The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam got an unexpected surprise when it offered to do technical analysis on a famous Paul Gauguin painting known as The Little Cat (1888), which is currently on loan from a private collection in France, formerly the Gustave Fayet Collection. The painting, together with comparable works from the museum collection and the outcomes of the research, is currently on display at the museum.
The comprehensive technical investigation, including X-ray imaging, revealed that The Little Cat was once part of a larger Gauguin work. Researchers found that the threads of the fabric on the left, bottom and top sides are “cusped,” or stretched into arched shapes. “The deformation of the canvas was caused by its original attachment to the stretcher frame, but does not occur on the right-hand side. This indicates that the canvas was cut off at the right side, probably by Gauguin himself,” the museum said.
The technical examination also revealed another unexpected creature, not a painted one: an actual 19th-century beetle, discovered on the right-hand side of the painting, indicating it must have been in the paint the work was created with.
A representative for the museum told me that the beetle, or rather what remains of it, is roughly one millimeter-long. Researchers said it’s difficult to say exactly what kind of beetle it is “because it is lying on its back, the head and legs broken off.”
Newspaper print was also discovered on the right-hand side of the painting. According to the statement, more than 100 years ago, the canvas was glued to another canvas to add strength. During this process, newspaper was used to protect the paint. Just a few letters of the newspaper prints are discernible, museum experts said.
The Little Cat was acquired in 1906 by the art collector Gustave Fayet (1865–1925), and the work has remained in the family’s possession ever since. In addition to works by Gauguin, Fayet also collected many paintings by Van Gogh.
Though Gauguin and Van Gogh had a highly contentious relationship—as portrayed in various biographies and movies such as Lust for Life (1956)—Gauguin admired Van Gogh’s still lifes, especially the sunflowers depicted against a yellow background. Van Gogh painted his iconic work while he was awaiting Gauguin’s arrival at the so-called “yellow house” in Arles in the South of France, where the two worked and lived together for a time.
Gauguin was inspired by Sunflowers, and started work on his own yellow still life. “Perhaps Van Gogh’s powerful still lifes made him hesitate and possibly dissatisfied with his own work. This might possibly reveal a different side of Gauguin, who is often characterized as confident and someone to whom Van Gogh looked up,” according to the museum.
Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo that Gauguin was “working on… a big still life of an orange pumpkin and some apples and white linen on a yellow background and foreground.” This quote is intriguing, as a “big still life” by Gauguin is unknown. As The Little Cat was once larger and has a pumpkin on a yellow background, this painting may very well once have been part of the work described in Van Gogh’s letter, according to the museum.
Further, Van Gogh painted a portrait of Gauguin that offers further insight into the “big still life.” In this portrait, the viewer looks over Gauguin’s shoulder as he works on a yellow painting with a spherical object to the left. This canvas was also cropped on the right, as is The Little Cat.
