Minisode 2: Discovered - An Unknown Self-Portrait of Van Gogh

This half-hour ‘sode discusses the exciting discovery of a previously unknown self-portrait by Van Gogh, which he painted on the back of his painting known as Head of a Peasant Woman in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland. Come for the knowledge, stay in spite of your hypothetical broken ankle.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Wait, am I recording? You are listening to Stuff About Things, an art history podcast. All right, let's bango. Hello and welcome to Stuff About Things, an Art History Podcast. The voice you are hearing right now belongs to me, Lindsay. Hello. Thank you for waiting patiently for this mini sode. I do have a good reason for the delay. I got a job. Yay! That has obviously taken up a lot of my time, but I promised y'all a mini sode, so you're gonna get a mini sod, which I am categorizing as any episode less than 30 minutes. This mini sod was inspired by some stuff that I came across when researching and writing episode 33, which covers Van Gogh, his life, and his work, with a particular emphasis on Starry Night. This mini sode can stand alone, but if you are so inclined to learn more about Van Gogh, I recommend that you head over to episode 33 and give that a listen. As for this mini sode, I've got a lot to talk about, so let's jump straight to the part where I tell you stuff about a thing. An unknown self-portrait by Van Gogh, discovered but not uncovered. In summer 2022, art conservator Leslie Stevenson made a discovery. In preparation for a then upcoming and now current exhibition on Impressionist works at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh, her team at the National Galleries of Scotland had ordered x-rays of one of the masterworks of their collection, a painting simply titled Head of a Peasant Woman. Sounds like a pretty boring painting, right? No. Not only is the peasant woman wearing a wonderful bonnet cap type thing that I find delightful, the painting also has the very good fortune of having been painted by one Vincent Van Gogh. Have you heard of him? He's kind of a big deal. The portrait features a peasant woman with dark hair and dark eyes, whose tan skin betrays the hours that she must spend in the sun. She wears drab dark clothing in shades of grayish blue and white, in addition to the aforementioned Dutch bonnet, which to me looks quite jazzy, but which I believe was a very traditional item of clothing for someone of her class. She is situated against a dark background, with the portrait only showing her shoulders and her head. The official entry for the painting on the website of the National Galleries of Scotland states that it's a small painting, but at 18 inches by 14 inches, the woman's head is basically life size. Van Gogh painted this oil-on-canvas portrait of a peasant woman in 1885, when he was in his early 30s, at which point he was living with his parents in the town of Noonen in the Netherlands, where he was just beginning to develop his signature style. He painted the head of a peasant woman around the same time that he completed one of his most famous works, uh specifically of his early career, a painting known as the potato eaters. In these paintings that treated the subject of peasants and laborers, Van Gogh did not use the usual colorful style that we now associate with his work, but instead employed a harsh realism that fit the lives of these laborers as painters like Gustave Corbet and Jean-Francois Millet had done before him. The head of a peasant woman and the potato eaters also have at least one other thing in common. The peasant woman in question appears in both. She is believed to be Gordina de Groot. I think that in Dutch it's more like Gordina de Groot, but that sounds ridiculous coming from me, so we'll just call her Gordina. Gordina was an unmarried 30-year-old woman. How scandalous, who also lived in Noonen and who posed for Van Gogh on several occasions. So many occasions, in fact, that local villagers began to talk. Rumors about Vincent and Gordina's relationship abounded, especially after Gordina fell pregnant in 1885. Van Gogh denied that the two were ever romantically involved, and while art historians seem to believe him, the local villagers did not. Van Gogh eventually leaves Noonan to move to Paris, where he lives with his brother Theo for the years of 1886 and 1887. He brings with him at least one thing from home: this portrait of Gordina de Groot. But more on that later. For now, what's important is that the painting passed into the possession of Theo Van Gogh in the years that followed. After Vincent van Gogh died in the summer of 1890, and Theo Van Gogh died six months later in the winter of 1891, the painting then became the property of Theo's widow, Joe, who took on the role of Van Gogh's biggest champion following the death of her husband. At some point around 1905, Joe loans the painting of the peasant woman to the Statelik Museum in Amsterdam. If I understand things correctly, the painting arrived unstretched, meaning that there was no wood frame or stretcher holding the material taut, providing its structure. Let me explain it like this. When