Thursday 5 June 2014

Hidden Beached Whale Revealed in 17th-Century Dutch Painting

By Megan Gannon, News Editor | June 04, 2014 01:21pm ET



"View of Scheveningen Sands," before and after conservators uncovered a beached whale in the painting.
Credit: Fitzwilliam Museum

When art conservators in the United Kingdom were cleaning a 17th-century Dutch seascape, they found a surprise: an image of a beached whale that had been hidden for at least 150 years.

Until recently, the painting — "View of Scheveningen Sands," created by Hendrick van Anthonissen around 1641 — simply showed groups of people gathered on a beach in The Hague in the Netherlands.

"It seemed a very unassuming painting depicting a very calm beach scene set in winter," Shan Kuang, a conservation student at the University of Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum, said in a new video explaining the strange find. "There were clusters of people gathered. I was unclear why they were there, but it didn't seem too out of normal." 


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