EXPERTS have cast doubt on the authenticity of a £10m painting purportedly by Vincent Van Gogh that is on show at an exhibition in Britain.

The work, known as either Portrait of a Man or Head of a Man, is said to have been painted by Van Gogh in Paris in the winter of 1886. It is on loan from the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne, Australia, for an exhibition in Scotland.

British art critics and historians who have had a chance to study the picture closely for the first time say it is more accomplished than other Van Goghs from the same period and is the only horizontal portrait credited to him. It is painted on canvas mounted on a panel, an unusual medium for Van Gogh, and is not mentioned by name in any of his letters.

Frank Whitford, an art critic for The Sunday Times, spotted the anomalies when the picture appeared at Van Gogh and Britain: Pioneer Collectors, a show at the Dean Gallery in Edinburgh. “It is clear to me it isn’t a Van Gogh,” he said. “It lacks the slightly crazy intensity, that obsessive engagement with a subject that you can see in other works.”

Tim Hilton, an art historian who has been commissioned by HarperCollins to write a biography of Van Gogh, said: “It isn’t convincing as a work by Van Gogh’s brush at that date but whoever did it was a talented person.

“I don’t think it is an imitation. I think it is by a young artist who was looking at Frans Hals or Eugene Delacroix and it has since been misattributed as a Van Gogh.”

Some critics believe the way the beard touches the bottom of the painting suggests the original canvas was deeper and has been sawn off, possibly to remove a signature.

The picture briefly belonged to a British collector before being sold to the Melbourne gallery for £1,750 in 1940, but its provenance only goes back as far as hanging in the Abels Gallery in Cologne as a Van Gogh in 1928.

Others believe the painting is not merely a wrong attribution, but may actually have been faked. Michael Daley, director of ArtWatch UK, which exposes forgeries, said: “It has all the hallmarks of a pre-existing picture tricked up to resemble a Van Gogh.”

But the Australians are standing by their claim. They say the only reason the painting cannot be authenticated further is because the Abels Gallery’s archives in Cologne were bombed during the second world war.

Gerard Vaughan, director of the NGV, said: “Our painting is indeed Van Gogh’s only known horizontal portrait. However, there is evidence that the canvas has been trimmed . . . it is therefore not impossible that the work was originally in a vertical format and included much more of the torso.”

Martin Bailey, a journalist at The Art Newspaper and curator of the exhibition, which runs until next month, said: “There is nothing to dissuade me from thinking it is a Van Gogh.”

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