The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has acquired a major 19th-century painting, *L’homme est en mer* by French artist Virginie Demont-Breton, for a price between €500,000 and €1 million. The museum purchased the work, which depicts a woman holding a child awaiting a sailor's return, from Gallery 19C at the TEFAF Maastricht fair, where it had been held in a private Dallas collection for two decades.
This acquisition is significant because the painting is one of the only known works by a woman artist that Vincent van Gogh directly copied, after seeing a reproduction in a magazine. It becomes just the third painting by a woman in the museum's permanent collection, marking a meaningful step in diversifying a institution dedicated to an iconic male artist and highlighting the influence of his female contemporaries.