Hidden Self-Portrait Discovered Beneath Van Gogh Painting – RisePEI

X-rays carried out on a Vincent van Gogh portray have revealed a beforehand unknown self-portrait hidden on the again, in response to a BBC report Wednesday. The invention was made when consultants on the Nationwide Galleries of Scotland scanned the work forward of an upcoming exhibition.

On the again of the early work Head of a Peasant Girl (1884), conservators seen the profile of a bearded man sporting a brimmed hat and a neckerchief beneath the layers of glue and cardboard. Though solely the left facet of his face is seen, the sitter maintains an intense, inescapable gaze.

The invention got here as a “shock,” senior conservator Lesley Stevenson instructed BBC. “This can be a important discovery as a result of it provides to what we already find out about Van Gogh’s life.”

The Dutch artist, whose work rose to prominence following his untimely dying at 37 years outdated in 1890, by no means reaped the financial rewards of his work. Throughout his lifetime, van Gogh typically reused or used either side of his canvases to economize. This isn’t the primary time that one other work has been uncovered on the again of his work from this time interval.

Head of a Peasant Girl depicts a neighborhood girl from the city Nuenen within the Neatherlands, the place the artist lived from December 1883 via November 1885. The self-portrait on the again, nonetheless, is believed to have been painted after he moved to Paris in 1886.

Roughly 15 years after his dying, the portray was loaned to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam for an exhibition, which consultants consider is when the cardboard backing was added to the canvas and framed. Over the course of its lifetime, the portray modified possession a number of occasions. It didn’t come to Scotland till 1951, when it entered the gathering of Alexander and Rosalind Maitland. The distinguished Edinburgh lawyer subsequently gifted it to the Nationwide Gallery of Scotland in 1960.

Conservators are additional researching whether or not it’s doable to take away the glue and cardboard with out damaging the work.

Guests to the exhibition “A Style for Impressionism: Trendy French Artwork from Millet to Matisse,” which is slated to open on July 30, will be capable of see the X-ray picture in a lightbox.

“Moments like this are extremely uncommon,” Frances Fowle, senior curator of French Artwork on the Nationwide Galleries of Scotland instructed BBC. “We’ve got found an unknown work by Vincent van Gogh, probably the most essential and standard artists on this planet.”

This information follows the invention of three sketches by Amedeo Modigliani hidden beneath a portray of a nude girl. The sketches have been discovered utilizing X-ray know-how whereas learning the portray forward of an October exhibition on the Barnes Basis in Philadelphia.