Picasso’s Hidden Paintings
This week’s article is less of a crime and more of a mystery. Under a few iconic Picasso works, conservators and curators have noticed some previously unknown paintings. Why did Picasso choose to paint over them and who did he cover up with the new composition? Turns out this is a topic that has sparked much debate!
Picasso
Some obligatory background on Picasso himself. Pablo Picasso was born on the 25th of October, 1881 in Malaga, Spain. He is regarded as one of the most influential painters of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the cubist movement, inventing constructed sculpture, co-inventing collage, and more. Pretty accomplished.
Typically Picasso’s work is categorized into periods though there is some debate over naming and timelines. The most commonly accepted periods are, the Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), also called the Crystal period.
The works that we will be examining today are all from the Blue Period where he painted, surprise, in mostly hues of blue only occasionally using other colours. It is said that Picasso’s mental state during this period wasn’t great and most of these paintings featured bleak subject matter like poverty.
The Works in Question
With the context set, let’s move on to talking about the actual paintings in question and how people even noticed that there were other paintings under their surfaces.
The first one we’ll discuss is Woman Ironing painted in 1904. In 1989 the painting was being restored and examined at it’s home at the Guggenheim Museum when restorers looking through their infrared camera noticed something beneath the composition of the woman. They looked some more and flipped the painting upside down when they finally saw that it was a painting of a man with a moustache. Examinations were conducted with both X-Ray machines and the newest type of infrared camera and this produced quite a clear image of the man beneath the painting. Conservators have come to the conclusion that Picasso painted this original portrait of a man when he was not a successful artist and therefore didn’t have money to purchase tons of canvases so ended up reusing ones for new paintings, so part of the mystery is solved. However, what they do not agree on is who the man in the painting is.
There are a few theories that are pretty hotly debated, even still. Some of the likely suspects include Ricard Canals who was a frenemy of Picasso’s. People think he is the most likely subject because (like all of these men) he has a moustache and portraits and photographs show him looking a lot like the mystery man in the portrait. Not thaaaat convincing but ok. The second potential subject is Picasso himself, people argue that this could have been a self-portrait done by staring in a mirror. The portrait of the man is looking out, directly at the viewer and this could be because Picasso was looking directly at himself in the mirror when painting. Third on the list is Mateu Fernandez de Soto who was a sculptor and a very good friend of Picasso; they shared apartments and studios in both Barcelona and Paris. Finally, we have Benet Soler, another very good friend of Picasso and his tailor. Soler supported him during some very lean years commissioning a family portrait from him as well as allowing him to trade paintings for cash or clothes.
Take a look at these four options for yourself, who do you think this mystery man is?
The second painting we will chat about has a similar story to Woman Ironing. In 2014 conservators at The Phillips Collection in Washington were restoring and examining The Blue Room, an early Picasso masterpiece, when they noticed something beneath the painting. Using infrared technology they uncovered another portrait of a man wearing a bow tie and resting his face on his hand.
Technical analysis revealed that this portrait had been painted just before The Blue Room. “Curator Susan Behrends Frank [said]: "When he [Picasso] had an idea, you know, he just had to get it down and realise it," explaining that the artist had quickly painted over another completed picture when the inspiration took him” (BBC, 2014). This one is a bit more of a mystery because researchers are still trying to dig into the painting, try to find any clues and identify this man. One potential option is that he is Ambroise Vollard, a Paris art dealer who hosted Picasso’s first show in 1901 but there is nothing definitive yet to prove this so the research continues. But take a look at his picture below, these two men look pretty similar to be tbh.
What’s interesting is that curators and those who came into close contact with The Blue Room had suspected that something was beneath it for years before the portrait was discovered. In a 1954 letter, a conservator noted some odd brushstroke texture that did not match the composition of the visible painting. It wasn’t until the 1990s, when an x-ray was done on the painting, that they were able to confirm this suspicion but it was difficult to really see until 2014 when the portrait was truly discovered with infrared technology.
The last painting to talk about is La Misereuse Accroupie (The Crouching Beggar). In 2018 using non-invasive procedures (likely infrared cameras again) it was discovered that this painting hides a landscape beneath it. Like The Blue Room experts noticed that brush stroke textures were not lining up with the figure of the woman as early as 1992. There is also some unrelated colour that can be seen through some crack lines that hints at the canvas being reused or a change in composition.
In order to probe into the landscape painting further, the researchers used a technique known as x-ray fluorescence to look at the distribution of chemical elements found in different pigments. All of these tests revealed to the team that this landscape painting was actually not done by Picasso at all, he had used another painter’s canvas and painted over the work to create La Misereuse Accroupie. The identity of the original painter is still unknown, the landscape has been identified as a real location in Barcelona that a lot of painters at the time referenced so the pool of possibilities is large.
Researchers also found that Picasso had actually used the shapes found in the landscape to inform the shapes of the woman he was painting. The hills painted in the background became the shapes of her back and her clothing. They also realized that Picasso had changed the composition of the original painting, he had initially painted the woman with her arm and hand visible and perhaps holding a piece of bread. Evidently, he decided he didn’t like this and ended up painting over it.
If you’re interested, La Misereuse Accroupie lives at the AGO in Toronto so you could go examine the brushstrokes and cracks for yourself!
To Wrap Up
Learning about artists’ processes is always fascinating and gives us a little window into their reality and lives and how they came to create these works that millions of people have seen and appreciate.
Dorothy Kosinski, the director of the Phillips Collection, is very interested in finding more ‘hidden’ paintings and says, “"our audiences are hungry for this. It's kind of detective work. It's giving them a doorway of access that I think enriches, maybe adds mystery, while allowing them to be part of a piecing together of a puzzle," she said. "The more we can understand, the greater our appreciation is of its significance in Picasso's life"” (The Guardian, 2014).
Works Cited:
Davis, Nicola. “Artwork Hidden Under Picasso Painting Revealed by X-Ray”. The Guardian. 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/17/artwork-hidden-under-picasso-painting-revealed-by-x-ray
“Hidden Painting Found Under Picasso’s The Blue Room”. BBC News. 2014. https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-27884323
“Picasso’s Blue Room Hides a Secret Painting”. The Guardian. 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jun/17/pablo-picasso-the-blue-room-hidden-painting
Vogel, Carol. “Scratching the Surface, Two Picassos Revealed”. The New York Times. 2012. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/10/25/arts/design/hidden-picasso.html?_r=0