Art conservators dream of finding hidden secrets in the masterpieces they look after. Rarely do they expect to find a dead grasshopper.
Curators at the Nelson-Atkins museum of art in Kansas City said they discovered the dead insect in one of its star paintings, Vincent van Gogh’s Olive Trees, when it was being scanned as part of the research for a catalogue of its French painting collection.
It was spotted by paintings conservator Mary Schafer. She told a local broadcaster that she found it in the work’s lower foreground. “Looking at the painting with the microscope ... I came across the teeny-tiny body of a grasshopper submerged in the paint, so it occurred in the wet paint back in 1889.
“We can connect it to Van Gogh painting outside, so we think of him battling the elements, dealing with the wind, the bugs, and then he’s got this wet canvas that he’s got to traipse back to his studio through the fields.
“What’s fun is we can come up with all these scenarios for how the insect landed in the paint.”
Schafer said they were curious to know if the grasshopper could be studied further to possibly identify which season Van Gogh painted Olive Trees.
The paleo-entomologist Michael Engel, a senior curator and professor at the University of Kansas, was approached to examine the grasshopper further.
He discovered that the insect’s thorax and abdomen were missing and there was no sign of movement in the surrounding paint. In other words, it was already dead and desiccated when it somehow landed on the artist’s wet canvas and could not be used for dating purposes.
Van Gogh painted Olive Trees in 1889, the year after his falling out with his friend Gauguin which may have led to the most famous act of self-mutilation in the history of art: cutting off his own ear.
Soon after, Van Gogh left the Yellow House in Arles and entered an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. It is likely that he painted Olive Trees while he was there.
Van Gogh was used to the the problem of insects. In an 1885 letter to his brother Theo he writes of painting outdoors: “I must have picked up a few hundred flies and more off the 4 canvases that you’ll be getting, not to mention dust and sand ... when one carries them across the heath and through hedgerows for a few hours, the odd branch or two scrapes across them.”
The grasshopper may not help in any art historical research but it has become a talking point for museum visitors, peering closely in to the painting to see if they can spot the dead insect.
The museum said more significant research on the painting was underway with new analysis showing that Van Gogh used a type of red pigment that gradually faded over time. That suggests the painting looks slightly different today than when it was completed.
Juliàn Zugazagoitia, director of the Nelson-Atkins, said Olive Trees was a beloved painting at the museum and the scientific study added to its richness.
“Van Gogh worked outside in the elements, and we know that he, like other plein air artists, dealt with wind and dust, grass and trees, and flies and grasshoppers.”