(piano playing)
This is a fantastic drawing
that was done by Picasso in 1906
when he was spending
the summer in Gósol,
which is a remote town
in northern Spain.
In this period, he was doing
lots and lots of drawings
on exactly this format paper--
a high-quality paper
he really loved to work on,
but scarce, expensive.
And because of this, when you're
looking at his drawings,
you often are asking yourself,
how many times did he use it?
Are there other things to see?
The drawing on the surface
is this wonderful drawing
of these three nudes.
You can see how he did light
and shading around the figure
of the boy,
and how he used his brush
to froth up this white gouache.
Behind there you see there's
this smeary, opaque background,
and he really was sort of
obliterating something,
or hiding something
that was behind this drawing.
Of course, when we were doing
examination, we turned it over,
and we saw this very faint
image on the verso.
But it's a little curious
at to how it got there.
One of the methods
is to use infrared light
that can penetrate
the top layers of a drawing
and allow you to see
what is underneath.
And what we found underneath
was this well-formed drawing
of this seated figure
upside down.
But when you change
its orientation,
you get a really good sense
that he worked on this drawing,
and really was fleshing out
a fully formed seated figure.
However, even though it's close
to the figure on the verso,
it's not exactly the figure
on the verso,
which led to more questions
about how this figure,
as well as the figure
on the verso, were made.
So we used transmitted light.
And this is light that comes
through the back of the sheet.
You can see that we were able
to grab
all of these lines and forms
and shaded figures.
As we look at this
transmitted light drawing,
and superimpose it with
the images from the IR,
we can really start to line up
how they relate to each other
in the entire composition.
What became clear was that
this pose and this figure
was exactly that
of the one you see in the
portrait of Gertrude Stein
in the Buddha pose.
And this was incredible
that you could find
such exact detail.
Now, he was friends
with Gertrude Stein.
He was working on a portrait
of Gertrude Stein,
one that had been...
he was working on before
we went to Gósol.
And this discovery really
is an incredible link
between having no early sketches
and having a completed
picture later.
And it's just very interesting
to see not only
that it's on his mind, but how
he's working through forms
and drapery and features
and shading.
And we also found a pair
of knees actually related
to this kneeling bather
made in the same summer
on the same paper
in the summer in Gósol.
It's been so exciting
to find not only
such a well fleshed-out sketch
of such a well-known person
like Gertrude Stein,
but also to find layer after
layer of the forms,
the way he was thinking
about drawing,
the materials he was using,
and how all this goes to his
development in creating his work
and his experimental nature
when it comes to materials.
(piano playing)
