Buggy Van Gogh

Bits of grasshopper found in one of his works

THIS INSECT IS a work of art.

A team of curators at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., recently noticed an out-of-place intruder in Vincent Van Gogh’s “Olive Trees.”

A grasshopper — minus its abdomen and thorax — was discovered to be lodged in the paint of the famous artwork created 128 years ago.

In the lower foreground of the work, the bug seems to have hopped itself into colors similar to its own browns and greens, blending in and remaining hidden for over a century.

“Van Gogh worked outside in the elements,” Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art director Julian Zugazagoitia told the Kansas City Star. “And we know that he … dealt with wind and dust, grass and trees, flies and grasshoppers.”

“Olive Trees” was painted by Van Gogh in 1889, a year before he committed suicide at age 37. He discussed the work in a letter to his brother Theo, the Star reported.

“But just go and sit outdoors, painting on the spot itself!” the artist wrote. “Then all sorts of things like the following happen — I must have picked up a good hundred flies and more off the 4 canvases that you’ll be getting, not to mention dust and sand . . . when one carries a team of them across the heath and through hedgerows for a few hours, the odd branch or two scrapes across them.”

The grasshopper was found when a team of outside researchers — including curator Mary Schafer — was working with the museum’s collection of French paintings. She noticed the trespassing insect while pouring over the painting with a magnifying glass.

Michael Engel, a paleo-entomologist at the University of Kansas, said there were no signs of movement from the grasshopper in the paint, indicating it was dead when it fell onto the canvas.

The grasshopper will not be removed from the paint and cannot be identified by casual museum goers with the naked eye.