The Chief Conservator Serena Urry of Cincinnati Art Museum noticed some small cracks on Paul Cézanne’s Still Life with Bread and Eggs. She was curious about what might be hidden inside and decided to examine the painting more closely. The cracks indicated that the artwork might be damaged somehow, so she decided to look for clues about what might be wrong.
Urry thought the painting might be a copy of an earlier work, so she had it x-rayed. “When I looked at the digital x-ray of the painting on the kitchen table, I saw a well-defined portrait underneath it.”, says Serena Urry.
This still life was created in 1865, and the portrait underneath it is one of the earliest portraits that Cézanne is known to have created. There are several clues that this may be a self-portrait, including the way that the artist has captured himself in the painting.
Serena had a really good idea. It was lucky that it came up in the lab when it did because that kind of intuition comes from a lot of experience studying historical paintings and understanding how nineteenth-century artists worked. She has that experience and knowledge in spades.
Paul Cézanne was a painter who participated in the first Impressionist exhibitions in the 1870s. In the 1880s, he developed his artistic course, which is known as the Postimpressionist movement. He is one of the most influential painters in the history of modern painting. Cézanne created the Cincinnati still life in his 20s when he was still influenced by Spanish Baroque paintings and Gustave Courbet’s Realism. However, by the time he developed his signature modern style, he used brighter colors in thinner layers to explore optics and the “sensations of color”.
“We want to study the painting more in the future, and we want to find out more about the person in the painting. We hope to work with an institution that is good at technology and has experts on Cézanne.”, said Bell. “This would result in a publication and maybe an exhibition.”
First, more detective work is needed to figure out the colors of the hidden painting. With cutting-edge technology, like multi-spectral imaging and x-ray fluorescence mapping, more insights may be gained about the painting’s colors. Working with conservation scientists may help us learn more about the painting. Many artists reuse canvases, and in recent years, paintings have been found hidden beneath works by some famous artists with the help of x-rays and other technologies.
Urry examined the painting when it was taken off the gallery walls at the conclusion of the special exhibition One Each: Still Lifes by Cézanne, Pissarro and Friends, on view at Cincinnati Art Museum this past spring (March 11–May 8, 2022).
Still Life with Bread and Eggs was donated to the museum in 1955 by Mary E. Johnston. It is one of two paintings by Cézanne in the museum’s collection.
“We found out that we can add another Cézanne to our collection with this new discovery.”, said Urry.
On December 20, Gallery 227 will have a new exhibition called “Still Life with Bread and Eggs.” This exhibition will include a painting by Cézanne.
The Cincinnati Art Museum gets money from people who give each year to ArtsWave. ArtsWave helps the Cincinnati Art Museum by giving money to the Ohio Arts Council. The Ohio Arts Council helps the Cincinnati Art Museum by giving money to the city so that the museum can continue to do things like make art and teach people about art.