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Hunt for van Gogh's relics. Results of paint research!

E

ex_libris

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Hunt for van Gogh's relics. Finds displayed in museum!

This story is going to be a long one so I will write it in parts. I posted this story on another forum but after I stopped my account there they deleted it.

In november 2007 the city head archaeologist of the city of Eindhoven, the Netherlands asked me if I was interested in a very special hunt.

Near the city lies the town Nuenen where in the 1880's Vincent van Gogh lived with his parents. His father was a protestant pastor in Nuenen. The research was to be done in the garden of the 18th century pastors house. Because I was an experienced metal detector user I was asked to join the research! That was chance of a lifetime!

Pastors garden by van Gogh

Parsonage%20Garden%20at%20Nuenen%20Vincent%20van%20Gogh.jpg


The reason for this hunt was an old story: When the father of Vincent van Gogh died, his mother moved to another place. When she moved the gardener cleaned up the attic and dropped all the garbage in a ditch in the garden. So the question was: Could we find anything in the garden that we could relate to Vincent van Gogh?

Van Gogh's house

gogh_nuenen_pastor_1071677b.jpg
 
I don't know, What could we find? Or what did you find? lol. Let us know if there was anything in the garden.
 
I recall reading this post on the other site. Cant remember how it turns out, but I do remember some pictures in a swampy old trash pit/Garden.
 
So on december 6th 2007 we visited for the first time the pastorage with 4 persons: two of them were metal detector hunters. The garden was about 60x20 meters and a large part of it was covered by a lawns. Unfortunately this was off limits for digging. At the back of the garden was a pond, surrounded by trees. Because of the new layout it was difficult to compare the garden to the old paintings of van Gogh. Luckily the 2 non md hunters were van Gogh experts so they could give advise where the bests spots were expected.

Dirk hunting near the pond

PICT2463.JPG


We started with metal detecting right away. I used my Tesoro Silver μMax because I expected the garden was full of metal waist. The smaller coil and the fast recovery would be more accurate in these sorts of conditions. Soon we started to find our first metal: finds that you would expect in a garden in this area. toy cars, tin cans, pieces of aluminium and iron, nails, two empty small bottles that contained paint (1980-1990’s), an 19th century lead bullet, a part of a bronze grenade (WWII) but also a few datable coins (1950-1990). Nothing that we could relate to van Gogh or his parents unfortunately.

Part of a Grenade (WWII)
IMGP0110.JPG


At the end of the day I got a last faint beep at the back of the garden, near the fence. When I started digging first I saw some blue blobs of an unknown substance coming out of the ground. Then I saw a part of a tin can which contained more of this blue stuff. I carefully removed the remains of the tin can and at a closer inspection the blue substance looked like paint. Could this be the find that we were hoping for??? With a good feeling we went home. The next day we would clean and research our finds at the Archaeological Service of the city of Eindhoven.

Blue blobs in the ground

PICT2490.JPG


Rob
 
Wow cool stuff.What was the blue stuff. I hope it wasint a dead smurf.:D

I cant wait to find out more hurry hurry post more:roll:
 
The next day we gathered at the Archaeological service of the city of Eindhoven, where we washed the finds and sorted them out. Surely the most intriguing find was the remains of the can with the blue blobs. It looked like this:
Cleaning the can
Van-Gogh-vondsten-wassen-foto%27s-Laurens-Mulkens%20%281035%29.JPG


Upper part of the can
IMGP0207.JPG


Lower part of the can
IMGP0261.JPG



In the soil next to the can, we found a small fragment of late 19th century pottery. Ofcourse this find raised some questions:

Could this be paint?
How old was the paint?
How old was the tin can?
Could this be van Gogh's paint?
Who is able to tell us more about it?
Are there other finds that we could relate to van Gogh?

We decided to contact "Instituut Collectie Nederland" (the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage), who did research to van Gogh's paint before. On the other hand we were going to try out to find out more about the can and the other finds.

Other finds

PICT2510.JPG


To see all the pictures we made at the first hunt click these links:

Pictures of the hunt
Pictures of the finds

Rob
 
Wow, that would be a hunt of a lifetime for many of us. Thanks for sharing the hunt with us. Really really cool stuff.
 
Very cool! :cool:
It would be cool to be part of something like that.
You could be shaking hands with van Gough :shock:
Good luck & HH :D
 
In the time we waited for the research of of the paint by the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage, we investigated the tin can itself. Tin cans were made for the first time fo the armies of Napoleon (around 1810) so cans could be available in the time van Gogh was living there (1883-1885). We also found the bowl of a spoon. This type was very common at the end of the 19th century.

Part of a spoon
IMGP0119.JPG


The problem with metal finds like this is that you cannot be sure what age it is. So this find we could not research more.

We looked better at the paint and discovered several hairs in the paint. Maybe this could bring us to a better determination of the paint....

Paint with a hair

IMGP0237.JPG


We were lucky to got permission for a second hunt in the garden. Maybe we could find some other things that were used by van Gogh or his family!

Rob
 
Not your average metal detecting hunt for sure, must be very exciting for all involved. Very cool indeed! :wow: Thanks for sharing, we will be waiting for your updates!
 
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