Never mind his ear, where is the missing part of Van Gogh’s hat?
Artistic detective work by Courtauld gallery reveals the long-kept secret of £90millon masterpiece
‘Our conservator realised that it used to be bigger and someone has ripped off a section of the portrait at some point’
PART of Van Gogh’s Self Portrait with a Straw Hat has been discovered to be missing by a London gallery after a dealer secretly tore the painting to fit it into a frame.
The £90 million masterpiece in the Courtauld Gallery is on an unprecedented loan from the US, after the Detroit Institute of Art was persuaded to send the self portrait for a landmark exhibition of the Dutch artist’s work.
But when the “box office” image arrived in London, having remained unmoved on gallery walls in Detroit for the best part of 100 years, experts examining the painting found that part of Van Gogh’s hat was missing.
Placed alongside another portrait of Van Gogh in his simple straw headwear, conservators became curious when they noticed that the 1887 painting shipped from the Detroit Institute of Arts was suspiciously small.
Dr Karen Serres, curator at the Courtauld, said : “The work was never loaned but we managed to get hold of it. They have never attempted a proper study.
“If you think about it, people come to see Van Gogh – it’s ‘box office’, so it stays on the wall for people to see.
“But then you never get the chance to study it.
“By putting it next to another self portrait of him in a straw hat, it was noticed that the painting seemed a little small by comparison, and his hat a little truncated.
“By studying it, our conservator realised that it actually used to be bigger, and someone has ripped off a section of the portrait at some point.”
Tucked into a large frame, the damage to the artwork was not immediately obvious, but experts found that the painting – made on a thin board – was snapped at some point in its history, possibly to fit it into its frame.
The left side of Van Gogh’s hat – on the right hand side of the painting – is the part that has been removed.
The city of Detroit bought Self Portrait with a Straw Hat in 1922, when the motor industry was booming, but amid financial difficulties in 2014 officials considered selling off the painting, which was then valued at a minimum of £90million by Christie’s.
Dr Serres believes the damage was probably done by an “early collector” before the reputation of Van Gogh made his paintings almost priceless.
The painting was given by Van Gogh to his friend and fellow painter Émile Bernard as a gift, before making its way through the hands of French art dealer Ambroise Vollard, collector Bernard Goudchaux, and Armenian art dealer Dikran Khan Kélékian.
Van Gogh painted the work in 1887, and it shows him wearing the peasant garb of a blue shirt and simple straw hat that would also kept the sun from his eyes while painting outdoors.
It forms part of exhibition of self-portraits at the Courtauld that Van Gogh painted frantically before his death by suicide in 1890.
The Detroit Institute of Arts has been contacted for comment.