Van Gogh painted this piece of canvas, he would have first stretched that canvas over a wooden framework and then secured it in place with something like nails or tacks, providing him with a lovely flat, smooth, taut surface on which to paint. When he was done and the painting was dry, he would then remove it from the stretcher, making it easier to store and allowing him to reuse the stretcher. If left on its own, especially if it's left over a long period of time, there is the major risk, even the likelihood, that the painting will crack or flake, which would be bad news bears. So when the head of a peasant woman arrives to the Stedlech Museum unstretched and unframed, the museum professionals have to do something. For whatever reason, the museum professionals who worked with the painting in 1905 decided to glue it to a piece of cardboard rather than re-stretch it and frame it. I don't know why they made this decision, but that's what they did. As a result, when you see pictures of the painting out of its frame today, it looks like a painting on panel rather than on canvas. So that all happens in 1905, and presumably after the exhibition, the painting is returned to the Van Gogh collection. In 1923, an English woman by the name of Evelyn St. Croix Fleming purchases the painting. She does so on the advice of her lover, yes, her lover, the painter Augustus John, who was a pretty big deal in Britain around that time. In addition to being a socialite, Evelyn St. Croix Fleming made her money the old-fashioned way, by marrying a very rich man who died in World War I, leaving her with a lot of money. Enough money to purchase a painting by Van Gogh. Also, fun fact, Evelyn's son, Ian, went on to write the James Bond books. Evelyn St. Croix Fleming eventually sells the painting to a Scottish lawyer by the name of Alexander Maitland in 1951, who, in turn, donated the painting to the National Galleries of Scotland in 1960, making the painting, in essence, the property of the Scottish people. And it has remained a beloved treasure of the National Galleries of Scotland for over six decades. The thing about paintings is that they're silent, which makes them very good at keeping secrets. And this particular painting of the head of a peasant woman had a major secret, one that finally came to the surface, at least in a manner of speaking. In summer of 2022, conservator Leslie Stevenson and her colleague, curator Frances Fowl, which is a great name, ordered x-rays of this particular painting. When they examined the x-rays, however, they made a shocking discovery. The ghostly face of a man. This man, however, was no stranger. In fact, he was very recognizably none other than Vincent Van Gogh himself, looking dapper in a brimmed hat and a neckerchief. Stevenson and Fowl had found nothing less than an unknown self-portrait by Vincent Van Gogh. Finding a previously unknown self-portrait by Vincent Van Gogh is undoubtedly a once-in-a-lifetime experience for a curator and a conservator, and it's very exciting for any museum and the world at large. It's not, however, all that surprising, at least not with regards to what we know about Van Gogh and his working methods. Case in point, when Van Gogh was feeling particularly frugal, he would save money by grabbing a painting that he'd done a few years earlier, he'd flip it over, and bada bing, bada boom, he had a fresh piece of canvas. That's exactly what he did with this portrait of Gordina de Groot, aka Head of a Peasant Woman. He flipped it on over and got to work on a new self-portrait. From the limited information that we can glean from the X-ray, Van Gogh likely painted this self-portrait when he was living with Theo in Paris. So between the years of 1886 and 1887, when he was soaking up all of the artistic inspiration that the city had to offer, namely the Impressionist fever that had struck the city in the 1870s and the 1880s. What we know at the very least is that Van Gogh must have painted this self-portrait before December of 1888, because in the self-portrait, Van Gogh is sporting a very healthy, very intact left ear, which he infamously cut off while in the depths of a mental health crisis on Christmas Eve Eve of 1888. That provides us with a surefire date by which this self-portrait had to have been painted. The self-portrait was lost, quote unquote lost, in 1905, when Joe Van Gogh loaned the canvas to that exhibition in Amsterdam, where, as I said, museum professionals decided to stabilize the unframed, unstretched painting by gluing it to a piece of cardboard. There are a number of reasons why these professionals may have chosen to showcase the head of a peasant woman over the self-portrait, some of them being that they simply found the portrait of Gordina to be more interesting, to be more finished, to be more polished. In truth, though, we'll never really know how or why they made this decision to sacrifice the self-portrait in order to glue Gordina's portrait to this cardboard. Now I thought that there would be a lot more to talk about with the self-portrait because I constantly saw stories about it popping up. But once you read one of these stories, you've basically read them all. And rather