Researchers have discovered a small dog intentionally hidden in one of the first paintings by Pablo Picasso included in the The young Picasso in Paris exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan. In the foreground of the artist’s ‘Le Moulin de la Galette’ (1900), a dark brown shape that appears to be either the back of a chair or a coat draped over it, was Picasso’s attempt to cover the little dog light-colored with a red bow tied around her neck, according to X-ray fluorescence scanning done at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The painting in question depicts a bohemian party taking place in the dimly lit dance hall of Montmartre’s Moulin de la Galette, a windmill that opened its doors. a cabaret for French nightlife in the 18th arrondissement of northern Paris. Brightly dressed men and women wearing the finest hats dance, drink and chat to Picasso’s candlelit composition, underscoring his enthusiasm for involvement in the Parisian arts and culture scene when he moved there this that year at the age of 19. The little dog sat at the table next to the smiling woman in the left corner of the painting, staring directly at the viewer with a rather nondescript face that matches the loose, rustling shapes of the rest of the painting. But the pooch didn’t make the cut for the finalized composition, and Picasso randomly covered it with a dark brown mass.
Megan Fontanella, curator of the The young Picasso in Paris exhibition at the Guggenheim, told Hyperallergic that it is not uncommon to find singular figures staring at the viewer, seeming to “acknowledge their presence”.
“In the previous composition for ‘Le Moulin de la Galette’, the little dog in the foreground would have played this role and would have been an attractive connection point,” Fontanella said. “By eliminating the dog, Picasso focuses his attention more on the figures and the space. We can now observe how the act of looking unfolds in ‘Le Moulin de la Galette’, with customers of the dance hall casting their eyes in different directions.
The dog’s overall shape is still somewhat identifiable despite its concealment, with the shape of its droopy ears and the dark paint patches making up its eyes and muzzle standing out in particular. According to Julie Barten, chief curator of the Guggenheim, an x-ray taken of the painting in 2017 for the Thannhauser Collection: French Modernism at the Guggenheim book indicated that there were additional pigments in the brown form that required more imaging to discern. It was the 2023 exhibition that required further research into the layers of the paint.
“Scanning X-ray fluorescence maps the distribution of elements in the paint, including inorganic pigments,” Barten said. Hyperallergic. “The image of the dog is a false-color visualization that was generated by mapping the distribution of vermilion red, zinc white, and ocher iron-containing pigments.”
Now I can’t think of a more fitting place for a little French dog than to sit at the table with his party mates, and frankly Picasso himself couldn’t either, as evidenced later in his life when he became the parent (more like a personal attendant) of a cheeky little dachshund named Lump who sat at the table in his Cannes mansion from the end of the 1950s to the beginning of the 1960s.
“It was a love story,” Picasso’s friend and photojournalist David Douglas Duncan said of their affectionate relationship. having documented the role of Lump in the household. “Picasso would hug Lump. He would feed him from his hands. Shit, that little dog just took over. He was running this fucking house!
It’s unclear exactly why Picasso concealed the dog in “Le Moulin de la Galette,” but such a practice isn’t out of the ordinary either. Many of Picasso’s paintings have been examined, scanned, and x-rayed to reveal hidden figures or altered compositions, including, but not limited to, a hidden portrait in “The Blue Room” (1901). Some experts claim that the artist would have painted over his old works due to limited funds and would have burned his older work for warmth during periods of abject poverty in the early 1900s.
The young Picasso in Paris opened on May 12, a month after the 50th anniversary of the artist’s death. There has been a recent spark in renewed research and examination of Picasso’s process, works, livelihood, and allegations of violent and abusive behavior towards his multiple partners and the female subjects featured in his work.
