From neglected old painting to sought-after masterpiece.
Excitement ran high in the Tokyo art world on Saturday as a painting, first thought worth less than US$100 dollars but now believed to be a work by Vincent Van Gogh, fetched more than US$550,000 in auction.
The unsigned painting, a portrait of a heavy-set, grim-faced peasant woman in a white cap, was greeted with a buzz of excited conversation as it was placed on the auctioneer's stand, just a day after the dramatic revelation that it appeared to be a previously unknown early work by the Impressionist master.
Bidding at the packed gallery in Tokyo's fashionable Ginza district began at Japanese yen 15 million (US$125,200) and rapidly rocketed upwards.
Less than four minutes later, the painting was bought by a broker on behalf of 73-year-old Toshio Nakamoto, head of a museum in western Japan, for Japanese yen 66 million (US$550,800).
"I would say the painting was rather cheap in the end," said Guillermo Bierregaard, an Argentinian attending the auction.
The sale was the final scene in an unusual saga that saw the painting, now called Peasant Woman, transformed from an unremarkable part of a consignment of paintings that arrived at Shinwa Art Auction Co Ltd from a Japanese collector and was first priced at a mere Japanese yen 10,000 (US$83) for the auction.
Initial difficulties in identifying the unsigned painting were made worse by some bad restorative work, which blurred the distinctive Van Gogh style.
But nagging suspicions on the part of officials at the auction house that the style of the painting resembled that of another Van Gogh piece prompted them to send a photograph of the work to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
What happened next was an art lover's dream come true.
"We got a call from the Van Gogh Museum in January and they asked us if they could see the painting," Shinwa president Yochiro Kurata told reporters. "So we took it to Amsterdam.
"The whole process took two weeks but they came back to us and said it was an original."
Louis van Tilborgh, curator at the Van Gogh Museum, informed Shinwa in a letter that it was the opinion of museum experts that the painting was indeed an authentic Van Gogh.
He added that they believed the work was painted between November 1884 and May 1885 and left behind in the town of Nuenen when Van Gogh moved to the Belgian city of Antwerp, not to re-appear until 1903.
"However, due to restorations, the painting has lost most of its original character and Van Gogh's characteristic brushstrokes are only partially recognizable," van Tilborgh said in the letter.
Some art fans at the auction said they felt these restorations had damaged the painting's value.
"It has some faults, so the final bid may actually have been too high," said Yoko Irie.
Still, Shinwa officials were pleased.
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