New leash of life for early Picasso work as ‘ghost dog’ discovered under layer of paint
A HIDDEN dog has been spotted in an early Pablo Picasso masterpiece more than a century after it was created.
The animal was concealed beneath a thin layer of dark paint in the Le Moulin de la Galette, which was completed in 1900 when the Spanish artist was 19.
The painting is on display at the Guggenheim Museum in New York as part of the Young Picasso in Paris exhibition. It was “re-discovered” using modern imaging technology which allowed experts to see the original outline that lay beneath.
Julie Barten, senior painting conservator, said: “If you look closely [at the painting] you can see there’s this lingering ghost of the dog.
“There’s red paint showing through in areas and if you look really closely you can see the eyes and the ears.
“You can see that when concealing it he actually left the contour of the head still visible.” Ms Barten said she had always had a “very strong feeling” that there was something hidden beneath the painting. “What we know was that in many instances Picasso painted aspects of the composition and then subsequently obliterated them and transformed them into other compositional elements. This was really part of his practice”, she added.
The exhibition looks at the painter’s early formative years in Paris and the impact the city had on his work.
Megan Fontanella, modern art curator at the Guggenheim, said: “It completely changes how one would have encountered this picture.
“You would have seen this really quite adorable dog in the foreground looking almost directly at the visitor with this wonderful red bow.”
She said they could “only speculate” on why Picasso covered up the dog, but suggested it may have been because it drew the observer’s eye away from the main subject of the painting.
The painting depicts a dance hall full of elegantly dressed men and women who are dancing, drinking and gossiping. In the foreground of the picture a woman leans on a table covered with a white cloth.
Roberta Smith, art critic at The New York Times, described the exhibition as an insight into “Picasso before he was Picassso”. She said: “The completeness and complexity, the amazing growth spurt, of Le Moulin de la Galette cannot be underestimated. It is one of the first paintings Picasso completed in Paris – the masterpiece of this initial twomonth transformative immersion.”