On Monday, September 9, 2013, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam announced that after extensive research, they were confident that the painting Sunset at Montmajour was an authentic work by Vincent Van Gogh. Alex Ruger, the museum’s director, said, “A discovery of this magnitude has never before occurred in the history of the Van Gogh Museum. It is already a rarity that a new painting can be added to Van Gogh’s oeuvre. But what makes this even more exceptional is that this is a transition work in his oeuvre, and moreover, a large painting from a period that is considered by many to be the culmination of his artistic achievement, his period in Arles in south of France.” Sunset at Montmajour was painted in 1888 around the same time as Van Gogh’s seminal works Sunflowers, The Yellow House and The Bedroom.
The canvas, which depicts a dry landscape in Van Gogh’s characteristically thick brushstrokes, had been stored for decades in the attic of a Norwegian home before becoming a research subject at the Van Gogh Museum. Scholars were able to trace the earliest history of the provenance of the painting while Oda Van Maanen, the museum’s restorer, used x-ray photos and computer analyses to determine the type of canvas and pigments used, which were consistent with the materials regularly used by Van Gogh. Museum officials had previously deemed Sunset at Montmajour as inauthentic because the artist had not signed it.
Sunset at Montmajour will be on view at the Van Gogh Museum starting September 24, 2013 as part of the exhibition Van Gogh at Work.
