By: Keira Gong

When Van Gogh started to get poorer, he decided to save some of his drawing paper and draw on each side of it. Since you could only show one side of the paper, people didn’t know there were 2 drawings on the same paper. Along with that, some of the reversed sides were lost so this made it even harder for people to find.

The most recent reversed picture was found at National Galleries of Scotland. They found it when x-raying the painting of Head of a Peasant Woman for an upcoming event and saw another face peeking from behind. The museum described what they could see from the x-ray saying, “a bearded sitter in a brimmed hat with a neckerchief loosely tied at the throat. He fixes the viewer with an intense stare, the right side of his face in shadow and his left ear clearly visible.” That sounds just like Vincent Van Gogh himself.

The museum responded to this saying “[h]idden from view for over a century, the self-portrait is on the back of the canvas with Head of a Peasant Woman and is covered by layers of glue and cardboard.” This was an amazing find for the museum knowing that there were 2 paintings in one. A senior curator of French art, Frances Fowle also replied to this finding by saying “[m]oments like this are incredibly rare, we have discovered an unknown work by Vincent van Gogh, one of the most important and popular artists in the world.”

These hidden reversed sides of the Van Gogh drawings will appear on future paintings just like that.

Link to article: https://s3.amazonaws. com/appforest_uf/ f1658072786561x 759462715101882000 / Van Gogh hidden self-portrait has been discovered in Scotland using X-ray _ NPR.pdf