Geology

?Lost? van Gogh landscape drawing unveiled

The sketch, titled The Hill of Montmarte with Stone Quarry, dates back to 1886 and is said to have been completed in the months after van Gogh arrived in Paris of the same year.

The piece is a ‘dusty’ sketch that shows a cluster of buildings and windmills with a quarry prominently displayed further down the hill.

According to reports, the previously unseen drawing was originally discovered in 2013 after it was given to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands for research.

It is understood the piece had been in a private collection for the last 100 years, after Dutch relatives of an American private collector had bought it from a gallery in the Netherlands in 1917.

However, the museum did not announce the discovery until this year at the request of the former owner.

After being authenticated by the Van Gogh museum – which owns the largest collection of van Gogh’s works anywhere in the world – it was then unveiled at an exhibition at the Singer Laren museum, which is located east of Amsterdam.

It was here where a similar sketch titled The Hill of Montmarte was also revealed to the public.

The Hill of Montmarte was also completed in 1886 and is originally thought to be by van Gogh; however, it was discredited in 2001 as it was so ‘dissimilar’ from the artist’s other works, independent van Gogh expert Fred Leeman said in a New York Times article.

“Now that you have a set of two, it’s clear that it was a style he maintained during the first part of his time in Paris,” Leeman said.

The sketch will be on display as part of the Singer Laren’s exhibition ‘Impressionism and beyond: a wonderful journey’ until May 2018.

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