EIGHT FACES ONE MAN?
First of all, we really must thank Mr. Van Son for his enthusiasm and his boldness in reigniting a debate; so many debates have died out since various museums have turned into fortresses. People are no longer allowed to discuss their passions or their methods. What a tremendous loss! Let’s hope there will soon be a resurgence.
Regarding the portrait of Vincent van Gogh, we can reflect on the list of major errors and pitfalls: on several occasions, researchers have tried to find figures resembling the one they imagined to be the portrait of Vincent van Gogh. Unsurprisingly, the search began and has been particularly intensive in school photos. It is an interesting quest in general, and one that has met with success in many other places and eras as well: Young Arthur Rimbaud was found in a class photo, for instance.
On the other hand, looking for resemblance sometimes led to dead ends, such as when two Italian scholars thought they had found Van Gogh in a studio photo from a Parisian art academy, mislabelled Cormon when it was probably Julian. Fortunately, a very scientific and fascinating response was published on the INHA blog by Jerome Delatour, a documented response that’s so useful for fueling the debate with precise arguments and interesting details.
We also remember the portrait of a clergyman who resembles some of Van Gogh’s self-portraits, but who was in fact photographed in a studio in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Canada — a case that clearly demonstrates the limits of research without safeguards. It is worth noting that this Canadian image never found supporters outside North America — a reminder that proximity breeds conviction: a local production was taken to depict a man who never crossed the Atlantic.
So we have a first error of biographical plausibility (the assumed presence in Canada) and a second error of context (the wrong workshop, corrected by Delatour with specific arguments). But the most interesting and far-reaching error was an error of identification, corrected only by material and documentary evidence: it shows that the resemblance held up for 60 years in the face of the facts.
The problem was the erroneous authentication of a portrait of his brother, which was unfortunately used for 60 years as a visual reference by the Van Gogh Museum to identify other portraits, photographs and paintings.
Pressure from financial interests has become increasingly effective in many areas, including the cultural sector.
« Vincent at Age 13, » Now Known as Theo (the Great Retraction of 2018). This is the most widely cited episode in the quest for Van Gogh’s image.
In 1957, Belgian researcher Mark Edo Tralbaut publicly presented the photograph at an exhibition and identified the boy as Van Gogh at age 13; the attribution was accepted without question for years—reproduced as Vincent in thousands of books and articles.
The turnaround: doubts began in 2014, when a Dutch television program compared the photo to another known image using “morphological aging” techniques and found that the two did not match.
The decisive argument reported everywhere: the photographer Balduin Schwarz did not set up his studio in Brussels until 1870—by then Vincent was already 17, and the boy in the photo is clearly much younger. Conversely, Theo moved to Brussels in 1873, and his letters indicate that he had his portrait taken there in February of that year, at age 15. The forensic analysis by Zeno Geradts (University of Amsterdam) and two other specialists concluded that it is Theo. Director Axel Rüger’s oft-quoted statement: “We have lost an illusion and gained a portrait of Theo.” Reference publication: Teio Meedendorp and Yves Vasseur, « A Case of Mistaken Identity », Oud Holland, vol. 131 (2018), nos. 3/4.
Now, going back to the most interesting Van Son article, we are invited to contemplate five candidates, five faces that could well be Vincent van Gogh’s. One of these cases deserves a deeper investigation, beginning, but not ending, with provenance, which authenticates the object, not the identity of the sitter. Forensic convergence requires independent identifications.
The Van Gogh Museum had already publicly expressed its skepticism when the 2015 auction catalogue was released. The photograph was sold on the evening of the auction (Brussels, 19 June 2015), at its reserve price, to a New York photography collector. The editor therefore retains no financial interest in the present discussion — only the curiosity that led to its discovery.
In 2015, the Museum’s principal argument against the identification rested on a comparison with the « Vincent at Age 13 » photograph — the very image it reattributed to Theo in 2018. To our knowledge, no new argument has been put forward since.
Let’s go back to the detective spirit. An investigation into the identification of a photograph begins with a preliminary consideration: Is the object we’re identifying truly old? From what era and what location? Then comes the real question: Does this photograph have a genuine reason for existing? Can we explain, in a few words, the context in which the photographer decided to take it?
