海角大神

A painting that sat for six decades in a Norwegian industrialist's attic after he was told it was a fake聽Van聽Gogh聽was pronounced the real thing Monday, making it the first full-size canvas by the tortured Dutch artist to be discovered since 1928.

Experts at the聽Van聽Gogh聽Museum in Amsterdam authenticated the 1888 landscape "Sunset at Montmajour" with the help of Vincent van聽Gogh's聽letters, chemical analysis of the pigments, and X-rays of the canvas.

Museum director Axel Rueger, at an unveiling ceremony, called the discovery a "once-in-a-lifetime experience."

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

Museum officials would not identify the owner who brought the artwork to them in 2011 to be authenticated. Van聽Gogh聽paintings are among the most valuable in the world, fetching tens of millions of dollars on the rare occasions one is sold at auction.

The artwork will be on display at the museum beginning Sept. 24.

The roughly 37-by-29-inch "Sunset at Montmajour" depicts a dry landscape of twisting oak trees, bushes, and sky, and was done during the period when聽Van聽Gogh聽was increasingly adopting the thick "impasto" brush strokes that became typical of his work in the final years of his short life.

It can be dated to the exact day it was painted because he described it in a letter to his brother, Theo, and said he had painted it the previous day 鈥� July 4, 1888.

"At sunset I was on a stony heath where very small, twisted oaks grow, in the background a ruin on the hill and wheat fields in the valley,"聽Van聽Gogh聽wrote. "It was romantic.... The sun was pouring its very yellow rays over the bushes and the ground, absolutely a shower of gold."

But then聽Van聽Gogh聽confessed that the painting was "well below what I'd wished to do." Later he sent it to Theo to keep.

Van聽Gogh聽struggled with bouts of mental distress throughout his life and died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1890. He sold only one painting during his lifetime.

According to a reconstruction published in The Burlington Magazine by three researchers, the painting was recorded as number 180 in 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 海角大神 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聽Van聽Gogh聽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.

"That may be a painful admission, given that the same museum is now attributing it to聽Van聽Gogh, but it is understandable," since experts had no information about what the painting depicted, the Burlington Magazine article said.

Teio Meedendorp, one of three experts who worked on the project, said his predecessors might also have been confused because the painting was done at a "transitional" moment in聽Van聽Gogh's聽style.

"From then on,聽Van聽Gogh聽increasingly felt the need to paint with more and more impasto and more and more layers," he said.

Among other reasons experts had their doubts: The painting was unsigned. Parts of the foreground were not "as well-observed as usual," the researchers said. And part of the right side of the painting used a different style of brush strokes.

But when the museum took a fresh look at the work in 2011, its experts had the advantage of a new compendium of all聽Van聽Gogh's聽letters, and they were able to identify for the first time the exact location "Sunset" depicts: Montmajour hill, near Arles. The ruins of Montmajour abbey can be seen in the background.

Van聽Gogh聽mentioned the painting in two other letters the same summer.

The number 180 on the back of the canvas was an important clue, and new chemical analysis techniques showed the pigments were identical to others聽Van聽Gogh聽used on his palette at Arles.

Also, an X-ray examination of the canvas showed it was of the same type聽Van聽Gogh聽used on other paintings from the period.

Meedendorp said "Sunset" belongs "to a special group of experimental works that聽Van聽Gogh聽at times esteemed of lesser value than we tend to do nowadays."

He said it's not impossible another unknown or lost聽Van聽Gogh聽could be found someday. The artist is believed to have completed more than 800 works. While he destroyed some when he wasn't satisfied with the results, the whereabouts of others that are mentioned in his letters or early catalogs of his work are unknown.

The聽Van聽Gogh聽Museum houses 140聽Van聽Gogh聽paintings and receives more than a million visitors a year.