Court battle over who owns famous van Gogh roots is tearing French village apart

Telegraph

20-04-2025

A tangled clump of tree roots that inspired Vincent van Gogh's final painting are at the centre of a heated legal battle between French villagers and their mayor.
Five years ago, art experts concluded that a system of exposed, gnarly roots along the side of a road in Auvers-sur-Oise on the outskirts of Paris, were those depicted in Tree Roots, the artist's last work.
It is believed that he painted the piece just hours before he died in 1890, after shooting himself in the chest with a revolver.
News of the location shook the art world. The small village, located about an hour north of Paris where van Gogh spent the last two months of his life, attracted international media in the summer of 2020 and a steady stream of eager pilgrims.
But the discovery has since become the subject of a pitched war between the town over whether the roots belong to the municipality or property owners Jean-François Serlinger and his wife Hélène, who is also an artist who moved to the village to live where van Gogh had worked.
Last month, French courts sided with the Serlingers and ruled that the roots painted by van Gogh are on their property, marking the second legal victory for the couple.
'The embankment containing the tree roots painted by Vincent van Gogh does not constitute an accessory to the public highway,' the Versailles Administrative Court of Appeal wrote in their decision.
But for Isabelle Mézières, the mayor of Auvers-sur-Oise, the fight is far from over.
'The roots belong to the people of Auvers!' she wrote this month, adding that she plans to file another appeal.
'There's no way we're going to surrender the public interest of the people of Auvers in the face of private interests. The question of ownership has not been settled.'
The couple moved to the village in the mid-1990s and purchased an extra parcel of land in 2013, not knowing that they had also bought an important part of art history.
Since the discovery, the Serlingers have launched guided tours called 'The Mystery of van Gogh's Roots' in collaboration with the van Gogh Europe Foundation.
Auvers will not 'abandon its roots'
Tickets are €8 (£7), and visitors are led on a 30-minute tour that traces the artist's life and work throughout the town, including the tree roots on their property.
The tours offer an 'immersive experience' of the area that is 'deeply linked' to the artist's final painting and last stretch of his life, according to the site.
Despite the municipality losing their case twice in a row, the town has vowed to try a third time.
'We are considering a possible appeal,' Michel Gentilhomme, the town's lawyer, told Le Parisien.
'There is a desire for private individuals to appropriate this property, in the interest of the municipality's residents. This issue must be resolved so that the municipality is not criticised for having abandoned its roots.'
For their part, the Serlingers said they wanted to 'turn the page' and put the legal battle behind them, while pursuing other ways to develop the site.
'There's no doubt about it, we own the land right down to the street,' the couple told Le Parisien. 'We've won a second time. We're within our rights.'
The initial connection between the local roots and the painting was made in 2020, when Wouter van der Veen, a local van Gogh expert, stumbled on an old black and white postcard in his collection that showed a man walking his bike along the village's Rue Daubigny.
The familiar ancient roots growing out of the road caught his eye and, in a eureka moment, he made the connection between the photo and the painting.
The new tourist season officially started on Saturday, which came with an air of tension in the village amid the ongoing row.
'It created a deep sense of insecurity around a site that calls for calm and serenity,' Mr. Serlinger told The New York Times. 'We have a feeling of insecurity with a mayor who is still in a war.'