Lost van Gogh
Posted by sarah
 Wild Vegetation, owned by the Vincent van Gogh museum
(drawing of the painting discovered beneath Ravine by Vincent van Gogh)
In October of 1889, Vincent van Gogh's brother Theo was late in sending the artist his supplies, leaving him without any unused canvases. Van Gogh did what any impatient and impulsive artist would do: he painted over one of his already completed paintings. 118 years later, the lost painting beneath Ravine (now owned by the Museum of Fine Art, Boston) has been discovered.
Using x-ray technology and a close examination of the painting's surface, scholars at MFA Boston and the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, were able to uncover Wild Vegetation, a painting van Gogh referenced more than once in drawings and in letters. According to the press release, the underlying composition was most likely painted in June 1889, during the early period of van Gogh’s stay at the asylum of Saint-Paul de Mausole near Saint-Rémy, and was re-used as a support for Ravine a few months later, in October 1889.
You can't see Wild Vegetation without an x-ray machine (and unusually extensive access to the museum's collection), of course. But you can see van Gogh’s pen-and-ink copy of Wild Vegetation (above) in Van Gogh’s Drawings: New Insights on view at the Van Gogh Museum through October 7, 2007. And Ravine (below)—the masterpiece that now covers the earlier painting—is on view in the MFA’s Impressionist Gallery. The images featured here are courtesy of MFA Boston's website, where you can get the whole story, if you're so inclined
Ravine, owned by MFA Boston X-ray of Ravine showing underpainting
Overheard
8/13/2007 3:52:24 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00) 
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