Excitement ran high in the Tokyo art world as a painting, first thought worth less than $100 but now believed to be a work by Vincent Van Gogh, went on sale there.
The unsigned artwork, 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 over the weekend, just a day after the dramatic revelation that it appeared to be a previously unknown early work by the Impressionist master.
