In a bid to settle one of the mysteries of the art world, the three inch long, red hair was lifted from "Still Life with Peonies" and DNA samples taken from it will be compared with those from Van Gogh's living relatives.

If confirmed a Van Gogh, the painting could fetch a value of £39 million and make Cologne art collector Markus Roubrocks, its owner, a multi millionaire.

The bright painting of a vase of multicoloured peonies resting on a wooden floor was discovered in a Belgian attic in 1977, and since then debate has raged in the art world whether it is the work of the Dutch master.

Mr Roubrocks, who inherited the painting from his father, has always argued it is an original Van Gogh dating from the spring of 1889 just a year before the artist took his own life. Two independent art experts who examined the picture independently backed his claim, but the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam contests this, saying the brush strokes are inconsistent with Van Gogh's style, and therefore the painting is nothing more than an expert piece of forgery.