8 ms·

Vincent Van Gogh: Hidden self-portrait discovered by X-ray

165 points by samizdis 4y ago

ComputerCat 4y ago
It's kind of depressing that art can be owned privately and stored away. If this was never donated to NGS then I doubt any private owners would have had it x-rayed and the self portrait would never have been discovered.
- justinator 4y ago
  Most art is owned privately and stored away (as an investment). Most art that's owned in a museum is stored (and is "donated" to the museum by the private collector). Also part of the problem is that art is fragile and showing say: a painting can degrade it, as light breaks up pigment. Even in storage, certainly paints/mediums change their physical characteristics. Many "hidden" paintings reveal themselves underneath the oils that make up the final painting as the medium becomes more transparent. Maybe it should be more clear to the public if the idea that art isn't so much given to museums, rather that artwork is used as a speculative investment by a private party until such a time it makes financial sense to transfer it to a museum. There is also the fact that if one is powerful/influential, you can influence the value of the artwork just by owning it and keeping it out of circulation. The whole private buying and selling of the artwork from gallery owners to auction houses works to raise the value of the artwork through hype, really. It can be a hell of a grift. van Gogh wasn't very good at playing that game, even when his brother was an art dealer - that's such a leg up and he blew that advantage. van Gogh isn't known to be all that easy to work with. Attempted murder doesn't help with this. We know him know since we celebrate his mental illness.
  - jrapdx3 4y ago
    You make a number interesting points. FWIW I've been a printmaker for many years and know many artists "successful" and not. Museums acquire work through purchase and donation, the ratio varies among museums and divisions within a museum. Several years ago a collector donated several thousand pieces to the major museum in my region. Fortunately a few of my pieces were included and are now part of the museum's "permanent collection". Obviously museums prefer donations but only if the museum gets the kind of work they're seeking. It's a lot like academia, very competitive among curators to have the "right" high-valued work in the museum's possession. And it's true that an artist's success is largely a marketing game. Artists who are good self-promoters will do the best. Those who aren't typically remain obscure. Of course success doesn't necessarily indicate artistic merit. That's often not decided until much later, like 50 or 100 years down the road. Conservation of work is a complex subject. Oil-based paint was the only real option from the 1400's until ~1960. Oil paint dries by polymerization of fatty acids, problem is it doesn't know when to quit.[0] A paint film continues to harden, eventually the film integrity fails and the paint flakes off the substrate (canvas, etc.). Oil paintings are very likely to require restoration after 100 years if not sooner. Worth noting: unlike works on paper, oil paintings are less affected by light exposure. That's why museums often display paintings in brighter areas (200 lux) vs. drawings, prints, photos being exhibited in dimly lit galleries (50 lux). Interestingly many great artists were lousy technicians. Da Vinci is said to have experimented with various additives to paint which affected stability. Fascinating subjects indeed, and certainly contribute to keeping conservators employed. [0] https://justpaint.org/aspects-of-longevity-of-oil-and-acrylic-artist-paints/ https://justpaint.org/aspects-of-longevity-of-oil-and-acryli...
- nomel 4y ago
  How would you suggest that artists get paid? Someone bought this painting from an artists, just as artists want you to do right now, so they can pay their bills. At what point would the painting be seized, from the buyer?
  - User007b 4y ago
    Isn't Art produced for money just another product? What is the difference between art and products when money becomes the sole focus of creating art? Should an artist just be creating art for the buyers?
    - yupper32 4y ago
