What Lies Beneath: Revealing Painters' Secrets
Nov. 6-March 29, 2009
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
600 Main St.
Hartford
278-2670
wadsworthatheneum.org

Ever wondered what went through the cracked brain of Vincent Van Gogh as he painted the sixth of eight self-portraits over the course of a few weeks in the summer of 1887? And what the heck was Marsden Hartley thinking when he shot all of those arrows into his own eyeballs back in 1939?

Though these are all mysteries, a small but fascinating new exhibit at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, What Lies Beneath, unravels some of their outer layers — quite literally, in some cases. In the process, the show offers a novel perspective on the magic-making of great painters and the act of creation itself.

Thanks to technologies like X-rays and infrared reflectography (IRR), curators, conservators and art historians can now begin to penetrate the surfaces of paintings to find the "early drafts" of iconic works of art, like Monet's "The Beach at Trouville" (1870) or Van Gogh's "Self Portrait" (1887) or Hartley's enigmatic "Sustained Comedy" (1939). Wadsworth conservators Stephen Kornhauser and Ulrich Birkmaier selected 10 paintings (nine from the collection; the Hartley is borrowed) to demonstrate how this works. The paintings cover about 500 years of art history; each painting was examined by X-rays and IRR, and the results are on display like a triptych: the original painting, the X-ray image, the infrared image.
"Van Gogh had many paintings that had other paintings underneath them," says Birkmaier. "It was a combination of economics — trying to save money by re-using old canvases — and his losing interest in the previous work that he painted over."

For some time, the Wadsworth staff had been troubled by its own Van Gogh self-portrait. Because it didn't possess the trademark "look" of a Van Gogh painting, some doubt had been cast on whether it was even an original.

"We don't X-ray capriciously," said Kornhauser. "X-rays are a non-destructive test. No harm is done to the painting. With the Van Gogh self-portrait, the attribution was in doubt. It was done in 1887 when he was in Paris, a transitional time for him when he was flirting with impressionism. We knew the canvas had been relined, which had flattened the impasto. But we were looking for the smoking gun about its origins."

When the canvas was relined by a previous owner, the process had removed the signature Van Gogh "ridges" of paint. When the conservators X-rayed the painting, they discovered a previous work beneath the self-portrait, of a woman in front of a spinning wheel — more "traditional" Van Gogh subject matter.

Yet, even this was not noticeable until one of the conservators turned the X-ray image upside down. There, clear as day, was the previous image.

"[This] provides conclusive evidence that this was a Van Gogh," said Kornhauser. "During the summer of 1887, he did eight self portraits, six of which had under-images. He was both economizing and destroying the past."

Some of the other 10 works in What Lies Beneath are testaments to the artists' fussiness, as the X-rays reveal the many revisions, erasures and paint-overs (e.g., an 18th-century portrait by Robert Feke and a 19th-century interior view by Francis Edmonds).

Some artists are, however, notorious, or celebrated, for their "first take" philosophy. Claude Monet is one of these. He's represented here by a beautiful seascape at Trouville, one of about eight plein air paintings he made at this French beach resort in the summer of 1870.

"Monet was the quintessential plein air painter," said Birkmaier. "He would set his easel up near a view and work directly on the canvas with oil paint without preparatory drawings. You can see the technique of direct wet paint in the Trouville painting."

However, using infrared rays, the conservators were able to see something else entirely. That is, from a composite from 225 different infrared images of the painting, they discovered a huge ghost sailboat that, were it allowed to stay in the painting, would have overwhelmed the placid scene. Monet either thought better of it and painted over it (doubtful, given the slow-drying oil paints he was using) or he took a canvas that he'd already started elsewhere and simply painted over the image. (Roll mouse over image to see it the infrared composite image of Monet's "The Beach at Trouville." 

"Monet painted very quickly," said Kornhauser. "He prided himself on not having a studio. He was the master of immediacy."

Other "name" painters represented are Winslow Homer, Theodore Rousseau and Marsden Hartley. Hartley's painting is the most jarring in the show. The label on the back of the canvas, in Hartley's hand, reads "Sustained Comedy," but he later appended a second title, "Sustained Travesty." The image itself echoes St. Sebastian, with arrows piercing both eye sockets. Other added elements suggest a crucifixion scene. It's a tortured and disturbingly strange image, and the X-rays remove all doubt about its being a self-portrait. This is corroborated by a large black and white photograph of Hartley on display next to the painting (a nice touch), though he always denied that it was a self-portrait. Taken all together, these clues might shed light on the agony of living as a closeted gay man in the mid-20th-century America.

"We hope this show gives the artists a humanness one might not expect," said Kornhauser. "This demystifies the artist and allows a closer inspection of their work."