“This is fantastic; we can definitively add two drawings to Van Gogh’s oeuvre,” Axel Rüger, director of the Van Gogh Museum, said on Tuesday, when the news was made public.
An analysis of the subject, style, technique, materials, and provenance of a sketch entitled The Hill of Montmartre with Stone Quarry has allowed experts to determine that it was drawn by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). The drawing, which belongs to the collection of the Van Vlissingen Art Foundation, was once part of Vincent and Theo van Gogh’s own collection and had disappeared from circulation in 1917.
“The two drawings are obviously by the same hand, and in style related to the model drawings that Van Gogh made early in 1886, first in Antwerp and then in Paris at Cormon’s studio,” said Teio Meedendorp, researcher at the Van Gogh Museum.
The works, which both date back to 1886, “illustrate a phase in the learning process of the artist, who eventually reinvented himself in Paris, but here still walked the traditional artistic path,” Meedendorp added.
Van Gogh’s known oeuvre includes over 900 paintings and five sketchbooks. More than half of his works are on display at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The last time a new van Gogh painting was discovered was in 2012.