than just cut things off here, I thought it would be interesting to talk about the use of x-rays in art conservation. Because when I first heard that x-rays were a thing in art history, I remember thinking that x-raying a painting just seemed like a silly thing to do. X-rays, though, can tell us a lot about a painting that we can't know just by looking at it. Before jumping into this, I want to give enormous credit to my buddy Jean Dahmermouth, who is a professional conservator, a listener of the podcast, hi Gene, and a soon-to-be podcaster herself. I have been peppering Jean with questions this past week about x-rays in conservation and a variety of other things, and she very graciously shared her expertise in this matter with me, which I will now pass to you. Any inaccuracies, however, are entirely my own. First things first, how do X-rays work? What's the science behind it? Now please keep in mind that I am not a scientist, and this is a very general overview in which I do what I do, which is my best. When someone talks about X-rays, they're usually referring to one of two things: X-radiation or X-radiography. X radiation refers to the emission, the releasing, of electromagnetic waves, which are so small that they can pass through the spaces between atoms. Yes, atoms, the smallest particles of matter. As a rule, the denser a material, the more tightly packed its atoms are, leaving less space for those waves to travel through. The waves are instead absorbed. The opposite is also true. The less dense a material, the more space there is between the atoms, allowing these waves to pass through it. That's x-radiation. Then there is X radiography, which refers to the use of X radiation to produce images, which we call X-rays. The fact that X-ray is short for both X-radiation and X-radiography is a little confusing, but bear with me. I think it's safe to say that most of us know X-rays within a medical context. So let's use that to explain the science at play here. Let's say that you've broken your ankle. Your doctor will likely order an X-ray. In order to do that X-ray, you'll be taken into a room with an X-ray machine, which is a machine that emits X-radiation, and an X-ray table, which contains either a piece of film or sensors of some kind that react when waves of X-radiation make contact with them. You'll put your leg up on the X-ray table and they'll like position you, and then the doctor will position the X-ray machine above your ankle, leave the room, flip a switch or whatever, thereby producing X-radiation, which travels in electromagnetic waves through your ankle. If you were to hold a fresh piece of X-ray film to the light, it would appear completely white. When the film is touched by electromagnetic waves, however, it turns darker. The less dense the material, the darker it'll be. So bones, being very dense, show up on X-rays as white, because X-radiation has not penetrated through them to the film beyond. Now, if you have a break in your bone, there is space for those waves to pass through, and it shows up as a darkened line on the bone. Fat and muscle are less dense, so the waves pass through those more easily, touching the film and then changing its color. The same process occurs when you x-ray a painting, because different kinds of paints and other artistic materials, like say graphite or pencil, all have different chemical and atomical properties. Lead paint, for instance, is made using lead, duh, which is very atomically dense, and so lead paint absorbs more X-rays and therefore shows up as white on the resulting X-ray film. Other kinds of paints will show up as shades of black and gray as they let through more X radiation. Now, as I understand it, paintings that haven't been changed should result in X-ray images that look like the painting. It might look a little crazy because it's a negative image in contrasting shades of gray, but it should still be recognizable as that painting. When you x-ray a painting that has undergone changes, though, those will show up because the x-rays are being absorbed by the layers of paint that we can't see. I explored such a situation in episode what 30? In which I talk about a painting of a woman with a unicorn attributed to Raphael. That portrait originally showed a woman holding a small dog. At some point, someone decided, Nabro, let's show her holding a unicorn, and so they painted a unicorn over the dog. On the X-ray of the painting, however, you can still see a form that doesn't quite look like a unicorn. It's got these like floppy ears that are definitely not on the surface of the painting. That tells us that the unicorn wasn't always a unicorn. It was originally a dog. Now, according to my buddy Gene, again, professional conservator, extraordinaire, there are a number of different reasons that a museum might choose to X-ray a painting. One is obviously to see if there have been any changes made to the image. Did the artist change the placement of a person's hands? Did the artist paint over an existing image? Things like that. Jean also said that x-rays can help conservators understand if the painting has been cut down or potentially enlarged, if canvas has been added to it. X-rays