The expert’s unique discovery of the “Olive Trees” has caused a stir among art enthusiasts.
For art enthusiasts, painter Vincent Van Gogh is probably not a strange name. With the possession of countless famous paintings and a unique style of painting, until now the paintings created by the Dutch artist are still of great value, both in terms of art and commerce.
To study Van Gogh’s painting style, setting, etc., Mary Schafer, a conservator of paintings at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Missouri, began studying Van Gogh’s paintings. Accordingly, this painting was painted by Van Gogh around 1889, when he was sick and emotionally disturbed, but it is still considered one of his greatest works.
The famous painting “Olive Trees” by artist Vincent van Gogh (Image: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art)
In 2017, after Mary Schafer magnified the painting hundreds of times with a surgical microscope, this expert suddenly discovered a secret that had been hidden in the painting for the past 128 years.
Sharing with Live Science, the art conservator said: “I came across something. At first, I thought it was a small leaf. But then I discovered it was actually an insect.”
After a closer look, Mary revealed that it was actually the carcass of a small grasshopper. Researchers have known that when he was alive, Van Gogh especially liked to paint in the open air, and the fact that an insect got lost in his work space is easily explained.
A microscope shows part of a grasshopper (Image: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art)
As soon as she discovered this interesting fact, Mary contacted Michael Engel, a professor of paleontology at the University of Kansas and a collaborator at the American Museum of Natural History, to see what he could collect. What can be learned from her discovery such as the season in which the painting was painted or the setting in which the artist composed the painting.
However, according to the paleontology professor, the remains of this creature show that the insect showed no signs of struggling to break free of the sticky coating. Mary said she suspected the dead grasshopper was on Van Gogh’s paintbrush when he pressed it on the painting “Olive Trees” and left this remarkable mark.
Regarding the finding, Mary said the finding may not be very important academically but she is glad it has attracted public interest. Many visitors to the museum, she said, crowded to get close to the painting and try to find the grasshopper debris on the painting.
