Category: Conservation
A Batoni in storage
October 10 2012
Picture: Brentwood Gazette
There's an interesting little story in the Essex local press today about the council's art holdings. The most valuable piece in their collection is the above Batoni, of Thomas Barrett-Lennard, 17th Lord Dacre, with his wife and daughter. Valued at £2.5m it is, needless to say, in storage. The Batoni was given to the council, along with other family portraits, by the late Sir Thomas Barrett-Lennard. The Council is hoping to display the works more effectively, but one wonders why it has taken them so long to find a suitable home. And doubtless a similar situation exists across the country with paintings that are owned by local authorities. As the PCF has sadly shown, 80% of publicly owned paintings are in storage.
There must be plenty of museums who would like such a fine work. The picture is an interesting, if rather sad one. The Dacres' daughter, Anne, had died before it was painted, and when the couple visited Rome a year after her death, they asked Batoni to include her portrait. He copied her likeness by Thomas Hudson, which accounts for the strange un-Batoni like quality of her head.
Dacre was a great patron of the arts. Some years ago we discovered his portrait by Andrea Soldi, which is now in the Rienzi House Museum in Texas (where, if you happen to be in Texas, you can soon see an exhibition on Romney).
Update - a reader writes:
I'm told that the great Eric Pickles has waded into this debate. I was pleased to hear that he supports wider display of publicly owned art, but was slightly surprised by his suggestion for how this should be done. Apparently the best place to do so is in supermarkets.
I would agree that the public could hardly avoid seeing these hidden treasures if they were next to a till in Morrisons, but I doubt very much if it will aid their appreciation. It hardly seems necessary to point out that there are other public buildings or more worthy not-for-profit sites such as churches or local museums/heritage sites which would welcome them.
You could get a lot of Clubcard points for a Batoni.
Gainsborough's grave restored
October 9 2012
Picture: BG/St Anne's Church Kew
Some time ago, I highlighted the parlous state of Gainsborough's grave in Kew (above), and the efforts of St Anne's Church to raise funds to restore it. I'm delighted to report that the Friends of St Anne's succesfully raised the necessary £15,000, and have now completed their work.
More grave matters here.
Van Dyck's Henrietta Maria on display
October 1 2012
Picture: BG
Thanks for your kind messages everyone - I'm glad you liked the final episode of 'Fake or Fortune?'. We had another strong audience showing - 4.3m viewers, peaking at 4.8m. The programme started off with 3.8m, then steadily put on another million viewers, despite the XFactor starting halfway through on ITV.
Here's a shot of the picture on display at the Banqueting House, where it hangs alongside one the best known studio of Van Dyck version (left). It's very instructive to see the two side by side - if you go and see them, let me know what you think. The BH's opening times are a bit sporadic, so it's best to check out their website first. In the middle is the remainder of the larger 18thCentury canvas. I'm afraid the lighting in the case could be better - we're hoping to improve it.
Was it right to excavate?
October 1 2012
Picture: BG
A reader and viewer of 'Fake or Fortune?' writes:
...the part of the programme where the painting was cut down and relined literally made me feel mildly unwell! My problem, I guess, is that my background is in history, rather than art history - and that I have been thinking of SPAB-type building restoration issues rather than art per se recently.
I couldn't help worrying, though, about what boils down to be a decision to destroy one state of an extant work in order to create what is, in some sense, a new work - a work which includes autograph work by Van Dyck, but which also incorporates decisions by a conservator regarding the removal of old varnish and old paint, a radical change in the size of the canvas, and a bit of skilful restoration. The result is, admittedly, beautiful - but at the same time, something has been lost.
It's a very interesting point - when is it acceptable to destroy one art work in order to get at another? We have recently had a most extreme view with the Battle of Anghiari debacle. In the case of Henrietta Maria, it was thought, mainly on a basis of connoisseurship (gasp!) that the painting on top was obviously not a great work of art. It was possible to date it to the early 18th Century, to about the 1730s. But there was no identifiable hand, or even a very skilled one. It appeared to have been done by either an enthusiastic amateur, or perhaps a regional artist in the manner of someone like John Vanderbank. But it really wasn't a great piece of painting, and art history will recover from the loss of 28 x 24 inches worth of not particularly good bodice and drapery. The remainder, above, is on display at the Banqueting House (I'm hoping Philip will one day let me keep it as a souvenir).
