Historians X-Rayed A Famous Painting And Uncovered A Strange ‘Presence’ Lurking Underneath

For more than 50 years, Head of a Peasant Woman has been stored at the National Galleries of Scotland, where it has served as a strong example of Van Gogh’s early work. But as it turns out, the somewhat gloomy portrait of a dark-eyed woman in a white cap has been harboring an incredible secret all along.

While preparing to display the iconic painting, conservators at the gallery used an X-ray machine to study its deepest layers. And there, hidden within the canvas, they found something that had been concealed for well over a century. Finally exposed, it casts a new light on the Post-Impressionist master — and changes how we view Head of a Peasant Woman for good.

Although he is considered one of the most famous artists in the world today, Van Gogh struggled to achieve his dreams during his lifetime. In fact, it wasn’t until after his death that his paintings started to receive critical acclaim. And for much of his short career, he lived an existence marred by poverty and despair.

According to many experts, the harsh realities of Van Gogh’s life are reflected in his work — even the pieces that might seem innocuous on the surface. But might the troubled painter have hidden additional layers of meaning to his canvases as he worked? This latest discovery has generated a buzz among art historians the world over.

Born in the Netherlands in 1853 Van Gogh was still a child when he first developed a passion for art. And in 1869 he was sent to The Hague, where he prepared to enter the industry as a dealer. According to historians, he was good at his job, and the early years of his 20s were spent in successful contentment. But then things began to go wrong.

Having been rejected by the woman that he loved, Van Gogh left The Hague and relocated to Paris, where he grew bitter about his role in the commercial art world. And so, he turned to religion instead, hoping to become a pastor. When that didn’t work out, he drifted for a while, eventually taking his brother’s advice to pursue painting as a career.

After another failed love affair, Van Gogh became a student of Anton Mauve, his second cousin and a member of the influential Hague School of artists. Back in the Dutch city, he developed his craft — first with watercolors and then in oils, the medium for which he would become famous.  

Although Van Gogh enjoyed painting, though, his personal life was no less tumultuous. And eventually, he left The Hague once more and went to stay with his parents, who were living in the town of Nuenen some 90 miles to the southeast. Interestingly, it was a move that would come to define his career.

In Nuenen, Van Gogh found something a million miles away from the comparatively cosmopolitan atmosphere of The Hague. A rural community characterized by poverty and hard manual labor, the village might have seemed a grim sight to many visiting city-dwellers. But to the aspiring artist, it was a source of almost endless inspiration.

During his two-year stay in Nuenen, Van Gogh painted almost 200 pieces, alongside hundreds of sketches, drawings, and watercolors. In fact, it is considered one of the most productive stints in the young artist’s entire career. At times, he turned to the landscape around him, recreating the village’s fields and architecture in his own distinctive style.

At other times, though, Van Gogh chose to focus on portraits instead, taking his inspiration from the hard-working people who surrounded him in Nuenen. And it was during this period that he began producing his peasant character-studies, a series of paintings focusing on farmers, anglers, and weavers going about their daily business. 

In 1885 Van Gogh added another installment to this series, dubbed Head of a Peasant Woman — the very painting that has caused such a stir almost 140 years down the line. According to experts, it is a portrait of Gordina de Groot, a 30-year-old woman with whom the artist was alleged to be having an affair.

While these allegations have never been proven, there is no doubt that De Groot was a favorite model of Van Gogh. A few weeks after finishing Head of a Peasant Woman, he painted The Potato Eaters, a work widely regarded as his first masterpiece. And in among the five figures seated around a dark table is a familiar face: the same one depicted in the earlier work. 

After Nuenen, Van Gogh began drifting once more, traveling from Antwerp to Paris and the south of France. But his health began to deteriorate, and by May 1889 he was living in the Saint Paul de Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy. There, he painted some of his most famous works, including The Starry Night.

By the time that Van Gogh committed suicide in 1890 he was only just beginning to receive recognition for his work. And the penniless artist could never have predicted what would happen in the decades to come. After a few memorial exhibitions ignited interest in his work, his reputation grew, eventually resulting in international acclaim.

In 1905 Van Gogh’s sister-in-law Johanna — who had inherited much of his estate — is reported to have loaned Head of a Peasant Woman to a gallery in Amsterdam. There, she was told, it would form part of an exhibition dedicated to the Post-Impressionist, whose star was by now immeasurably on the rise. 

Some time later, the painting was acquired by Evelyn Fleming, a British socialite whose son, Ian, would go on to write the James Bond novels. Then, in 1951 it was purchased by Alexander Maitland, a Scottish lawyer. Within a few years, he had donated the artwork to the National Gallery, where it remains to this day. 

Located in the heart of Edinburgh, the National Gallery of Scotland is home to some of the most famous paintings on Earth, including pieces by Rembrandt, Monet, Holbein, and Constable. And it also houses three paintings by Van Gogh. As well as Head of a Peasant Woman, both Orchard in Blossom and Olive Trees can be found within the museum’s collections.

But it’s Head of a Peasant Woman that has been making headlines recently — and for one surprising reason. On July 30, 2022, the exhibition “A Taste for Impressionism” opened in Scotland’s capital. Featuring works by Van Gogh, Monet, and Gauguin, alongside other famous names, it promises an unrivaled glimpse into the world of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art.

