Damage detected in Van Gogh`s Flowers In A Blue Vase

Zeenews Bureau

New Delhi: Thanks to advancement in science, researchers have spotted a chemical effect in Vincent Van Gogh`s Flowers In A Blue Vase for the first time, which is dulling the yellow flowers in the painting. High-intensity X-ray studies described in Analytical Chemistry found compounds called oxalates in the painting which is turning the yellow to a greyish-orange colour. The BBC reports that such examination of the artist’s paintings have been done before. In 2011, a team led by the University of Antwerp`s Koen Janssens had reported that a pigment Van Gogh favoured called chrome yellow degraded while the other remained intact. The first work of restoration of these paintings started in 2009 though when conservators found that the yellows in Flowers In A Blue Vase had turned greyish and cracked. The team took tiny samples of the work to some of Europe`s largest sources of X-rays: the ESRF in France and Desy in Germany. Both use vast particle accelerators to speed up electrons, which spray out X-rays as they pass around the accelerators. The purpose was to determine not only what was in the samples in terms of atoms and molecules, but also the precise structures in the interface layer between the original paint and the varnish.