Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto (1901), detail. Oskar Reinhart collection ‘Am Römerholz’, Winterthur, Switzerland.

Artnet_ Beneath the melancholy hues of Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Sotoby Pablo Picasso, conservators have uncovered a long-hidden secret—an earlier painting of a mysterious woman, concealed for over a century. Using advanced imaging technology, researchers at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London detected the figure beneath the surface of the early Blue Period work, providing new insights into Picasso’s creative process and raising questions about the identity of the veiled subject.

The discovery comes ahead of the painting’s inclusion in the upcoming exhibition “Goya to Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection,” opening at the Courtauld Gallery in London on February 14. Painted in 1901, when Picasso was only 19, this artwork marks one of the earliest pieces from his renowned Blue Period—a phase that lasted until roughly 1904 and was characterized by a monochromatic palette dominated by cool cerulean tones. It depicts Picasso’s friend and fellow Spanish artist Mateau Fernández de Soto.

“We have long suspected another painting lay behind the portrait of de Soto because the surface of the work has tell-tale marks and textures of something below,” explained Barnaby Wright, head of the Courtauld Gallery. “Now we know that this is the figure of a woman. You can even start to make out her shape just by looking at the painting with the naked eye.”

Left: Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto (1901). Photo courtesy Oskar Reinhart collection ‘Am Römerholz’, Winterthur, Switzerland. Right: Infrared image of Picasso, Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto (1901) by department of conservation at The Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

The canvas was analyzed using special imaging technology by conservators at the Courtauld Institute of Art; the Oskar Reinhart Collection also collaborated on the research project. The new X-ray and infrared images of Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Sotohave revealed the unidentified woman’s head, which can be seen to the right of de Soto’s, facing in the opposite direction. With her hair up in a chignon bun and her face set in an apparently impassive expression, she resembles some of the other subdued female figures that populate Picasso’s paintings from this period, like Woman with Crossed Arms(1901–2) or The Absinthe Drinker (1901).

At the time, Picasso was only just beginning to develop his somber Blue Period style, which was partly a reflection his mood following the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas at the start of 1901. Picasso took over Casagemas’ old rooms in Paris and established a studio there, which he shared with de Soto. The Courtauld conservators believe that the woman’s identity will never be established. She may have been a subject selected by chance from a neighborhood cafe, a model, or a friend.

X-ray image of Picasso, Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto (1901). Image courtesy the department of conservation, The Courtauld, London.

Why would Picasso have painted over the original portrait? It may be that the earlier image of the woman was in the more Impressionistic, colorful style that Picasso had just abandoned, causing him to reuse the canvas. Or, like many other artists, the young Picasso may simply have been short on supplies. It is known that he often recycled canvases at this time when he was short of money. When he did this, he did not whitewash the canvas to start from scratch, but, rather, began the new composition directly on top of the previous one, so that the image morphed beneath his paintbrush.

“Picasso’s way of working to transform one image into another and to be a stylistic shapeshifter would become a defining feature of his art,” according to Wright. This “helped to make him one of the giant figures of art history. All that begins with a painting like this.”

“This is truly a picture of great complexity, revealing its secrets over the years,” said Kerstin Richter, director of the Oskar Reinhart Collection. “When Oskar Reinhart acquired it in 1935, it was simply considered to be a portrait of an unknown woodcarver. Now we not only know the personality depicted, his significance in Picasso’s life after the death of his closest friend, but we can also visualize the artistic development process of the young painter layer by layer.”

“Goya to Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection,” which runs through May 26, will include several works from the Oskar Reinhart Collection that have never been shown outside of Switzerland, including paintings by Goya, Renoir, Cézanne, and Van Gogh.