MASTERPIECE

A VAN GOGH painting, which art historians have always believed must exist as a preparatory drawing is known, has finally been discovered - underneath another work by the artist.

The work, Wild Vegetation, painted in June 1889, was discovered in an X-ray of The Ravine, which Van Gogh painted four months later.

Natalie Bos, spokeswoman for the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, said yesterday: "One of our specialists looked at the X-ray and recognised it as resembling a drawing from the museum."

The museum said it would display the drawing from next week as part of an exhibition of Van Gogh's drawings running until 7 October.