Well, in the case of the group image there is a very precise potential explanation: Around 1 December 1887, Vincent Van Gogh brought his friends to visit an exhibition at rue Blanche where he proudly participated next to Signac and Seurat, with one painting: « Tableau du jardin avec Amoureux ». They had met together near Place de Clichy at the Restaurant du Chalet where they could visit the group exhibition organized by Vincent with his closest friends. Now in rue Blanche, it was a different story.
All started three months earlier, on 7 September 1887. The journalist Trublot published André Antoine’s call in Le Cri du peuple, a paper directed by Jules Vallès, inviting young artists to display their works on the walls of the rehearsal room at 96 rue Blanche, about 500 meters South from rue Lepic where Vincent was living with his brother Théo.
It has been suggested that Antoine may have been slightly coerced into making this invitation. In issue 341 of Les Hommes d’Aujourd’hui, dedicated to André Antoine (1888), Désiré Luc mentions the exhibition: “Until May 1887, rehearsals took place—first—at a small drinking establishment on rue Lepic, and then—in an unoccupied ground-floor room, sparsely furnished… Since then, the troupe has met in a spacious venue at 96, rue Blanche. The Impressionists cover the walls. As soon as you walk in, you notice a bust of Antoine (displayed at this year’s Salon) gloriously posed as Pierrot, on one of the mantels.”
Signac exhibited Neige, Boulevard de Clichy and Les Andelys, Côte d’aval. Seurat’s paintings remain unidentified; they were contemporary with Une Baignade à Asnières and Honfleur, un soir.
Vincent wrote to his brother that this painting was still on display at the Théâtre-Libre in March-April 1888: “I had to spend nearly everything I received on colors and canvases, and I would be grateful if you could send me something else in the coming days. The garden painting with lovers is at the Théâtre-Libre.” (Van Gogh Correspondence, letter 592 to Theo, about 3 April 1888)
The presence of his painting The Garden with Lovers in a parallel display to the group exhibition at the Grand Bouillon, Restaurant du Chalet, 43 avenue de Clichy, “provoked a quarrel with Émile Bernard. The memory of this disagreement comes to us through a long and beautiful letter from Vincent to Émile Bernard.” (Comments from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam).
Bernard, for his part, became very upset. We can compare the physiognomy of this figure with a caricature of Bernard drawn a few months later, in similar circumstances. (Le Synthetisme, un cauchemar!, folio 18 in the Album Gauguin, housed in the Department of Graphic Arts at the Louvre, Paris)
Gauguin returned from Panama, arriving in Paris on November 13, 1887. He was hosted by Schuffenecker, at 29 Rue Boulard, south of the Montparnasse Cemetery, which is quite far from Montmartre, where the Van Gogh brothers lived.
Gauguin was still recovering from illness, but despite his condition, he agreed to visit the exhibition organized by Vincent van Gogh for the “Petit Boulevard” group at the Grand Bouillon, restaurant du Chalet, located on rue de Clichy, not far from Montmartre and rue Blanche.
According to a letter from Vincent to Théo, this exhibition, which lasted only a few days, ended with two sales—one by Émile Bernard—and a painting exchange between Van Gogh and Gauguin.
In 1990, a letter from Paul Gauguin, some day of December 1887, was discovered, confirming this exchange: «Dear Sir, Coming from me, you will find at Cluzel, framer, Rue Fontaine St Georges, a painting I have left for you ( for our exchange). If it doesn’t suit you, let me know, and you can choose another yourself. I apologize for not coming myself to retrieve yours, as I so rarely visit your neighborhood. I’ll collect them at 19 Boulevard Montmartre if you kindly leave them there. – Yours truly – Paul Gauguin” (Van Gogh Correspondence, P. Gauguin to V. van Gogh, Letter 576, December 1887).
We compare Pipe smoker in Breton costume (jacket, “bragou berr”/bloomers, tucked into boots) with Paul Gauguin, Self-portrait with palette.
Next to the pipe-smoker is sitting an older man, who has been identified.