      You're asking a lot of deep sounding questions, but at the end of the day they don't matter much. Michelangelo was commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel. The School of Athens was commissioned by Pope Julius II. You'll find that a massive number of famous art pieces were commissioned, and I don't think you'll find any serious people who think less of them because of it.
      - User007b 4y ago
        But isn't the - at least partially - purpose of art to be a critical mirror of society? Art and the freedom of art have often been used to critise society. Now if art becomes a product, where is the critical function of art? Critical art is part of healthy and diverse society, without we're one step closer to an orwellian utopia.
        yupper32 4y ago
        Again, you're getting too deep where you don't need to be. You say "if art becomes a product" while I'm showing you examples from 500 years ago where people were paid to create some of the most famous pieces of art in history. You're tapping into a single category of art -- art that is critical of society -- as if that's the only purpose of art. The purpose of and the person who commissioned the piece of art is just part of the context and history of the piece. It says nothing of its impact and importance.
- tobylane 4y ago
  Research is done for some private sales, or for loans from private collections to public exhibitions. I can’t think of any specific examples that went as far as xraying though.
kitanata 4y ago
Just a minor myth busting here. Vincent Van Gogh was absolutely well known and well liked as a painter while he was alive. He didn’t make a lot of money at it, and rich people didn’t fawn over his paintings, and he definitely suffered from mental illness before he committed suicide, but the myth that he was a failure as an artist during his life while he was alive is just that… a myth. The guy is the GOAT and while he was alive… many… many… other artists also saw him that way. His contemporaries absolutely adored him, and even tried to emulate him. His work was known to be important during his life to even the most financially successful of painters. I suppose if you limit the concept of “success” to how much money one earns in their life, then fine Van Gogh was not very financially successful, but he was monumentally successful and recognized as such during his life by the only real measure that matters: Impact. This is why as a journalist or a writer, it is important to confirm “what you know” before committing it to a piece. If you don’t verify everything you risk perpetuating myths instead of realities.
- happytoexplain 4y ago
  Isn't the trivia that he only sold one painting during his life (where I assume the definition of "sell" includes paid commissions), and it was to his brother? Are you saying that is true, but he was popular as an artist (just not successful financially as an artist)? Or is that bit of trivia also untrue? Edit: It occurs to me that also implicit in this popular definition of "successful artist" is that the majority of other well known artists were financially successful via their art, but I don't know if that's even true! Edit: The parent was edited after I made this comment to be more explicit about financial success vs reputational success.
  - Finnucane 4y ago
    History is full of artists (whether painters, musicians, writers, etc.) who were known and respected by their peers, but failed to get much traction with the general public, and particularly with people who would pay money for their work, during their lifetime.
    - failTide 4y ago
mhb 4y ago
Why did the x-ray it? Do they x-ray all paintings?
- peter303 4y ago
  To also learn how the drawing was executed. Original sketches may underlay the final paint. Van Gogh was a rapid painter and didnt paint in stages that much. But someone like DaVinci who worked on the same painting for years, if not a decade, reveals various changes from original conception. In addition to Xray there is hyperspectral imaging and fluorescent imaging. Hyperspectral photographs at many different optical colors and extra-optical light. That revealed some techniques of creating the Mona Lisa.
rwmj 4y ago
Van Gogh, well known for reusing canvases, you'd probably want to X-ray any of his paintings to see if there was anything underneath, or in this case on the reverse.
