A team of conservators discovered a secret beneath the brushstrokes of a Blue Period portrait by Pablo Picasso. Since 1901, Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto has hidden an earlier Picasso painting of a woman. The identity of the sitter and the purpose of the original portrait remain unknown.
“We Have Long Suspected Another Painting Lay Behind the Portrait”
Pablo Picasso was just 19 years old when he painted Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto. It is one of the earliest paintings from the artist’s legendary Blue Period, during which he favored somber subjects and a cool monochromatic palette. The Picasso portrait recently underwent conservation at the Courtauld Institute of Art ahead of its inclusion in a new exhibition, Goya to Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection. The exhibition opens at the Courtauld Gallery in London on Friday, February 14.
According to Barnaby Wright, head of the Courtauld Gallery, conservators were not surprised to find another figure hidden beneath the surface of the painting. “We have long suspected another painting lay behind the portrait of de Soto because the surface of the work has tell-tale marks and textures of something below,” Wright explained. “Now we know that this is the figure of a woman. You can even start to make out her shape just by looking at the painting with the naked eye.”
X-Ray and Infrared Images Reveal Hidden Portrait
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Sign up to our Free Weekly NewsletterIn collaboration with the Oskar Reinhart Collection, conservators at the Courtauld used special imaging technology to analyze the Picasso portrait. They created new X-ray and infrared images of Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto, which reveal evidence of a previously undocumented underpainting: the head of a woman to the right of de Soto’s head. The woman, whose identity is unknown, appears subdued, much like other female figures in Picasso’s Blue Period paintings, such as The Absinthe Drinker (1901) and Woman with Crossed Arms (1901-2).
While experts don’t know exactly why Picasso painted over the first portrait, doing so wasn’t unusual for the artist. One explanation is that Picasso simply recycled the canvas when he was short on supplies. Instead of whitewashing the canvas to start anew, he began a new composition on top of the old one. It is also possible that he painted over the earlier portrait because it did not align with his burgeoning Blue Period aesthetic. Whatever the reason, Wright explained, “Picasso’s way of working to transform one image into another and to be a stylistic shapeshifter would become a defining feature of his art.” This approach “helped to make him one of the giant figures of art history. All that begins with a painting like this.”
After opening this Friday, Goya to Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection will run through May 26 at the Courtauld Gallery. Alongside the Picasso portrait, the exhibition will feature works by Goya, Renoir, Cézanne, and Van Gogh that have never been shown outside of Switzerland.
