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in 1908, a Norwegian collector was told that what he thought was a Van
Gogh oil landscape was actually a forgery. So he tucked it away in his
attic where it languished for six decades. Now, art experts have
authenticated the piece — and it is indeed a Van Gogh.
It's not
everyday that a new Van Gogh gets added to his astounding collection of
works. And indeed, the experts who authenticated the painting, titled
"Sunset at Montmajour," are calling it a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Incredibly,
the large oil landscape was painted in 1888, a time when Van Gogh
created some of his most important works, including "Sunflowers," "The
Yellow House," and "The Bedroom." The researchers authenticated it by
comparing it to Van Gogh's techniques, style, paint used, and a letter
he wrote on July 4th, 1888, in which he described the work. They also
conducted a chemical analysis of the pigments and took X-rays of the
canvas.
The piece
depicts a dry landscape of twisting oak trees, bushes and sky in the
south of France. It was done during the period when the artist was
increasingly adopting the thick "impasto" brush strokes characteristic
of his later works.
From Yahoo! News:
According to a reconstruction published in The Burlington Magazine by three researchers, the painting was recorded as number 180 in [Vincent Van Gogh's brother] Theo's collection and given the title "Sun Setting at Arles." It was sold to French art dealer Maurice Fabre in 1901.
Fabre never recorded selling the work, and the painting disappeared from history until it reappeared in 1970 in the estate of Norwegian industrialist Christian Nicolai Mustad.
The Mustad family said Mustad purchased it in 1908 as a young man in one of his first forays into art collecting, but was soon told by the French ambassador to Sweden that it was a fake. Embarrassed, Mustad banished it to the attic.
After Mustad's death in 1970, the distinguished art dealer Daniel Wildenstein said he thought the painting was a fake Van Gogh or possibly the work of a lesser-known German painter, and it was sold to a collector. The museum would not say who bought it or whether it had been resold since then.
In 1991, the museum declined to authenticate the painting when whoever owned it at the time brought it to them.
Thankfully,
the museum eventually came to its senses and launched a formal study of
the piece. Reasons for skepticism are understandable, as it's a
transitional/experimental piece from Van Gogh, it's unsigned, and parts
of the foreground are "not as well-observed" as per his other works. And
in fact, Van Gogh himself admitted that, the painting was "well below
what I'd wished to do."
It's the first full-size canvas by Vincent Van Gogh to be discovered since 1928.
The
identity of the collector cannot be divulged, but the work will be
on-loan to Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum for an entire year starting
September 24th.
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