N.Y. Times - An announcement two years ago of the discovery of a trove of small drip paintings thought to be the work of Jackson Pollock set off an uproar in the world of art scholarship that has yet to die down.  The paintings have been scrutinized by connoisseurs, been subjected to computerized pattern tests, undergone chemical analysis at Harvard and elsewhere, and deeply divided a group of once-united Pollock experts.  Alex Matter last year with three of the 32 works he contends Jackson Pollock created.  Pollock’s foundation says that several have been sold.

Now questions about their authenticity may begin reverberating in the art market too.  The man who found the paintings, Alex Matter; the son of Herbert and Mercedes Matter, close friends of Pollock — has quietly sold some of them, though he had generally maintained in interviews that he was not interested in profiting from their discovery.

He has never publicly disclosed selling any of the works — 32 in all, including some ephemera and works on paper. Twenty-five paintings are scheduled to appear on Sept. 1 at an exhibition at the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College and will be the subject of an exhibition catalog featuring new scholarship by Ellen G. Landau, one of the world’s leading Pollock experts.  She has said she believes the works are genuine, though recent scientific tests have begun to suggest that they are not.

Information about the sales came to light recently through the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, which guards the legacies of the artist and of his wife, the painter Lee Krasner.  The foundation’s chairman, Charles Bergman, was told by the SoHo gallery owner Ronald Feldman at a lunch in January 2006 that he had bought an unspecified number of the paintings outright and owned some jointly with Mr. Matter, according to the foundation’s lawyer, Ronald Spencer.  Mr. Spencer added that the foundation believes other paintings may have been sold to two other collectors or dealers.

Through a receptionist at his gallery, Mr. Feldman declined to comment about the paintings.  It is unclear how much he paid for them; it is also unclear if he still owns any of them or whether he has sold any to collectors.  Mr. Matter, who is recuperating from surgery, referred questions about the paintings to his lawyer, Jeremy Epstein, who said he was aware only that Mr. Feldman had been serving as an adviser to Mr. Matter.

“I don’t know what his financial interest is,” Mr. Epstein said of Mr. Feldman.

The foundation, which was formed in 1985 primarily to give grants to artists, has become deeply involved over the last several months in trying to determine for itself whether Mr. Matter’s paintings are authentic.  It is a question that foundation officials said they believed was important because of the sheer number of works involved.

An analysis by Harvard’s art museums of three of the paintings, conducted with Mr. Matter’s permission and released in January, found that some pigments used in the paintings were not patented or commercially available until long after Pollock died in 1956.  Mr. Matter and Dr. Landau have questioned the conclusions of the study.

Recently the foundation learned that Mr. Matter had commissioned a forensic scientist, James Martin, in Williamstown, Mass., to conduct an extensive chemical analysis of many more of the paintings.  But Mr. Martin has yet to release the results of the study, completed last fall.  In a February article about the paintings in The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Mr. Martin said he had decided not to release the results after being threatened with legal action by Mr. Matter’s lawyer, Mr. Epstein.

Mr. Martin, reached yesterday, declined to comment about his study.  Mr. Epstein denied that he had ever threatened Mr. Martin with legal action but did say that he had told Mr. Martin he was not authorized to release the report because Mr. Matter did not feel that it was complete. . . By Randy Kennedy