Style transfer for improved visualization of underdrawings and ghost paintings: An application to a work by Vincent van Gogh

Abstract

We applied computational style transfer, specifically coloration and brush stroke style, to achromatic images of a ghost painting beneath Vincent van Gogh's Still life with meadow flowers and roses. Our method is an extension of our previous work in that it used representative artworks by the ghost painting's author to train a Generalized Adversarial Network (GAN) for integrating styles learned from stylistically distinct groups of works. An effective amalgam of these learned styles is then transferred to the target achromatic work.