from attic to museum

So journeys a newly discerned Vincent Van Gough, Sunset at Montmajour, enthusiastically unveiled by Amsterdam's Van Gough Museum on Monday.  Museum experts thought otherwise in 1991 when an undisclosed collector initially carried the painting over for them to have a look at.

Since 1991, new techniques for authenticating art have developed;  so, reports the New York Times, about ten years later, the owner (still haunted by questions, one gathers) took the painting back.  Enabled and emboldened by these new techniques, researchers looked again, and have been looking ever since, with Van Gough now believed to have indeed painted this "more experimental" work from his "mature period" on July 4th, 1888 when he wrote to his brother on the following 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 wheat fields 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. And all the lines were beautiful; the whole scene had charming nobility.”

 A flicker photographer (similarly bewitched, one supposes) snapped this yellow Montmajour sunset upon a group of wild horses.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston reports that painting on site in Montmajour was a constant struggle for Van Gough because of "fierce, blustering winds that swept through this region" and "whipped violently against his canvases."  MFAH is home to another 1888 Montmajour Van Gough titled The Rocks.  The Rocks played a key role in conclusively determining that Sunset at Montmajour was truly a Van Gough.

1888 is also the same year Van Gough's ear incident went viral. 

Via wiki, Montmajour Abbey, the "ruins" of which are said to be seen from a distance in Sunset at Montmajour.  During the Middle Ages, the abbey was an important pilgrimage site, and during the 18th century, housed a Maurist monastery that is now in ruins, shown second.  Wiki reports the building largely demolished for building materials after the French Revolution (1789-1799).

 

 

*Photo credit/top, New York Times, photographer: Herman Wouters; second, via cbswpam, Sunset at Montmajour, by Vincent Van Gough;  third, Wikipedia, uploaded by Len'Alex, March 2005, Vue générale de l'abbaye; fourth, Wikipedia, photographer: Marc Ryckaert (MJJR), Montmajour Abbey near Arles (département des Bouches-du-Rhône, France): ruins of the Monastère Saint-Maur, 18th century.