"Montmajour Sunset" - Newly Discovered Van Gogh Painting

A lost Vincent van Gogh painting has been discovered after spending decades hidden away in an attic, once thought to be a forgery. The long-lost landscape was unveiled yesterday (Sept. 9) by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Investigations revealed that its style matched other works from the peak period of the Dutch artist's career, and scientific investigations showed that the paint, canvas and subject matter all matched Van Gogh's work from this time.

"It is a great addition to his oeuvre," Van Gogh Museum director Axel Rueger said in a statement about the new addition to the artist's body of work. "And what makes this even more exceptional is that this is a transition work in his oeuvre that adds to our understanding of Van Gogh's development."

Van Gogh died in 1890 at the age of 37, but left behind hundreds of paintings. The newly discovered work, "Sunset at Montmajour," dates to about 1888, around the same time Van Gogh painted some of his most famous works, including "Sunflowers," "The Bedroom" and "The Yellow House."

The painting, which measures approximately 3 feet wide by 2.4 feet tall (93 centimeters by 73 cm), originally belonged to the collection of Theo van Gogh, the painter's brother, and was sold in 1901, museum officials said at the unveiling ceremony in Amsterdam, according to the Associated Press. Not long after, it was declared a forgery and eventually wound up in the attic of a Norwegian collector.

Museum officials reported that as recently as the 1990s, the painting was rejected as a Van Gogh. But new historical records and examinations of the materials used in the painting have proven otherwise.

"We carried out art historical research into the style, the depiction, the use of materials and the context," the museum researchers said in a statement. "Everything we found came together to create a convincing case for this being a Van Gogh."

The researchers identified the actual location depicted in the painting — a spot near Arles, France, close to the ruins of the Benedictine Montmajour Abbey.

The new painting also shows the same discoloration phenomena that have troubled conservators of many Van Gogh paintings. In many of Van Gogh's paintings, such as "Sunflowers," bright yellow areas have turned to a muddy brown. Recent research shows this darkening is due to a chemical reaction caused by ultraviolet light (including sunlight) penetrating chrome yellow pigments.

The researchers even uncovered two descriptions of the painting in letters written by Van Gogh himself, who expressed dissatisfaction with the work and deemed it a failure.

"You can clearly see how he is struggling, but that is also what makes this painting so fascinating," Tilburg and Meedendorp said in a statement. "It belongs to a special group of experimental works that trace his path to the unique brushwork of the early autumn of 1888 that everyone knows today. Van Gogh himself rated this transitional quality of the work critically; to him it was a 'failure' among others in this particular period."

The discovery process of "Sunset at Montmajour" will be detailed in the October edition of the Burlington Magazine, and the painting will be on display at the Van Gogh Museum starting Sept. 24.

Last year, new research authenticated another controversial Van Gogh: a still life depicting two flowers already seen in another work, and underneath, revealed by X-ray images, two half-naked wrestlers.