tannhaeuser 4y ago
Not saying it is, but tbh that story sounds like a canard or fake if there ever was one.
olivermarks 4y ago
Frances Fowle looks like the peasant woman! The xray image is bound to end up as an NFT somewhere soon
peter303 4y ago
Besides often being broke, Vincent had a strong compulsion in his final years to complete a painting every day. Sometimes he was forced to reuse canvas then. (Part of his final style too to get the paint on as fast as possible with large strokes.)
- Pokepokalypse 4y ago
  The problem was; he also used very thick impasto-style brushstrokes. With Oil Paint, this often takes a long time to dry (and leaves a physical texture which will be visible if you overpaint that). Some of Van Gogh's paintings are so thick, that underneath an outer layer of dried paint, there's still liquid paint trapped underneath, which may not dry for another hundred years. But yeah, he was known for re-using canvases, as were many impressionist and post-impressionist school painters.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    Will this internal drying of the liquid paint affect the looks of the painting in any way? ie will the painting look different in 100 years than it does today, assuming it is kept perfectly preserved and untouched in the ideal environment?
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      No, but it can lead to trouble when the painting is re-framed or cleaned because any kind of manipulation of the canvas can crack the paint. This is specialist work (especially on paintings with this kind of value) so they're in good hands but the problem is much less pronounced with thinner layered paintings.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  Over his life as an artist (bout 10 years) he produced on average a piece of work every 36 hours. 900 paintings and a ton of drawings and sketches. He was incredibly prolific and although he had no real training, he practiced constantly and studied relentlessly. 100% dedicated to the craft.
sachdevs 4y ago
Wonder if there is any way to separate this from the painting on top
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Yes, but not non-destructively. This has been done to some paintings where the painting 'underneath' was considered to be far more valuable (either monetary or historically). Personally I think this should never be done but obviously opinions on such stuff differ. See: https://artenet.it/en/removal-of-overpaint/ https://artenet.it/en/removal-of-overpaint/ When the chemical properties of overpaint and underlayer are close this can get extremely hairy, removal speeds of a few square centimeters per day are not unheard of, you need to patience of a monk for this sort of thing.
  - notjulianjaynes 4y ago
    Unless I misunderstood the article the self portrait is on the reverse side of the canvas and can't be seen because someone glued cardboard over it.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      That may make recovery much more tractable depending on the glue used. The cardboard itself is likely not going to pose a big challenge.
Geonode 4y ago
Interesting if they separate it and it becomes part of his body of work. I hope not to be judged by the discards of my work, I wonder if this should be an artist's right ?
- trhway 4y ago
  i think it is an established practice to research and publish "full work sets", including the archives of letters, notes, incomplete/preparational drawings, etc. of big artists, writers, etc. Whether the discards of your works would be worth of such an attention is up to you :)
- mftb 4y ago
  The idea that we control how others judge us is largely an illusion.
- mc32 4y ago
  If you are of sound mind and decide you don't want something you produced seen, destroy it irreversibly (burn, melt, shatter, degauss, whatever it takes. Don't leave it for others to destroy --often they ignore your will and then we see posthumous works come to light.
  - Geonode 4y ago
    Van Gogh couldn't foresee the X-ray. I wonder what future tech will reveal. But yes, good advice.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pleb_nz 4y ago
Can only see one ear. Identity confirmed

