Noordbrabants Museum acquires van Gogh watercolor for €1 million

The Noordbrabants Museum in 's-Hertogenbosch has acquired a watercolor by Vincent van Gogh titled 'The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen', dated 1885, for €1 million. The purchase was funded by a consortium of banks, museum supporters, and foundations, which raised half the total sum. The work is the last painting definitively created in Nuenen, where van Gogh lived for nearly a year and a half with his father, a pastor. In a letter to his brother Theo, van Gogh mentioned making a study of the pond in the garden. He later used the watercolor as a basis for a large painting that was lost during World War II and is now known only through black-and-white reproductions. Separately, a controversy has emerged in France over a newly published notebook titled 'Vincent van Gogh, the Mist of Arles, the Rediscovered Notebook', released by Seuil simultaneously in France, the US, Japan, the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands. The notebook contains 65 unsigned drawings and sketches attributed to van Gogh, allegedly found in the archive of the Café de la Gare in Arles. However, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has disavowed the authenticity, calling them 'imitations with obvious topographical errors'.