The muted greenish brown colouring, the strange wide aspect ratio, the generally dark tone and setting: if you'd try to sell this to me as a Van Gogh painting, I would have probably laughed at you. I'm far from being an art historian, but it looks quite out of character for a Van Gogh.
One of his most famous paintings matches 2 out of 3 of your criticisms, he only went wild with colour later. I agree the style change can seem abrupt but it happened over years.
You'd think the sort of person that wanted to pay art thieves would be more interested in the prestige of a famous or characteristic work than a relatively obscure naturalistic study of a garden he painted several times. I mean, similarly, anyone interested in studying the history of art sees Picasso's naturalistic family portraits he made as a teenager and his 'blue period' as important in his development as an artist, but it's not the stuff I'd imagine is high on the list of wealthy criminals wishing to flaunt their wealth and power with famous abstract paintings worth millions in their private rooms.
Though I doubt Van Gogh's more famous works were on display at the Singer Laren museum...
If you put "Van Gogh painting" in Google images, you have to scroll quite a bit to find anything in a similar style, except for a couple hits from current news pieces.
And composition is primitive also for a Van Gogh. The figure is well placed, but the tree at the left is asking for an axe. The same artist than studied the color theory to place the right combinations of colours close. Early work, or trying to be 'realistic', I suppose.
I'm not questioning the painting's authenticity. I'm merely bewildered that someone would steal a Van Gogh that doesn't look like a Van Gogh to the untrained eye - how are you going to impress your billionaire friends with that hanging over the fireplace of your lair?
Although the thief will probably just blackmail the insurance/museum, so the style of the painting doesn't matter at all.
He wasn’t born painting sunflowers. If you look at http://art-vangogh.com/1885.html, there a lot of dark portraits (also, if I’m counting correctly, 140 paintings in a single year)
I'd make the same point for these - if you showed them to anybody on the street and asked them to name the artist, I don't think many would guess Van Gogh. They are quite different from the works he's known for.
