Computational Imaging Sheds Light on Paul Gauguin's Prints

After studying the surfaces of prints with innovative imaging processing tools, researchers replicated the artist's techniques

A visualization of the surface-shape structure technology used to understand the "blind incisions" in Gauguin's monotype technique.

Experimental replication helped researchers test the unconventional ink transfer and mark-making techniques.

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) is best known for his vivid post-Impressionist paintings of his travels to the South Pacific. Less known are his many graphic works; Gauguin was an academically untrained draftsman and printmaker, free to be highly experimental with the materials and techniques that he used to make unconventional prints, monotypes, and transfer drawings. 

Northwestern researchers in the Computational Imaging lab used a variety of techniques to evaluate the surface structure of these graphic works, with the aim of better understanding his printmaking and transfer processes. The imaging data allowed insight into how Gauguin formed, layered, and re-used imagery interchangeably to make these works. Based on this data, researchers were able to experimentally reconstruct his printmaking and transfer techniques.

Gauguin’s Nativity served as a case study. It is a so-called “oil transfer drawing” on paper that the artist produced in 1902. At first glance, the print looks like it was made by the simple monotyping method, yet several regions contained lines where no ink or pigment had been applied. For decades, these features have been noted by art historians, who theorized that these areas had been caused by so-called “blind incising”—indentations in the paper where ink simply wasn’t transferred. It was unclear, however, how these incisions had been introduced during the printmaking process.

After photographing the print under a sequence of lighting angles, the team applied a technique known as photometric stereo to mathematically separate color and surface, allowing researchers to view the topography of the print’s surface, as measured from the small changes in brightness caused by the lighting differences.  

After observing a map of areas with possible blind incisions, a new idea emerged: these impressions were made from the inked surface, rather than elements contained in the paper. Researchers developed a new hypothesis that Gauguin used a hard and flat material (such as a glass slab), covered it in ink, and then created multiple monotypes of different images from this inked matrix. In doing so, he left behind a palimpsest of un-inked areas from earlier drawings that would be transferred onto a piece of paper as blank lines with no surface topography.  

To confirm this hypothesis, researchers replicated this process by recreating prints with “blind incisions” that match what was found on Nativity, even at microscopic magnification. When comparing Gauguin’s Nativity and the transfer drawing produced using this hypothesized transfer process, the marks on the reconstruction appear visually consistent with the original. 

The surface topography research on Nativity and other graphic works by the artist was included in the Gauguin: Artist as Alchemist exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017.

Publications:

Broadway, M., H. Stratis, M. Walton. 2018 "Cast in a New Light: Surface Topographies of Paul Gauguin's Transfer Drawings.” Journal of the Institute of Conservation 41 (3): 206-217.

Daher, C., K. Sutherland, H. Stratis, F. Casadio. 2018. "Paul Gauguin's Noa Noa Prints: Multi-analytical Characterization of the Printmaking Techniques and Materials." Microchemical Journal 138:348–359.