Sewell says £16m 'Vermeer' is a fake

Art critic Brian Sewell today said that a "Vermeer" painting sold this week for £16.2 million is a fake.

The bidder who had paid such a huge amount for the painting, Young Woman Seated At The Virginals, had been "gulled" by a committee of experts who had declared it genuine, he said.

Sewell, the Evening Standard's respected art critic, states that he never believed the painting was by the Dutch master Johannes Vermeer. "Only a glance was required to identify it as an irredeemable dud," he said.

Sewell said the arguments put forward by the committee of six Dutch experts, one English and one from Sotheby's, were groundless. The details of the painting, such as the girl's shawl and hands - or "pig's trotters" as Sewell calls them - betray a less able painter.

"In no genuine Vermeer are the fold-forms of the costume so unrelated to the figure within. Above all I must argue that the most profound difference between this picture and genuine Vermeers lies in composition: too facile and intellectually undemanding."

He also rejects claims that only Vermeer could have used the painting's particular canvas and the expensive pigment it contains.