165 points by samizdis 4y ago

It's kind of depressing that art can be owned privately and stored away. If this was never donated to NGS then I doubt any private owners would have had it x-rayed and the self portrait would never have been discovered.

justinator 4y ago
Most art is owned privately and stored away (as an investment). Most art that's owned in a museum is stored (and is "donated" to the museum by the private collector). Also part of the problem is that art is fragile and showing say: a painting can degrade it, as light breaks up pigment. Even in storage, certainly paints/mediums change their physical characteristics. Many "hidden" paintings reveal themselves underneath the oils that make up the final painting as the medium becomes more transparent. Maybe it should be more clear to the public if the idea that art isn't so much given to museums, rather that artwork is used as a speculative investment by a private party until such a time it makes financial sense to transfer it to a museum. There is also the fact that if one is powerful/influential, you can influence the value of the artwork just by owning it and keeping it out of circulation. The whole private buying and selling of the artwork from gallery owners to auction houses works to raise the value of the artwork through hype, really. It can be a hell of a grift. van Gogh wasn't very good at playing that game, even when his brother was an art dealer - that's such a leg up and he blew that advantage. van Gogh isn't known to be all that easy to work with. Attempted murder doesn't help with this. We know him know since we celebrate his mental illness.
- jrapdx3 4y ago
  You make a number interesting points. FWIW I've been a printmaker for many years and know many artists "successful" and not. Museums acquire work through purchase and donation, the ratio varies among museums and divisions within a museum. Several years ago a collector donated several thousand pieces to the major museum in my region. Fortunately a few of my pieces were included and are now part of the museum's "permanent collection". Obviously museums prefer donations but only if the museum gets the kind of work they're seeking. It's a lot like academia, very competitive among curators to have the "right" high-valued work in the museum's possession. And it's true that an artist's success is largely a marketing game. Artists who are good self-promoters will do the best. Those who aren't typically remain obscure. Of course success doesn't necessarily indicate artistic merit. That's often not decided until much later, like 50 or 100 years down the road. Conservation of work is a complex subject. Oil-based paint was the only real option from the 1400's until ~1960. Oil paint dries by polymerization of fatty acids, problem is it doesn't know when to quit.[0] A paint film continues to harden, eventually the film integrity fails and the paint flakes off the substrate (canvas, etc.). Oil paintings are very likely to require restoration after 100 years if not sooner. Worth noting: unlike works on paper, oil paintings are less affected by light exposure. That's why museums often display paintings in brighter areas (200 lux) vs. drawings, prints, photos being exhibited in dimly lit galleries (50 lux). Interestingly many great artists were lousy technicians. Da Vinci is said to have experimented with various additives to paint which affected stability. Fascinating subjects indeed, and certainly contribute to keeping conservators employed. [0] https://justpaint.org/aspects-of-longevity-of-oil-and-acrylic-artist-paints/ https://justpaint.org/aspects-of-longevity-of-oil-and-acryli...
nomel 4y ago
How would you suggest that artists get paid? Someone bought this painting from an artists, just as artists want you to do right now, so they can pay their bills. At what point would the painting be seized, from the buyer?
- User007b 4y ago
  Isn't Art produced for money just another product? What is the difference between art and products when money becomes the sole focus of creating art? Should an artist just be creating art for the buyers?
  - yupper32 4y ago
    You're asking a lot of deep sounding questions, but at the end of the day they don't matter much. Michelangelo was commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel. The School of Athens was commissioned by Pope Julius II. You'll find that a massive number of famous art pieces were commissioned, and I don't think you'll find any serious people who think less of them because of it.
    - User007b 4y ago
      But isn't the - at least partially - purpose of art to be a critical mirror of society? Art and the freedom of art have often been used to critise society. Now if art becomes a product, where is the critical function of art? Critical art is part of healthy and diverse society, without we're one step closer to an orwellian utopia.
      - yupper32 4y ago
        Again, you're getting too deep where you don't need to be. You say "if art becomes a product" while I'm showing you examples from 500 years ago where people were paid to create some of the most famous pieces of art in history. You're tapping into a single category of art -- art that is critical of society -- as if that's the only purpose of art. The purpose of and the person who commissioned the piece of art is just part of the context and history of the piece. It says nothing of its impact and importance.
tobylane 4y ago
Research is done for some private sales, or for loans from private collections to public exhibitions. I can’t think of any specific examples that went as far as xraying though.

kitanata 4y ago

Just a minor myth busting here. Vincent Van Gogh was absolutely well known and well liked as a painter while he was alive. He didn’t make a lot of money at it, and rich people didn’t fawn over his paintings, and he definitely suffered from mental illness before he committed suicide, but the myth that he was a failure as an artist during his life while he was alive is just that… a myth. The guy is the GOAT and while he was alive… many… many… other artists also saw him that way. His contemporaries absolutely adored him, and even tried to emulate him. His work was known to be important during his life to even the most financially successful of painters. I suppose if you limit the concept of “success” to how much money one earns in their life, then fine Van Gogh was not very financially successful, but he was monumentally successful and recognized as such during his life by the only real measure that matters: Impact. This is why as a journalist or a writer, it is important to confirm “what you know” before committing it to a piece. If you don’t verify everything you risk perpetuating myths instead of realities.

happytoexplain 4y ago
Isn't the trivia that he only sold one painting during his life (where I assume the definition of "sell" includes paid commissions), and it was to his brother? Are you saying that is true, but he was popular as an artist (just not successful financially as an artist)? Or is that bit of trivia also untrue? Edit: It occurs to me that also implicit in this popular definition of "successful artist" is that the majority of other well known artists were financially successful via their art, but I don't know if that's even true! Edit: The parent was edited after I made this comment to be more explicit about financial success vs reputational success.
- Finnucane 4y ago
  History is full of artists (whether painters, musicians, writers, etc.) who were known and respected by their peers, but failed to get much traction with the general public, and particularly with people who would pay money for their work, during their lifetime.
  - failTide 4y ago

mhb 4y ago

Why did the x-ray it? Do they x-ray all paintings?

