NEW YORK — In 2016, a painting purchased for less than $50 at a Minnetonka, Minnesota, garage sale has been identified by LMI Group International, a New York-based data science art research firm, as a long-lost work by Vincent van Gogh. The piece, titled “Elimar,” depicts a bearded fisherman mending a net and smoking a pipe. LMI Group’s four-year investigation, costing over $30,000, combined traditional art analysis with advanced scientific methods, including pigment examination and DNA analysis of a hair found on the canvas. They concluded that van Gogh painted “Elimar” in 1889 during his stay at the Saint-Paul asylum in France. However, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam previously assessed the painting in 2019 and determined, based on stylistic features, that it could not be attributed to van Gogh. The museum has not yet commented on LMI Group’s recent findings.
