Bords de la Seine à Argenteuil
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| Artist | Claude Monet (?) |
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| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Owner | David Joel |
Bords de la Seine à Argenteuil (Banks of the Seine at Argenteuil) is an oil painting widely accepted by leading fine arts experts to be a work by Claude Monet. The painting is a landscape depicting the River Seine at Argenteuil in France. It is owned by Englishman David Joel.
It was featured on the British TV programme, Fake or Fortune?
The painting was acquired by David Joel in 1992 for £40,000. Joel is an art historian who has published two art books, the first a catalogue raisonné of the marine paintings of Charles Brooking, the second a history of Monet at Vétheuil and on the Norman Coast. The painting had previously been offered for sale at auction, but failed to reach its £500,000 reserve. The title Bords de la Seine à Argenteuil along with the date, 1875, appears on the frame, and there is a painted signature of Claude Monet. In the years since he purchased it, Joel has attempted to establish it as an authentic Monet. The most widely accepted authority on Monet's work is the catalogue raisonné published by the Wildenstein Institute in Paris. The Wildenstein Institute has examined the painting once, after the death of Daniel Wildenstein, and does not accept it as genuine.Fiona Bruce (a journalist) and Philip Mould (an art dealer and historian) investigated the painting in the TV programme Fake or Fortune? first aired on 19 June 2011. The Art Access Research Centre scanned the picture using high resolution, infrared and X-ray photography. At the Lumiere Technology Centre the picture was scanned using a 240-megapixel camera and 13 light filters. The resulting image was examined by Iris Schaefer, the head of conservation at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne, who previously uncovered a fake Monet which had been accepted by the Wildenstein Institute. She declared the Joel painting genuine. The chemical analysis of paints used in the painting and signature were studied by Nicholas Eastaugh (Courtauld Institute of Art) and were found to conform precisely with Monet's palette and the mediums he used in 1873.
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