The West Flanders auction house New-Art sold a painting by renowned Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh for €1.5 million on Sunday, Belga News Agency reports.
The small oil painting which measures just 18 x 23.5 cm is entitled Val avond in de Kempen ('Evening in the Campine'). It was completed by Van Gogh in 1885 during his stay in the Campine natural region in north-eastern Belgium. The landscape depicts the view from his studio window, according to Het Laatste Nieuws.
Multispectral cameras confirmed its authenticity and revealed drawings beneath the paint, including some self-portraits and signatures by the artist. The handwriting on the back of the painting was also confirmed to be Van Gogh's.
Le Soir reported that a letter by the artist to his brother Theo written that same year even mentions the work sold on Sunday: "Last week I painted three studies, one of old houses seen from my bedroom window and two views of the park."
Both the seller and the buyer preferred to remain anonymous.
Val avond in de Kempen by Vincent Van Gogh.
On the same day, New-Art auctioned an artwork titled Femme au foulard bleu ('Woman in blue scarf') by French impressionist Edgar Degas, estimated to sell between €3-5 million.
However, Degas' piece didn't find a buyer despite its unique mix of mediums, including pastel, tempera, gouache and charcoal on paper. The nude was also proven authentic by an MA-XRF analysis to determine the composition of the material.
Femme au foulard bleu by Edgar Degas.
Bringing Van Gogh back to life
The auction comes just before an impressive event at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, in which visitors will have a chance to speak to the artists from the past.
From 3 October, an exhibition entitled 'Van Gogh at Auvers-sur-Oise, the last months' will bring Van Gogh back to life using virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence. 37-year-old and single-eared, the VR Van Gogh will be able to respond to questions in either French or English with a Dutch accent.
"We entered just about all available information about Van Gogh into computers, such as all the letters he wrote. And algorithms and artificial intelligence have learnt what he was like, how his brain worked, how he looked in real life and how he would have talked in real life," Dutch specialist Wouter van der Veen, who is collaborating on the project, told De Morgen.
The AI project is also accompanied by about 50 of the artist's paintings brought together for the first time, including his 1890 Racines d'arbres which has never been exhibited before in France.
