Lost Vincent van Gogh Painting Discovered

Authentication of Elimar (1889) by LMI Group follows multi-year, interdisciplinary investigation combining traditional authentication and innovative scientific methods

January 28, 2025 (New York, NY)

LMI Group today announces the attribution of a previously orphaned oil painting by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) created while the artist was in the Saint-Paul sanitarium in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France (May 1889-May 1890). Authentication of the late-career painting, entitled Elimar (1889), is the culmination of rigorous, multidisciplinary research involving a team of experts—with specializations ranging from art history and scholarship to DNA analysis, materials science, and advanced data analysis. A detailed, more than 400-page report outlining the research and findings is available at bit.ly/ElimarvanGogh. The attribution represents the first by LMI Group, a data science company that generates verifiable information and applies leading technology toward the discovery, stewardship, and accessibility of cultural heritage.

Elimar, an oil on canvas measuring 45.7 x 41.9 cm, is an emotionally rich, profoundly personal work created during the final and tumultuous chapter of van Gogh's life. One of the artist’s many ‘translations’ of works by other artists is based on a painting by Danish artist Michael Ancher (1849-1927). Elimar connects van Gogh's artistry with the storytelling of Hans Christian Andersen, whose character Elimar from The Two Baronesses (1848) serves as the work's title and parallels van Gogh’s struggles and desires for transformation. In this portrait, van Gogh reimagines himself as an older, wiser man depicted against the serene palette-knife-sculpted sky and smooth expanse of the water, evoking van Gogh’s lifelong personal interest with life at sea. In the painting, van Gogh features the fisherman contemplating a cross incised onto a glass weight of the net that the fisherman is repairing, revealing the increased religiosity that van Gogh found late in his life and evoking the subject of sorrow that is shown in Pierre Puvis de Chavannes’s famous painting, The Poor Fisherman (1881), in which both van Gogh and his close friend Paul Gauguin long
had interest.

“LMI Group’s data-based approach to verifying authorship of this painting represents a new standard of confidence for bringing to light unknown or forgotten works by important artists,” said Lawrence M. Shindell, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of LMI Group. “By integrating science and technology with traditional tools of connoisseurship, historical context, formal analysis, and provenance research, we aim both to expand and tailor the resources available for art authentication based on the unique properties of the works under our care.”

“The analysis conducted on this distinctive painting provides fresh insight into the oeuvre of van Gogh, particularly as it relates to his practice of reinterpreting works by other artists,” said Maxwell L. Anderson, Chief Operating Officer of LMI Group. “This moving likeness embodies van Gogh's recurring theme of redemption, a concept frequently discussed in his letters and art. Through Elimar, van Gogh creates a form of spiritual self-portrait, allowing viewers to see the painter as he wished to be remembered.”

In his lifetime, van Gogh lost many works by giving them away to friends or being neglectful. It is believed that nearly 300 paintings may have been lost, many during van Gogh’s time at Saint-Rémy. The discovery of one of these lost works, Elimar, is the product of four years of research by LMI Group and a team of art historians, literary historians, provenance experts, materials scientists, and computational experts who forensically analyzed the portrait’s many facets. Each element of this team's work, when examined together, points to the conclusion that the painting is indeed by the hand of van Gogh. Some of the most compelling facts follow below.

Situating Elimar Within van Gogh’s Artistic Practice

During his time in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, van Gogh shifted from his earlier approach of copying works of other artists to creating “translations”—a process which he described in his letters at the time as an improvisational interpretation of works by different artists, which he pursued vigorously while at the sanitarium. Among the roughly 150 paintings he completed there, 28 were translations. Created during his first year at Saint-Rémy, Elimar is based on a painting by Michael Ancher, a popular Danish artist from the Skagen artist’s colony, a group to which van Gogh was linked by Mette Sophie Gauguin, the Danish wife of van Gogh’s friend and artist Paul Gauguin. Ancher’s work depicts Niels Gaihede, a hard-working fisherman, a subject to which both Gauguin and van Gogh were drawn.

In his letters, van Gogh shared his desire to be remembered above all as a portraitist—and Elimar is an emotionally rich product of this quest. The painting takes its title from the word “Elimar,” painted on the fisherman’s sleeve, and the name of a Byronic boat boy featured in The Two Baronesses (1848) by Hans Christian Andersen. Andersen was one of van Gogh’s favorite authors, and the reference connects the painting to themes of life at sea and underscores van Gogh’s voracious appetite for reading throughout his life. Moreover, the depiction of a fisherman, a subject van Gogh had previously explored in 1883, is connected to the image of Christ and his disciples as “fishers of men” (from Matthew 4:19) and recalls van Gogh’s early desire to become a preacher. Van Gogh returned to each of these themes amidst struggles near the end of his life.

Composition and Technique

A comparative examination of the 892 paintings attributed to van Gogh and images of his drawings from all periods of his career reveal significant similarities with the formal elements of Elimar. Among the key findings are:

• Elimar features the same three-quarter view of all four van Gogh self-portraits painted in 1889, with his face looking towards the left-hand side of the canvas and the left side of the face visible. These final self-portraits were likely posed in this way to avoid exposure of his wounded ear, since before these late works, he featured himself posed in other ways.
• Elimar exemplifies his temporary return to more subdued colors and use of a palette knife while in Saint-Rémy, writing to his brother Theo in June and July 1889, “I felt a desire to begin again with a palette like the one in the north.”
• Elimar features stylistically distinct elements that appear throughout van Gogh’s oeuvre, including distinctive marks under the eyes, marks at the corner of the mouth, eyelashes, “whites of the eyes” often in blue or green, a pronounced nasal-labial line, cursory shorthand describing the tragus and helix, and the color of cuff set off from the sleeve.

Scientific Analysis

LMI Group’s analysis deployed a multidimensional approach to investigating the painting’s authenticity using both scientific and data-driven methods:

• An exhaustive technical review found the materials were all compatible with a 19th-century attribution and identified the organic element found on the surface as an egg-white temporary finish that van Gogh was known to have used to protect his canvases as he rolled them. Evidence of Elimar having been rolled was also confirmed.
• A precise mathematical comparison of the letters “E L I M A R” to the block and free-form letters found in other autograph works by van Gogh, yielded significant similarities in the letters’ characteristics, including stroke length, counter, angle, stroke width, and bounding size. In some cases, it indicated a 94% similarity, with differences attributed to variations in subject matter, emotional expression, creative process, and materials.
• After acquiring the painting, it was discovered that Elimar contained a hair partially embedded in the surface at the bottom left corner. Methodical DNA analysis verified that the hair belonged to a human male, with the investigating scientists observing that the hair appeared to be red in color.

About LMI Group

LMI Group is a data science company serving the arts and cultural heritage sector. It generates verifiable information and applies leading technology toward the discovery, stewardship, and experience of cultural heritage. Taking an interdisciplinary, data-based approach, LMI Group brings major works of art previously lost to history into the public realm by applying an array of resources and pushing scientific and methodological advances in establishing authorship. LMI Group’s rigorous approach extends to engagements with governments and other stakeholders that establish the veracity and preservation of cultural heritage records and data, including developing advanced methodologies for digitization, organization, data extraction, and public engagement with cultural heritage.

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