WASHINGTON - The year 1901 was a big one for Pablo Picasso. The painter was just 19 years old and living in Paris. Picasso was trying to find his own style of painting. He painted furiously and was very poor. It wasn't strange for him to take one painting and paint over it if he had a new idea.

Now scientists and art experts say they've found a hidden painting. It is from that time period. They used infrared technology on "The Blue Room," one of Picasso's earliest important paintings. Underneath it they discovered a hidden painting of a bow-tied man. His face is resting on his hand. His picture was lying beneath the surface of the other painting.

Now conservators who own the painting want to know: Who is he?

It's a mystery. But it's encouraging new detective work on the painting. "The Blue Room" was made early in Picasso's life. He painted it at the start of his famous "blue period." During that time, he painted many sad subjects.

"When he had an idea, you know, he just had to get it down and realize it," Susan Behrends Frank said. She is the curator of the Phillips Collection, which owns the painting. She described how Picasso had quickly painted "The Blue Room" over another whole picture. "He could not afford" to buy new canvases "every time he had an idea," she said. "He worked sometimes on cardboard. Canvas was so much more expensive."

Something Must Be Under There

Experts had suspected there might be something under the surface of "The Blue Room." Some brushstrokes on the painting clearly don't match what you can see. "The Blue Room" shows a woman bathing in Picasso's studio.

A conservator found the odd brushstrokes in 1954. It wasn't until the 1990s that anyone used an X-ray on the painting. When they did, it revealed a fuzzy image of something under the picture. But it wasn't clear that it was a portrait of a man.

By 2008, there was better technology. Now they could see details for the first time. A man's bearded face appeared. His face looks like it is resting on his hand and three rings are on his fingers. He's dressed in a jacket and bow tie.

"It's really one of those moments that really makes what you do special," said Patricia Favero. She works for the Phillips Collection. Favero helped piece together the best image yet of the man's face.

"The second reaction was, 'Well, who is it?' We're still working on answering that question," she said.

Scholars have decided that it was not a picture of Picasso himself.

Many Clues To The Painting Puzzle

Experts have worked to study the painting over the past five years. Now they have a clearer image of the mystery picture under the surface. Picasso likely painted it just before "The Blue Room."

Art experts are using other technology to search the painting for more clues. They want to identify and map the colors of the hidden painting. They would like to recreate it as a digital image. It would be as close to the colors Picasso used as possible.

Curators are planning the first exhibit focused on "The Blue Room" for 2017. It will examine the discovery of the man's portrait beneath the painting.

For now, "The Blue Room" is in South Korea as part of an art tour.

Hidden pictures have been found under other important Picasso paintings. A study of "La Vie" showed Picasso changed that painting a lot. And conservators found a portrait of a mustached man in another.

Dorothy Kosinski runs The Phillips Collection. "Our audiences are hungry for this," she said. "It's kind of detective work." The new technology lets audiences be "part of a piecing together of a puzzle."