Van Gogh museum identifies artist’s long-lost painting

It's the first full-sized canvas by Vincent van Gogh to be discovered since 1928.

"Sunset at Montmajour" has been identified and authenticated by experts at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam to be the 1888 painting the Dutch artist once described in a letter to his brother.

"For the first time in the history of the museum, that is in the past 40 years, a substantial capital new work of van Gogh has been discovered that was completely unknown in the literature," museum director Axel Rüger said in an interview with the New York Times.

"He is one of the most famous artists in the world and we always think we’ve seen everything and we know everything, and now we’re able to add a significant new work to his oeuvre."

The painting was authenticated by the artist's letters and after a two-year investigation into the style and materials used in the work.

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According to Reuters, "'Sunset at Montmajour,' which shows twisted holly oaks and a distant ruin bathed in the light of the setting sun, was painted in 1888 when Van Gogh was living in Arles, in the south of France."

In a letter to his brother on July 5, 1988, van Gogh described the work and said that he painted it the previous day.

Fred Leeman, an independent art historian and van Gogh scholar, believes the work is "100 per cent genuine."

The painting had spent years in a Norwegian attic after its art-collector owner assumed it wasn't authentic. Even the museum rejected the painting once, in the 1990s, because the canvas wasn't signed by the artist.

"This time, we have topographical information plus a number of other factors that have helped us to establish authenticity," Axel Rüger, director of the Van Gogh Museum, told the New York Times. "Research is so much more advanced now, so we could come to a very different conclusion."

"This discovery is more or less a once-in-a-lifetime experience," said researcher Louis van Tilborgh, who helped with its authentication. "There is no doubt that it is a Van Gogh."

The museum unveiled the newly discovered landscape painting today.

"This is a great painting from what many see as the high point of his artistic achievement, his period in Arles, in southern France," Rüger said at an unveiling ceremony at the museum. "In the same period he painted works such as 'Sunflowers,' 'The Yellow House' and 'The Bedroom.'"

At the time of van Gogh's death by self-inflicted gunshot in 1890, the troubled painter had sold only one painting.

"Sunset at Montmajour," which now belongs to a private collector, will be on display at the museum starting September 24.