As the banner atop every page on this website should attest, I am a fan of Vincent van Gogh's art. So it was with some interest that I read
this news item, about a lost van Gogh being found... underneath a not-lost van Gogh.
Art expert and historians in Boston and Amsterdam announced Friday that they have discovered a valuable lost work by the painter Vincent Van Gogh hidden under an existing canvas at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, discovered the Van Gogh painting underneath the artist's painting entitled "Ravine," which is owned by the MFA.
MFA conservator Meta Chavannes was conducting a technical examination of "Ravine" and discovered the existence of the second painting below the paint surface of the work.
So they had an existing, well-known van Gogh, and while poking at it they discovered that he painted it over another of his own works. Which is interesting... but now what? If the painting on top was some kind of Dogs Playing Poker they could chip it off and have a new irreplaceable and nearly priceless van Gogh. But they've got a classic Van Gogh over a long lost less-classic Van Gogh. I don't think there's any way for them to remove the top version and preserve it, thus doubling their van Goghage, so what's the point in this? Just art historian satisfaction, I guess.
The lost work was known from mentions Vincent made in letters to his brother/benefactor Theo, so that's one mystery solved. Vincent painted a tremendous amount of canvases in a short time, and they were not valued during his life time, so lots were lost, reused, destroyed, etc. The fact that Vincent produced a lot of them while trekking across provincial Europe, and often gave away paintings, or traded them for food, means there are almost certainly a few still tucked away in dusty attics in French and Belgian farmhouses. Finding one or more of those is the Holy Grail of art collectors, and one turns up every few years, though there are always issues of authenticity. In fact, plenty of art scholars think quite a few of the known, identified, museum-displayed, hundred million dollar van Goghs are forgeries, though this is a highly contentious issue, given the prestige and tens of millions of dollars involved.
Labels: art, van gogh
