Dead bug discovered in Vincent van Gogh artwork – 128 years after he painted it
The discovery, announced this week, reflects the artist’s practice of painting in the outdoors, where it was often windy enough to send dust, grass and insects flying
When a Kansas City museum put a Vincent van Gogh painting under the microscope, it found an unlikely intruder: a grasshopper trapped in the canvas’s painterly whirls for 128 years.
Mary Schafer, a conservator at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, came across the tiny dried, brown carcass in the lower foreground while studying the painting of olive groves.
“I was mainly trying to understand the different layers of the painting and how it was constructed, and that’s how I came upon part of the body of this little grasshopper,” she said.
“The fact that we have this little surprise of a grasshopper is a fun way to have a new look at a Van Gogh.”
The find, announced this week, reflects the artist’s practice of painting in the outdoors, where it was often windy enough to send dust, grass and insects flying.
“I must have picked up a good hundred flies and more off the four canvases that you’ll be getting, not to mention dust and sand,” van Gogh mused in an 1885 letter to his brother Theo.