Painting authenticated as van Gogh - 26/02/2010

A painting housed in a small Dutch museum has been authenticated as an original Vincent van Gogh.

Le Blute-Fin Mill, a dusky scene with a windmill in the background, is the first painting to be attributed to van Gogh since 1995.

The piece, which now stands in a museum in the Dutch town of Zwolle, was in fact originally hailed as a van Gogh in 1975 by controversial art curator Dirk Hannema.

However, because of the curator's diminished creditability on account of previous wayward claims and supposed association with the Nazis in World War II, his suggestion was dismissed.

Louis van Tilborgh, curator of research at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, said: "Hannema was the laughing stock of the art world."

More than three decades later Mr Hannema, who died in 1984, has been proved correct.

The art world will now perhaps stop laughing.