The hills come alive in form of Picasso’s Crouching Woman
AT FIRST glance, the undulating lines of Pablo Picasso’s La Miséreuse accroupie appear to have been meticulously placed to hint at a shoulder, waist and hip beneath the beggar’s green cloak.
But new scans of the Blue Period masterpiece suggest that the Spanish artist actually traced the contours of her back from an image of a garden in Barcelona on the canvas beneath.
X-rays have revealed an entirely different scene below Picasso’s work, which experts think was a painting of the Parc del Labertint d’Horta, formal grounds on the outskirts of the city.
The garden was a popular spot for artists and the lost oil painting bears similarities to the work of Santiago Rusiñol, a friend of Picasso, and the leader of the Catalan modernist movement.
“We know that Santiago Rusiñol painted this site and we believe other younger Catalan painters would have painted it, too,” said Kenneth Brummel, assistant curator of modern art at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
“Because we have not uncovered a signature we cannot attribute the painting to any individual, but we are confident it was a younger artist who lived in or around Barcelona at the turn of the century.”
La Miséreuse accroupie (The Crouching Woman) was created at the height of Picasso’s Blue Period in 1902, when he was suffering from depression after the death of his friend, Carlos Casagemas, who shot himself in a Paris café.
Reflected in his art, his mood led to a series of paintings composed almost entirely in blue and green hues, featuring prostitutes, beggars and drunks. The gloomy subjects and sombre colours proved deeply unpopular with the public, and Picasso struggled to sell the work, falling into poverty.
Around the same time as the painting Picasso was moving away from Rusiñol and the Barcelona artists, so re-using the canvas could have been an attempt to eliminate the work of former associates or a simple act of necessity as he could not afford to buy fresh canvas.
Researchers suspected the existence of a painting underneath because of an uneven texture in the paint, which had Miséreuse accroupie cracked, exposing unexpected colours. Picasso was known to paint over other compositions without scraping away the paint beneath and is known to have worked over other artists’ work during his Blue Period.
X-rays taken 20 years ago suggested another composition was below but it was only with new technology that the full details emerged. The breakthrough came when Sandra Webster-Cook, a senior conservator, rotated the landscape and noticed it matched the woman’s back.
Mr Brummel added: “It became evident to both of us that Picasso repurposed the line formed by the ridge of the hills in the background of the landscape.”
John Delaney, an imaging scientist at the National Gallery of Art, studied the painting with infrared reflectance hyperspectral imaging, which reveals underlying images and layers. Scans showed that Picasso originally intended for the woman to be holding bread, a depiction found in a watercolour the same year.
“The works of art are linked and it allows us to understand what Picasso was thinking about,” said Marc Walton, a research professor at Northwestern University where the imagine techniques were developed.
“The hills that were painted in the background become the contours of her back and it is part of the genius of Picasso that he sees things in shapes and forms that other people wouldn’t see and transforms them.”
The findings were presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Austin, Texas.
The models made claims against at least 25 photographers, agents, stylists, casting directors and other industry professionals including Demarchelier fellow photographer Greg Kadel, who has worked for Vogue, and Templer, who has worked with Coach, Zara, and Tommy Hilfiger.
All of those accused in the Globe have denied the allegations. However the Condé Nast publishing empire, whose titles include Vogue, has said it has stopped hiring Demarchelier and Kadel.
Demarchelier said the complaints against him were untrue. “People lie and they tell stories,” he said. He became the first non-British, official photographer of the Royal family when Diana requested he take on the role of her personal photographer.
Condé Nast has issued a new “code of conduct” including banning alcohol on sets and the use of models under the age of 18 without a chaperone present.
Any nudity or “sexually suggestive” poses are to be agreed on beforehand.
‘It is part of the genius of Picasso that he sees things in shapes and forms that other people wouldn’t see’