After all, the gallery is home to one of the finest collections of its kind anywhere in the world. And when curators were preparing the exhibition, they had plenty of pieces from which to choose. Clearly, though, Head of a Peasant Woman had to be included — and so they got to work preparing the painting for display.

During a routine X-ray, though, conservators discovered something incredible — a previously unknown portrait painted on the reverse side of the painting. And it’s not just any old portrait, either. With his unmistakable beard, large hat, and loose neckerchief, the mysterious sitter appears to be none other than Van Gogh himself. 

“It was absolutely thrilling,” the National Gallery’s Lesley Stevenson told British newspaper The Guardian in July 2022. “We weren’t expecting much [of the] modest little painting… We don’t see much of the peasant woman, but what we have is the lead white, the much heavier pigment he used for his face, showing up after the X-ray goes through the cardboard.”

According to experts, the self-portrait was probably painted by Van Gogh some time after Head of a Peasant Woman, following his move to Paris. There, he began associating with artists such as Émile Bernard and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, taking his work in a different direction. And it was around this period when he began to draw inspiration from the Impressionist movement.

“This period where he began producing self-portraits was key in the development of his mature style, when he began experimenting with his own distinctive brush stroke,” the National Gallery’s Frances Fowle told The Guardian. “Van Gogh was a very independent thinker and he developed his radical new style so quickly.”

According to Fowle, the discovery of the hidden portrait shines a new light on a significant period in Van Gogh’s career. But how did such an important painting end up lost and forgotten — despite being housed in one of the world’s leading galleries for more than 50 years? Slowly, art historians are beginning to uncover the truth. 

Despite the prolific nature of his work, you see, Van Gogh was still trapped in poverty for most of his life. And so, it was not uncommon for him to recycle materials such as canvases when inspiration struck. Compelled to produce a self-portrait, then, he may have decided to save money by repurposing an old piece painted back in Nuenen.

After all, Head of a Peasant Woman represented Van Gogh’s old artistic style — not his new direction, inspired by Impressionists such as Paul Gauguin and Georges Seurat. And it wouldn’t be the only time that he painted later pieces on the reverse of his Nuenen works. In fact, conservators have discovered several similarly hidden self-portraits in the past.

According to international journal The Art Newspaper, back in 1929 Jan Cornelius Traas, a restorer from the Netherlands, was working on three Van Gogh pieces from the Nuenen era. And when he peeled back the layers of cardboard concealing the reverse of the paintings, he discovered that each bore a secret portrait of the artist himself. 

In the years since, more examples of Van Gogh’s strange habit of repurposing canvases for self-portraits have emerged. And today, there are a total of five examples in Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum alone. Meanwhile, others can be found in the Kunstmuseum den Haag in the Netherlands, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Connecticut, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

In fact, according to The Art Newspaper, some experts have harbored suspicions about Head of a Peasant Woman for a long time. Might this comparatively uncelebrated work from Van Gogh’s Nuenen period, they wondered, also contain a hidden self-portrait like the ones in galleries around the world? Now, their hunches have been proven right.

Apparently, the portrait is likely to have been lost when Johanna sent Head of a Peasant Woman to Amsterdam for display. Believing the painting to be the most significant of the pair, she glued the canvas to a piece of cardboard with De Groot’s image facing upwards — completely obscuring Van Gogh’s self-portrait in the process. 

Married to Van Gogh’s brother Theo, Johanna was just a young woman in her 20s when her husband passed away, leaving her the unlikely custodian of a huge body of work. And while she seems to have done her best to protect this legacy, it’s hardly surprising that she made some errors along the way.

Now, almost 120 years after Johanna’s unfortunate blunder, the lost self-portrait has been revealed, ready to take center stage in the new exhibition. Speaking to The Art Newspaper, Fowle explained, “Moments like this are incredibly rare. We have discovered an unknown work by Van Gogh. What a gift to Scotland.”

But there is a slight problem with revealing the hidden work. According to restoration experts, there is no way of telling what condition the self-portrait is in. And although the thick layers of cardboard and glue may have helped to preserve the artwork, removing them could cause untold damage to the fragile piece.

“It’s like stepping into the unknown,” Stevenson told The Guardian. “The challenge will be removing the adhesive from the oil paint layers, exploiting the difference in solubility of animal-based glue and oil-based paint.” At the moment, though, nobody knows if efforts to uncover the self-portrait will succeed.

In the meantime, the X-ray has gone on display in the National Gallery’s exhibition, taking pride of place. Arranged within a specially-designed lightbox, it offers a tantalizing glimpse of an artwork lost for generations — and has quickly become the star of the show.  

For fans of Van Gogh and his work, the unveiling of the self-portrait has been an exciting experience. Stevenson continued, “The discovery of a new work is extraordinary. Anything that gives us more information about the artist is a huge bonus, and just shows the benefit of technological analysis, that we can still find out new things.” 

According to The Guardian, the Van Gogh Museum receives hundreds of inquiries every year relating to lost works by the troubled artist. But out of all the people claiming to have rediscovered a missing masterpiece, only a few ever come through with the real deal. Most, it seems, are either misidentified or outright fakes, making the Scottish discovery all the more rare.

For a little over three months, the X-ray showing Van Gogh’s portrait will remain on display at the National Gallery in Edinburgh. And for anyone who visits, the painting will help provide a unique insight into the work and life of one of history’s most beloved artists.