Cincinnati Art Museum Chief Conservator Serena Urry noticed something odd about one of their pieces in their collection this past week.
While examining Still Life with Bread and Eggs by noted French painter Paul Cézanne for possible treatment and cleaning she spotted some unusual cracks.
“I had a hunch,” said Urry. She had the painting x-rayed to see if the still life was painted over an earlier work.
The digital x-ray image revealed a well-defined portrait hidden beneath the painting of food and drink on a kitchen table.
The still life, made in 1865, is one of only a handful of works Cézanne dated, possibly making portrait underneath the earliest firmly dated portrait by the artist and several features suggest it could be a self-portrait.
“Serena had an excellent hunch. We are lucky it came into the lab when it did, because intuition like that can only come from extensive experience with historical paintings and deep understanding of the working methods of 19th-century artists, both of which she has in spades,” said Peter Jonathan Bell, PhD, Curator of European Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings at the Cincinnati Art Museum. “This is a huge discovery!”
Cézanne (1839–1906) participated in the first Impressionist exhibitions in the 1870s, before charting his own artistic course in the 1880s and ‘90s. Considered a leader of the Postimpressionist movement, he is one of the most influential artists in the history of modern painting, the Cincinnati Art Museum stated.
Cézanne created the Cincinnati still life in his 20s.
“We want to follow up in the coming months and years by conducting more imaging and analysis of the painting and research into the portrait’s subject, ideally in partnership with an institution well-equipped for technical study and with leading Cézanne scholars,” said Bell. “This will result in a publication and possibly an exhibition, as we seek to reveal as much as we can about this important, long-hidden portrait.”
More detective work is needed, the museum stated. Working with conservation scientists and using cutting-edge technology such as multi-spectral imaging and x-ray fluorescence mapping may yield further insights, including the colors of the hidden painting.
Many artists reused canvases, and in recent years, paintings have been found hidden beneath works by Picasso, van Gogh and other famous artists with the help of x-rays and other technologies.
Still Life with Bread and Eggs was acquired in 1955, a gift of the great Cincinnati philanthropist and modern art collector, Mary E. Johnston, and is one of two paintings by Cézanne in the museum’s permanent collection.
“We went from having two Cézannes to three with this discovery,” said Urry.
Cézanne’s Still Life with Bread and Eggs returns to view December 20 in Gallery 227.
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