Automated Canvas Analysis
A new tool for sequencing Van Gogh’s paintings
In 2007, conservators and art historians at the Van Gogh Museum began to collaborate with a team of computational engineers.
They developed a computer program that can analyse the weave pattern of the canvas on which a particular work is painted, based on a digitized X-ray. The program is still being refined, but it is already clear that the results it generates could make a significant contribution to sequencing and dating Van Gogh’s painting.