Conservator Ruth Hoppe got the surprise of her life when she looked at the x-ray of Wisteria. This masterpiece, one of three paintings by Claude Monet (1840-1926) in Gemeentemuseum Den Haag’s collection, was removed from the museum for the first time several months ago and taken to the conservation studio. To investigate the damage to the canvas Hoppe had it x-rayed and had several other tests carried out on it. She never imagined that, besides learning more about the damage the painting had sustained, she would also discover a group of water lilies. ‘Wisteria was already a very special painting, actually’, explains curator Frouke van Dijke. ‘There are only seven paintings by Monet with this subject. But of course the water lilies are the iconic Monet image. The fact that there are also water lilies under Wisteria makes the painting all the more special, and it also adds a number of pieces to the puzzle in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Conservator Ruth Hoppe got the surprise of her life when she looked at the x-ray of Wisteria. This masterpiece, one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publications"],"yoast_head":"\n