We compare Man with white moustache and Légion d’honneur, with Jobbé-Duval official portrait as a Paris town officer.
Félix Jobbé-Duval, who had frequented Paul Gauguin before his departure for the Panama Canal, resigned from his position on the Paris Council on April 29, 1887. He lived at 12 Rue Sainte-Élisabeth, near Square du Temple, until his death in 1889. He was proudly wearing his Légion d’honneur on his jacket.
This is the only identification in the group portrait the VVG Museum validated in 2015.
We compare the man seated at the table, pipe in his left hand, right hand tucked into his coat, with the portrait John Peter Russell painted of Vincent in Paris in 1886 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) — one of the very few images of the painter made from life, and by a friend. The reddish hair receding at the temples, the trimmed reddish beard, the deep-set eyes under a prominent brow, the high cheekbones: the correspondence of features is at least as close as any comparison offered in Friday’s article. Unlike a photograph, Russell’s portrait has never been disputed.
Gauguin himself, describing Vincent as he knew him in those very weeks of late 1887, spoke of a « drover wearing a fur toque ». A rabbit-fur hat lies on the table, in the foreground of the photograph.
We compare the standing man with pipe with a photographic profile of André Antoine by Carjat, ca. 1886 and with the subject of the second melanotype, kept together with the group photograph. We recommend Jacques van Son article for the identification of the sixth character with Arnold Koning.
The dispute with a jealous Bernard coincides with Vincent’s decision to leave Paris — not for Brittany with Bernard, but for Arles. It is the subject of the first letter of the famous correspondence.
Van Gogh wrote to Bernard: « instead of slandering them you must respect them and speak sympathetically of them, especially if there has been a quarrel. Otherwise one becomes a sectarian, narrow-minded oneself, and the equal of those who utterly despise all others and believe themselves to be the only just ones. » (Van Gogh Correspondence, letter 575 to Émile Bernard, no precise date, about December 1887).
Arles. A sceptic will rightly object that two photographs of unknown origin cannot corroborate each other: the same unknown man with the same stick remains an unknown man, and forensic convergence requires at least one independently established piece of evidence.
Our answer: convergence is claimed here as proof of a series — the same man in both images — not as proof of identity. That distinction deserves to be tested by independent forensic examination, which we hereby invite.
Passion drives every collector, and passion has its risks: the temptation to bend the history of a place or a person to fit the story one hopes to tell. On the Roulin identifications, we respectfully part ways with the author. To accept them, one must suppose that Joseph Roulin appears without the beard that defines him in every portrait Van Gogh painted of him, and that seventeen-year-old Armand looks well beyond his years. But can a hypothesis be built on two rare exceptions? The strength of the Arles group photograph lies elsewhere: in its internal coherence with the Montmajour photograph — the same unknown man, whoever he may be.
Every identification proposed here remains, like those of Friday’s article, a hypothesis — including ours. But the Paris group photograph passes the detective’s first test: it has a reason to exist. An exhibition called by Antoine in the press on 7 September 1887; a room at 96 rue Blanche, five hundred metres from the Van Gogh brothers’ flat; a painting by Vincent hanging on its walls until at least March 1888, on his own testimony; and six men, each of whom had a documented reason to be there in December 1887.
We repeat here the invitation made above: each photograph, its provenance and its identifications deserve an independent forensic examination, and we will lend our full cooperation to anyone willing to undertake it.
Both articles — Jacques van Son’s study and this response — will appear in Italian in the printed edition of PARTITA DOPPIA, no. 4, Ferragosto 2026.
Every detective story needs its informants. Here are the open questions of this inquiry. any lead, however small, will be credited in issue no. 4:
Who was Gautier Martin, whose stamp appears on the support of the Paris photograph? A studio, a framer, an operator, an inventor? Any trace in Paris directories or archives of the 19th century?
Where exactly is the Arles courtyard or Bar terrace with the limestone wall and shuttered windows?
Which paintings did Seurat show at 96 rue Blanche in the winter of 1887–88?
And the verdict: of the five faces proposed by Jacques van Son, which convinces you — and which does not?
The best arguments, for and against, will be printed in the Ferragosto issue.
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