peter303 4y ago
To also learn how the drawing was executed. Original sketches may underlay the final paint. Van Gogh was a rapid painter and didnt paint in stages that much. But someone like DaVinci who worked on the same painting for years, if not a decade, reveals various changes from original conception. In addition to Xray there is hyperspectral imaging and fluorescent imaging. Hyperspectral photographs at many different optical colors and extra-optical light. That revealed some techniques of creating the Mona Lisa.

rwmj 4y ago

Van Gogh, well known for reusing canvases, you'd probably want to X-ray any of his paintings to see if there was anything underneath, or in this case on the reverse.

tannhaeuser 4y ago

Not saying it is, but tbh that story sounds like a canard or fake if there ever was one.

olivermarks 4y ago

Frances Fowle looks like the peasant woman! The xray image is bound to end up as an NFT somewhere soon

peter303 4y ago

Besides often being broke, Vincent had a strong compulsion in his final years to complete a painting every day. Sometimes he was forced to reuse canvas then. (Part of his final style too to get the paint on as fast as possible with large strokes.)

Pokepokalypse 4y ago
The problem was; he also used very thick impasto-style brushstrokes. With Oil Paint, this often takes a long time to dry (and leaves a physical texture which will be visible if you overpaint that). Some of Van Gogh's paintings are so thick, that underneath an outer layer of dried paint, there's still liquid paint trapped underneath, which may not dry for another hundred years. But yeah, he was known for re-using canvases, as were many impressionist and post-impressionist school painters.
- googlryas 4y ago
  Will this internal drying of the liquid paint affect the looks of the painting in any way? ie will the painting look different in 100 years than it does today, assuming it is kept perfectly preserved and untouched in the ideal environment?
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    No, but it can lead to trouble when the painting is re-framed or cleaned because any kind of manipulation of the canvas can crack the paint. This is specialist work (especially on paintings with this kind of value) so they're in good hands but the problem is much less pronounced with thinner layered paintings.
nemo44x 4y ago
Over his life as an artist (bout 10 years) he produced on average a piece of work every 36 hours. 900 paintings and a ton of drawings and sketches. He was incredibly prolific and although he had no real training, he practiced constantly and studied relentlessly. 100% dedicated to the craft.

sachdevs 4y ago

Wonder if there is any way to separate this from the painting on top

jacquesm 4y ago
Yes, but not non-destructively. This has been done to some paintings where the painting 'underneath' was considered to be far more valuable (either monetary or historically). Personally I think this should never be done but obviously opinions on such stuff differ. See: https://artenet.it/en/removal-of-overpaint/ https://artenet.it/en/removal-of-overpaint/ When the chemical properties of overpaint and underlayer are close this can get extremely hairy, removal speeds of a few square centimeters per day are not unheard of, you need to patience of a monk for this sort of thing.
- notjulianjaynes 4y ago
  Unless I misunderstood the article the self portrait is on the reverse side of the canvas and can't be seen because someone glued cardboard over it.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    That may make recovery much more tractable depending on the glue used. The cardboard itself is likely not going to pose a big challenge.

Geonode 4y ago

Interesting if they separate it and it becomes part of his body of work. I hope not to be judged by the discards of my work, I wonder if this should be an artist's right ?

trhway 4y ago
i think it is an established practice to research and publish "full work sets", including the archives of letters, notes, incomplete/preparational drawings, etc. of big artists, writers, etc. Whether the discards of your works would be worth of such an attention is up to you :)
mftb 4y ago
The idea that we control how others judge us is largely an illusion.
mc32 4y ago
If you are of sound mind and decide you don't want something you produced seen, destroy it irreversibly (burn, melt, shatter, degauss, whatever it takes. Don't leave it for others to destroy --often they ignore your will and then we see posthumous works come to light.
- Geonode 4y ago
  Van Gogh couldn't foresee the X-ray. I wonder what future tech will reveal. But yes, good advice.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

pleb_nz 4y ago

Can only see one ear. Identity confirmed