Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum unveiled a newly discovered work by the Dutch master Vincent Van Gogh on Monday (September 9).

'Sunset at Montmajour', painted in 1888, is the first full-size canvas by Van Gogh discovered since 1928.

The work depicts a landscape around Montmajour, a vineyard hill town in the French Provence, with the ruins of a Benedictine Abbey in the background, a subject that van Gogh revisited many times during his time in Arles.

Museum director Axel Rueger described the discovery as a "once in a lifetime experience" at the unveiling of the painting in Amsterdam. Rueger also said the work belongs to a period considered by many to be the culmination of Van Gogh's artistic achievement.

"It is a great pleasure for us to present to you this morning a new work by Vincent Van Gogh, a newly discovered painting," he said.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is an important work by Vincent Van Gogh that we are going to present this morning to you, it is from his most prominent period in his career, from his period in Arles, when he worked in the south of France, in Provence, and just to give you some context, it is the period during which he also painted "The Sunflowers," "The Yellow House," "The Bedroom," some of his really most famous works," he added.

In a letter to his brother Theo dated July 5, 1888, Vincent described the scene he had painted the previous day, but expressed his disappointment at the end result.

The work was later listed in one of Theo's catalogues, and then reappeared in 1970 in the estate of a Norwegian industrialist, Christian Nicolai Mustad, who had collected the works of Edvard Munch.

The Mustad family believed the painting had been bought by Mustad in 1908 but that he was advised later on that it was a fake or wrongly attributed, and banished it to the attic.

The painting will be on display at the museum from September 24 and the entire report establishing the authenticity of the discovery will be published in the October edition of The Burlington Magazine and will also be available in the Van Gogh Museum.

Presented by Adam Justice