Bendor Grosvenor shares some thoughts on connoisseurship in a very enjoyable article in The Art Newspaper today. He is also the author of the Art History News blog, highlighted on the right side of this blog, and an expert on Van Dyck through years of first-hand experience with his works.
In the article, he gives Erik Larsen as the typical example of the not-so-good expert who ruins things for years afterwards. His attributions are notoriously unreliable (and often simply wrong), but are still used by sellers and auction houses to improve the chances of selling a work for a lot of money.
At Allgauer, they will sell a Van Dyck next month, 16-18 April 2015. The attribution is based on the "expertise by Dr. Erik Larsen, Florida 2002". This should justify an estimate of 120,000 Euro. Even taking into account that the painting needs a thorough cleaning, there is nothing there to justify an attribution to Van Dyck (or his workshop of even a good follower). It is worth a few thousand Euro at most, and even for that price there are many pictures I'ld rather have. One has to wonder whether they don't keep the painting dirty to keep bidders interested, as a clean picture would make the wrong attribution even more obvious.
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