The Van Gogh Museum announces that it has identified a long-lost Van Gogh painting, after years of study and investigation.
The painting had spent most of its time hidden away, largely ignored, in a Norwegian attic because it had not been thought to be authentic. It is the first full canvas painting by the artist to be discovered since 1928.
Titled "Sunset at Montmajour," the painting depicts a sprawling landscape of oak trees, bushes, and sky, all done in the lush, thick brush strokes which is the well known trademark of the Dutch master.
Van Gogh painted the piece while "on a stony sheath where small twisted oaks grow." Its exact location could also be traced: it is in Arles, France, where Van Gogh had been living at the time, near the hill of Montmajour, with the ruins of an abbey of the same name nearby
It can be dated to the exact day that it was painted-July 4, 1888-because Van Gogh had described it in a letter he wrote to his brother, Theo.
Much of the painting's authenticity could be traced from Van Gogh's letters, as he had brought them up while writing several times, in one letter saying that he had been trying to present himself as a poet among landscape painters, and had considered the newly authenticated painting "Sunset" to be a great failure of this goal.
But is it? Van Gogh was known to have said the same about his most acclaimed masterpieces "Starry Night," which now hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in London.
Researchers have said that "Sunset" was indeed an ambitious piece, having had been painted on a large canvas: 93.3 by 73.3 centimeters.
The painting now belongs to a private collector, although it will be on public display at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam until September 24.
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