Van Gogh - Sunset at Montmajour

When we think that there's no possibility, whatsoever, to find an unknown master piece from a world famous artist, sometimes the unthinkable happens.

Sunset at Montmajour, a large oil landscape of oak trees in the south of France, was painted in 1888 when Van Gogh was at the height of his powers in Arles. In 1908 was bought by a Norwegian industrialist, Christian Nicolai Mustad, but he was told that the painting was fate so it ended up forgotten in his attic until his dead.

When Mustad died, in 1970, his real estate was reunited and it was by then that speculations started around whom was the artist.

Technical expertise were made and sign of Van Gogh's signature were found as well a references to a landscape on one of Vincent's letters to Theo mentioning a similar landscape that he had painted on the previous day:

"Yesterday, at sunset, I was on a stony heath where very small, twisted oaks grow, in the background a ruin on the hill, and wheatfields in the valley. It was romantic, it couldn’t be more so, à la Monticelli, the sun was pouring its very yellow rays over the bushes and the ground, absolutely a shower of gold."

The painting comes from one of artist most prolific years. The time which Van Gogh spent in Arles, on the southern of France, when he created works such as The Yellow House and The Sunflowers.

Writing in the Burlington Magazine, three Dutch experts from the Van Gogh Museum, in Amsterdam, responsible for the studying said the work was "absolutely sensational". 

There is ample evidence of his hand, says the article, not least "the diversity of the brushstrokes and the creaminess of the paint, as well as in the rapidity and liveliness with which it was applied". 

The newly attributed painting is in the hands of a no doubt thrilled, but anonymous, owner but has been on display in AmsterdamVan Gogh Museum, since September 2013. from here