Court rules Van Gogh painting ‘the real thing’

FRANCE’S highest court ruled that an atypical Van Gogh landscape rumoured to be fake was, in fact, real — ending an eight-year-old squabble over the sale of the painting.

The painting, Jardin a Auvers (Garden at Auvers) was at the centre of a dispute involving the heirs of a Paris banker, who were unable to sell the work amid rumours about its authenticity.

Heirs of French banker Jean-Marc Vernes paid the equivalent of €8.5 million for the painting in 1992.Four years later, news reports said it was a fake, prompting Vernes’s family to filed suit in 1998 on claims that the previous owner knowingly withheld information about the work.