Amsterdam museum selling 3D reproductions of Van Gogh paintings

It would be the envy of forgers: a technology that can mint near-perfect reproductions of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings at a rate of three a day, with differences only experts can detect.

So far, five of the Dutch painter's best-known works, including Sunflowers and The Harvest, have undergone the treatment in a project backed by Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum using technology developed by the Fujifilm unit of Fujifilm Holdings.

"This is the next generation of reproductions. In the past we had lithographs, then photographs, first black and white, then colour. Now these are reproductions in three dimensions," museum director Axel Rueger said.

Each numbered copy on canvas with relief costs €25,000 (HK$258,000). The complex production process means only three can be produced a day, although prices may come down as production becomes cheaper and easier.

That's more than the usual US$15 university dorm poster of Sunflowers but a lot less than the US$82.5 million Japanese businessman Ryoei Saito paid in 1990 for Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr Gachet at a Christie's auction, or the US$53.9 million Australian businessman Alan Bond paid for Irises in 1987.

Rueger expects the reproductions to be especially popular in Hong Kong.

"Van Gogh is very popular in Asia, and Hong Kong is a very commercial market," he said. "People in Asia have a different attitude to reproductions. There was a lot of interest there."