The Rediscovery of Jan Ruyscher and Its Consequence

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 2014, a painting attributed to the seventeenth century Dutch artist Jan Ruyscher appeared on the art market. Despite a prestigious career, Ruyscher, who possibly was a pupil of Rembrandt and Hercules Seghers, vanished from art history after his death and was only rediscovered in the 1930s. In this research paper, the combination of multiple analytical techniques ranging from radiocarbon dating of the support material to multispectral imaging and spectroscopic analyses (XRF, SEM-EDS, FTIR and Raman) of the pictorial layer offers a comprehensive analysis of the object. Radiocarbon analyses of the wooden panel indicated that the tree was probably cut down in the mid-eighteenth century, whereas spectroscopic analyses pinpointed the twentieth century as a timeframe for the application of the pictorial layers. The applied methodology sheds new light on the story of the object itself. The painting was created at the earliest in the 1930s possibly as a consequence of the rediscovery of Ruyscher, and the deliberate use of an aged panel supports an intent to deceive and hence classifies the object as a forgery. The painting under study was furthermore compared with artworks of renowned forgers in an attempt to identify the forger in disguise.