can also be very helpful to better understand how an artist painted something, including techniques used and obviously changes made. Of course, x-rays aren't the only tool used to better understand these changes. There are also other methods of imaging a painting, of seeing beneath the surface, if you will, such as infrared reflectography, which can show any underdrawings that the artist might have made, any kind of sketches to the surface of the canvas or panel before going in with paint. There are also times when you can visually see indications that a painting has been changed. You might be able to see through layers of paint that's become more translucent over hundreds of years. You might be able to see seams where canvas has been added that's kind of appeared over time as the paint has settled. And then there's even instances in which light will react differently across the surface of a painting, indicating that something was done, that some change was made. So there's all kinds of methods that can be used to better understand a painting that aren't x-rays. In the case of the discovery of this previously unknown self-portrait by Van Gogh, however, X-rays were the winner-winner of this art conservation chicken dinner. While art conservation has come a very long way since 1905, when people thought gluing double-sided canvas paintings to cardboard was a fan-flippantastic idea, there's still things that even modern technologies and expertise may not be able to accomplish, such as uncovering a previously unknown portrait of Van Gogh that's been glued to a piece of cardboard? I have heard of conservators pulling off crazy feats of conservation magic, but this project would be a real triumph if they can pull it off. From the articles that I've read, there seems to be a tone of confidence that it might be possible, but ultimately it'll come down to one thing. Can conservators remove the glue and cardboard backing without damaging the head of a peasant woman? You don't risk a beautiful painting by Van Gogh to uncover a self portrait that, for all it's been through, probably is not in the best condition. You also never know what technology might develop in the next 10, 20, 30 years. Years that would allow us, like I mean saying us, like I have anything to do with this, that would allow conservators to either get better images of the self-portrait, that would help us understand its state of conservation, and or to remove the cardboard with less risk. We'll just have to wait and see. But I do know one thing for sure. This self-portrait of Van Gogh has lurked on the back of this canvas, unknown and unseen, for well over a century. It's not going anywhere anytime soon. That is all I have for you on the previously unknown portrait by Van Gogh recently discovered in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland. That self-portrait is currently on display in the form of its x-ray at the exhibition A Taste for Impressionism at the Scottish National Gallery and will stay on view until November 13th, 2022. As always, I will include sources, additional reading, and relevant pictures on the podcast's website, stuffaboutthingspodcast.com. I do want to credit the official webpage of the National Galleries of Scotland. They have a variety of media related to the discovery of the self-portrait, as well as to an article by my boy, Martin Bailey, who wrote an article about the discovery that I found much more helpful than most. Another article that stood out from the crowd is the one that appeared in the Washington Post by Sebastian Smee, so I'll have those all posted. I, of course, also want to extend another hearty thank you to my good friend Jean Domermouth for all of her insights. A quick Gus corner for this mini-sode, Gus is very happy. He recently enjoyed milling around a family event where he proved remarkably talented at shaking people down for nibbles. He's definitely getting older, though he doesn't seem to know that. And the thought of leaving him in about a week makes me cry. Like literally, I have sobbed about it. But he'll be with my parents, who are his favorite people ever. So he'll be very well taken care of and very, very loved. As for me, I don't know when I'll get another episode up. I think that the next couple of months will be crazy for me, but rest assured, I will absolutely resurface once again at one point or another. In the meantime, if you've enjoyed the podcast, I would really appreciate it if you took a few minutes out of your day to leave it a rating and a review. You can also contact me directly through the podcast's website or through the podcast email, which is stuffaboutthingspodcast at gmail.com. It might take me a week or two to reply. I'm kind of busy, but I will reply. And I do love hearing from you. The usual thanks go out to hooksounds.com and freemusicarchive.org for the music featured in the intro and the outro. The first song that you hear is a version of Box Brandenburg Concerto number four by Kevin McLeod, and the second, jauntier tune is called Success Dreams. I wish you happiness and health in these final days of summer, and of course, I hope that you take the time to look at something beautiful today.