Dirk Hannema was known as a brilliant art curator but a bit of a fool. He claimed he had seven Vermeers in his collection, several Van Goghs and a few Rembrandts, but no one believed him. Now 25 years after his death it turned out he was right - about one work by Vincent van Gogh. The painting, “Le Blute-Fin Mill,” goes on public display Wednesday in the small Museum de Fundatie in the central Dutch town of Zwolle. Louis van Tilborgh, curator of research at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, said the painting was unusual for the 19th century impressionist, depicting large human figures in a landscape. The painting shows Parisians climbing wooden stairs to a windmill in the Montmartre district. But the work was typical of Van Gogh's at that time in other ways, with its bright colors lathered roughly on the canvas. Van Tilborgh said it was painted in 1886 when the artist was living in Paris. The canvas bore the stamp of an art store he was known to frequent, and used pigments that were common in other works, van Tilborgh said. It is the first Van Gogh to be authenticated since 1995 and the sixth to be added to the confirmed list of the artist's paintings since the latest edition of the standard catalog was published in 1970, van Tilborgh said.
