CONSERVATORS AT Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane have discovered traces of another painting beneath John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Sir Hugh Lane.
The painting, commissioned by friends and admirers of Lane as a mark of gratitude for his work on behalf of art in Ireland, was completed in 1906.
Sargent, one of the most fashionable society portrait painters of his time, was chosen because Lane was known to be an admirer. The underlying painting, which appears to be a landscape, came to light during cleaning.
Senior conservator Joanna Shepard said the discovery had made the painting one of the most exciting she had ever worked on.
“Because of the technique he used, Sargent’s work is prone to problems of surface cracking caused by the paint drying.
“On initial investigation it was evident that you could see glimpses of clear, bright colours in the cracks all over the surface – reds and blues and greens, nothing like a ground colour at all.
“In addition, there is impasto [textures caused by the application of thick pigment] on the surface that doesn’t correspond to the image.”
There was a chance that the impasto might have indicated a background setting that Sargent had painted over, something that is not uncommon. “But it was puzzling because if that was the case he hadn’t really bothered to scrape it down much,” Ms Shepard said. She decided they needed to investigate more deeply and turned to the National Museum.
“Basically they lent us their X-ray facilities,” she said. X-ray images revealed distinct traces of an underlying composition that appeared to be a landscape. “You can make out what looks like a pond or a lake, some trees and perhaps the pattern of hills.”
The discovery was surprising, she said, “considering that the subject was quite a prestigious one. It’s very strange that Sargent would just work over an existing painting without scraping back the impasto.”
There are a couple of factors that might help provide an explanation, though. For one thing, Ms Shepard said, Lane’s friends and supporters, following the “digout” model, contributed money themselves to pay for the portrait but, embarrassingly, only succeeded in raising half Sargent’s usual fee. Out of regard for Lane, Sargent pressed ahead with the portrait anyway.
“This is slightly beyond even speculation,” Ms Shepard said, “but perhaps he thought that, under the circumstances, he would recycle a painting he wasn’t happy with.” Besides which, she noted, his very popularity had made Sargent weary of painting society portraits.
His portrait of Lane, together with documentation of the detective work that went into establishing the existence of the underlying painting, will go on display when the 300 or so works that made up the gallery’s entire original collection from 1908 is exhibited from June 26th.
“It’s particularly appropriate that the painting with the most interesting story to tell should turn out to feature Lane himself,” Ms Shepard said.
