{"id":34943,"date":"2025-04-20T06:49:16","date_gmt":"2025-04-20T06:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/34943\/"},"modified":"2025-04-20T06:49:16","modified_gmt":"2025-04-20T06:49:16","slug":"in-france-an-odd-fight-over-van-goghs-last-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/34943\/","title":{"rendered":"In France, an Odd Fight Over Van Gogh&#8217;s Last Work"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"storyParagraph\">&#13;<br \/>\n                                        What is not in dispute: Vincent van Gogh&#8217;s last painting is called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vangoghmuseum.nl\/en\/collection\/s0195v1962\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tree Roots<\/a>, and the actual tree roots he used as a model still exist in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris. What is very much in dispute: Who owns those roots? As the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/04\/15\/world\/europe\/van-gogh-tree-roots-france-auvers-sur-oise.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">New York Times<\/a> explains, the black locust tree to which the roots belong sits on private property but abuts a public road. The homeowners insist the roots belong to them, while the village insists they should be in the public domain. Each accuses the other of jeopardizing the site.&#13;\n                                    <\/p>\n<p class=\"storyParagraph\">&#13;<br \/>\n                                        As of now, the homeowners are winning. Earlier this month, a French court sided in their favor, reports <a href=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/van-gogh-final-painting-site-french-couple-legal-dispute-1234737843\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Art News<\/a>. It&#8217;s not clear if the village plans to further contest the matter, but Mayor Isabelle Mezieres slammed the ruling on social media: &#8220;These roots are not a commodity\u2014they belong to the people of Auvers.&#8221; The homeowners, Jean-Francois and Helene Serlinger, bought the property before it was determined the famous roots were there, and they now offer <a href=\"https:\/\/vangoghroots.com\/en\/home-english\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">private tours<\/a>. However, they say they don&#8217;t profit from the enterprise and instead run a nonprofit dedicated to the roots.  (More <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newser.com\/tag\/7994\/1\/vincent-van-gogh.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Vincent Van Gogh<\/a> stories.)&#13;\n                                    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; What is not in dispute: Vincent van Gogh&#8217;s last painting is called Tree Roots, and the actual&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36,18096],"class_list":{"0":"post-34943","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-france","11":"tag-vincent-van-gogh"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114368962526465477","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}