Monet painting discovered in Finland

A version of Monet's Meule soleil couchant painted in 1891 currently in the Museum of fine Arts Boston. Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Une Meule dans le soleil couchant, an 1891 painting by Impressionist master Claude Monet, was authenticated at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland.

Purchased in the 1950s by the Gösla Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation, until recently no one had succeeded in assembling sufficient proof to conclusively prove that the work was an authentic Monet. Researchers from the Mathematics of information technology department of the Finnish university were able, with the help of a hyperspectral camera, to discover an almost invisible signature, hidden under a layer of paint. “The device revealed what the human eye was not able to see by analysing the painting using 256 difference infra-red wave-lengths”, said scientist Ilkka Pölönen.

Monet’s Haystack series, created between the summer of 1890 and the beginning of the year 1891, and which up until now constituted 25 paintings, is one of the French artist’s most important series. At present the series is held in Paris’ Musée d’Orsay. In 2001, Monet’s painting Dernier rayon de soleil (1890) sold for €15 million at Sotheby’s London.