Something to behold as Van Gogh wrestlers spring forth from flowers
British scientists use X-rays, AI and 3D printing to recreate pair of figures under Master’s still life
VINCENT Van Gogh’s “hidden” portrait of two wrestlers has been brought to life by British scientists 135 years after it was painted over by the artist.
An X-ray of one of Van Gogh’s floral paintings in a Dutch museum confirmed the existence of the artwork which the Dutch master had made reference to as a student to his brother Theo on Jan 22 1886, telling him: “This week I painted a large thing with two nude torsos – two wrestlers.”
However, he reused the canvas so the completed painting never took shape – until now, 135 years later, as two British scientists have recreated the earlier composition in full colour with 3D textured brushstrokes in a project lasting five months. Neuroscientist Anthony Bourached and physicist George Cann, both PHD candidates at University College London, used X-rays, artificial intelligence and 3D printing.
The wrestlers are beneath Van Gogh’s Still Life With Meadow Flowers and Roses, painted in 1886-87, an oil on canvas measuring 100cm by 80cm, in the Kröller-müller Museum in Otterlo.
Mr Bourached is a specialist in high-dimensional neuroscience, trying to model human behaviour through AI.
He told The Daily Telegraph that they trained an algorithm to simulate how the original painting might have looked, analysing Van Gogh’s brushstrokes in hundreds of paintings
“How much it is like the original painting is impossible to tell at this point because the information doesn’t exist. I think it’s very convincing – by far the best guess we can get with current technology,” he said.
He is the first to admit that it is not perfect and that, while the X-ray shows broad outlines, this is “a statistical method of interpretation”. Artists have reused canvases, either because they could not afford new supplies or they were unhappy with a composition. Precisely why Van Gogh painted over his wrestlers is unknown.
He had arrived in Antwerp in 1885, enrolling at the art academy the following year.
Part of the course involved painting wrestlers. Van Gogh told his brother: “I really like doing that.”
The recreated wrestlers will be exhibited this week at the Focus Art Fair in the Carrousel du Louvre, Paris, where it is expected to fetch offers in the region of tens of thousands of euros.
Thought to be the first attempt to recreate a “hidden” Van Gogh, it is the latest experiment in the scientists’ “Neomasters” project, conducted through a company called Oxia Palus.
Previous examples include a Picasso painting of a crouching nude woman, recreated almost 120 years after the artist painted an entirely different composition over it, The Blind Man’s Meal, in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. On their website, the scientists say: “With potentially thousands of works of art hidden dormant beneath existing paintings, resurrecting the world’s lost art has only just begun.”
The X-ray that revealed the wrestlers was among discoveries made in 2012 by researchers from the University of Antwerp, headed by Prof Koen Janssens. Yesterday, on being shown images of the recreated painting, he said: “It reminds me very much of one of the Van Gogh self-portraits.
“The scientists say that information from so many paintings was used, but it seems to be biased towards one.”
The recreation prompted a mixed response from Prof Emily L Spratt, an art historian and data scientist at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York. She described it as “a bold project”, using technology to bring “a more nuanced understanding” of what can be learned from traditional conservation methods.
But she is uncomfortable about these scientists calling such recreations “Neomasters”.
She said: “I don’t know if Neomaster refers to their work as computer scientists or if they’re saying the algorithm is a Neomaster in some sort of a resurrection of Van Gogh. That raises a host of ethical problems.”
She added: “Van Gogh did not want the world to see that underdrawing completed and that was for a reason. This also has to be considered.”
Responding to that criticism, Mr Bourached said: “When we study history, we don’t consider what political figures wanted us to know about them. It’s much more important to us that we know the absolute truth as much as possible… Why do we think about it differently [with] artists?”
‘With thousands of works of art hidden beneath existing paintings, resurrecting lost art has only just begun’