In an effort to help museums authenticate the dates of paintings and provide perspective on an artist’s sequence of work, Prof. C. Richard Johnson Jr., electrical and computer engineering, is using a computer algorithm that determines whether two historic paintings originated from the same roll of canvas.

Johnson’s work is part of the Thread Count Automation Project, which uses an algorithm to analyze X-ray images of paintings to calculate their thread densities and average thread counts, revealing the weave pattern beneath the paint and primer of the canvas. 

Each canvas roll is unique because of several factors, including the loom’s set-up prior to weaving, relative variances of thread thickness and tension and other factors, Johnson said. If the weave patterns of two or more paintings match, then it can be deduced that the material came from the same roll, he said.

“What you want to do is put [the paintings] in sequence, you want to date them since that’s where the art historians draw their conclusions and insights. Especially in the case of Van Gogh, being able to say that two paintings came from the same canvas roll is tantamount to saying that they were painted in very close time proximity,” Johnson said.

In his current role as the adjunct research fellow of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Johnson has analyzed more than 350 paintings by Van Gogh — or 60 percent of the total Van Gogh collection held by museums around the world.

In conjunction with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, Rijksmuseum and others, Johnson also worked to analyze 24 out of 33 paintings done by Vermeer, a 17th century Dutch painter. 

Jose Rosello ’12, a research assistant for Johnson’s project, emphasized the importance of algorithm analysis to the work, a technique he said helps make a time-consuming process more efficient. 

“It’s immediately helpful to the people in the museums because they were doing these counts by hand in an era where so many things that you would think could be done automatically weren’t being done,” he said.   

Through the project, Johnson said he hopes to bring together the technical world of an engineer with the world of art.

“I want to bring the technical and social, curator aspects together. What I’m trying to show these people is that we’re engineers and we want to help you,” Johnson said. “Tell me what it is that you’re trying to do in your scholarly activities, and I bet you I can make it go faster.”  

In addition to obtaining a clearer understanding of an artist’s development over his or her career through dating and sequencing, Johnson’s project has also provided supporting evidence for authenticity analysis.  

“There is so much money involved in works of art, if you’re going to buy it, or if you own it, or if you’re trying to sell it as a dealer or collector, you want to have as many reassurances as you can get that the work is in good condition and that it’s by the person the owner says it’s by,” said Frank Robinson, director of the Johnson Museum of Art.

In September 2010, Johnson’s thread count project confirmed that a painting, The Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital, was painted by Van Gogh. The project found that the weave pattern of the painting matched Van Gogh’s The Walk: Falling Leaves.

The project also helped authenticate several Vermeer paintings. A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal, a privately-owned work whose authenticity was debated, was found to match Vermeer’s The Lacemaker in the Louvre, Johnson said. The two paintings will appear together in an exhibition held by the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge this upcoming fall.