Scans reveal newsprint, second painting under a Pablo Picasso painting

Infrared imaging technology has helped peel back the layers of a Pablo Picasso painting on display in Japan, and revealed a page from a 1902 newspaper and another composition below. US and Japanese researchers scanned the piece “Mother and Child by the Sea”, owned by the Pola Museum of Art in Hakone, west of Tokyo, and uncovered a page of the French newspaper Le Journal from January 18, 1902. “While the reason for the presence of newsprint in the paint layers in a mystery, the discovery is significant for Picasso scholars due to the proximity of the date to the artist’s move from Paris to Barcelona,” said the Washington-based National Gallery of Art, whose researcher John Delaney led the project in Japan. Picasso is thought to have moved to the Spanish city in early January 1902, bringing a few canvasses with him, and the newspaper article revealed in the painting suggests the work was completed some time after his move.