Sunset at Montmajour

Sunset at Montmajour is an oil painting on canvas by Vincent van Gogh, made near Arles on 4 July 1888 and now in a private collection. It measures 73.3 × 93.3 cm and was confirmed as an authentic Van Gogh by the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, in 2013.

The picture shows a garrigue landscape of rocks, scrub and small twisted oaks at the foot of Montmajour hill, with the ruins of Montmajour Abbey in the distance at the left and wheat fields beyond. Van Gogh described the scene to his brother Theo the next day, 5 July 1888: at sunset he had been on a stony heath where very small twisted oaks grew, with a ruin on the hill and wheat in the valley; it was romantic, in the manner of Monticelli, with the sun pouring very yellow rays over the bushes like a shower of gold, the fields purple and the distances blue. He added that he had brought back a study of it, but that it fell well short of what he had wanted.

The canvas was listed as number 180 in Theo's collection in 1890, and the number can still be seen on its back. Jo van Gogh-Bonger sold it in 1901 to a Paris dealer, and in 1908 it was bought by the Norwegian industrialist Christian Nicolai Mustad. After a French diplomat told him it was probably not by Van Gogh, Mustad took it down, and it was stored in an attic, resurfacing in his estate after his death. When the owners consulted the Van Gogh Museum in 1991, it was rejected, partly because it was unsigned, and the letter had been linked instead to another painting, The Rocks.

A two-year investigation begun in 2011 examined style, technique, pigments, canvas, provenance and the letters. The researchers found that the paints matched those Van Gogh habitually used at the time and identified the site near Montmajour. The museum unveiled the result on 9 September 2013, calling it the first full-size canvas by Van Gogh to be newly identified since 1928, and put it on display there from 24 September 2013 in the exhibition Van Gogh at Work.