ON 26th February Dr Luigi Grosso, an Italian journalist who has for some years worked for the B.B.C. in London, telephoned the Courtauld Institute of Art and asked if he might show me the photograph of a painting which he thought might be by Van Gogh (Fig.50). He had recently bought it for £45 in a Hamstead antique shop: it was clearly signed vincent, but, as he was told when he purchased the picture, there were many painters of that name working in the nineteenth century. He had, however, seen the exhibition of works from the Van Gogh Foundation collection at the Hayward Gallery, for which I had provided the catalogue, and he would like to have my opinion on this picture. I told him it was most unlikely to be a Van Gogh, but agreed to look at the photograph.