$550,800 for early Van Gogh

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.

Bidding at the packed gallery in Tokyo’s fashionable Ginza district began at $125,200 and rapidly rocketed upward. Less than four minutes later, the painting was bought by a broker on behalf of 73-year-old Toshio Nakamoto, head of a museum in western Japan, for $550,800.