So in this case, what lay beneath was clearly worth pursuing. But if it had been, say, a body by Joshua Reynolds over a Van Dyck, it probably would not have been. But then Reynolds would probably have never done such a thing...
Update - a reader writes:
The spectacular appearance of the Original work fully justifies the discarding of the repainted portrait, repainted to deceive a purchaser in the 18th century that they had a fully 'complete' work. The state the picture is in now, allows us to see the work as Van Dyck wanted us to see it, with the very Titianesque sleeve to the fore, congratulations on a wonderful conclusion.
Henrietta Maria mid-clean
October 1 2012
Picture: BG
I thought I'd put this picture up of the Henrietta Maria in mid-clean. What an amazing job our restorers Rebecca Gregg and Jo Gorlov did. What you see here is the exciting nature of what lay beneath the 18th Century over-paint. The revealed drapery was in pleasingly good condition - there is no re-touching here at all.
As you can see, the over-paint was not removed as systematically as you might imagine - it was a case of following a good 'seam' of over-paint, almost following the strokes of the paint as it had been applied.
The white glove fallacy
September 28 2012
Picture: Keystone
I got a ranting letter yesterday from a viewer of 'Fake or Fortune?', berating me for not wearing white gloves when handling Turner's sketchbooks at the Tate Gallery. It's interesting how white gloves have taken hold in the public and media's imagination as an essential item of clothing when handling anything old. We can see them above in the photo of the unveiling of the Isleworth[less] Mona Lisa. The picture is in a glass encased white box and not even being handled. But still white gloves are demanded for the photo, just for pulling back a curtain.
White gloves are in fact more or less useless, and if anything more likely to cause damage, especially with old documents and works on paper. If, for example, you went to see Turner's sketchbooks at the Tate the staff there would not offer you white gloves, but ask that you wash your hands first, and then handle the material with great care. White gloves make tears and damage more likely, because you cannot handle the paper properly. Gloves make you clumsy. The real danger from handling works on paper comes from the grease on your fingers - that's why there is a sink by the door in the Tate prints and drawing room. Anxious viewers can rest assured that when I was being filmed showing Fiona Bruce the Turner material, I was doing so in front of two Tate curators, who had advised me of the best way to handle the works.
At the National Archives staff and readers do not wear white gloves when handling material, except when on TV. They are so weary of people writing in complaining if white gloves are not used, that they make an exception when the cameras are rolling.
Update - a reader writes:
Totally agree with you about white gloves. The other point is that, when you're offered them in a print room, they are invariably several sizes too small for your hands, making delicate handling that bit more tricky, and also very often darkened with dirt.
Update II - a curator writes:
Definitely agree about cotton gloves for handling paper, but might be worth pointing out that they do prevent damage and should be worn for some items. At both the Geffrye and Parliament we wore powder-free latex disposable ones (cotton gloves once you’ve worn them for a little while become sweat/grease permeable anyway, which is what your trying to prevent, and soon become dirty and can actually transfer dirt onto paper items) and probably would have worn them for handling paper collections – they’re smooth and tighter fitting than cotton so you don’t get loss off sensation. It partly depends how long you’re going to be handling things for, condition and temperature of room.
Good curatorial practice would recommend wearing gloves for some historic objects:
- polished metal
- gilded frames
- coins
- ceramics with gilding/overglaze decoration/lustre glazes or those with porous surfaces
- marble
- early plastics bandalasta/Bakelite (grease can damage all of the above and even with clean hands, it would only take minutes for the natural grease in your skin to return to your fingertips)
- delicate textiles (your fingernails/rough skin can snag on loose threads)
- anything which might harm you (rather than the other way around) – lead objects/vintage electrical items/early plastics (contained formaldehyde)
There’s probably more, but it’s a basic principal of assessing what best protects the object – if you handle glass objects in cotton gloves they’re going to be more at risk than without and glass doesn’t have a porous surface and can be relatively easily cleaned of fingermarks.
Monkey restorer asks for royalties
September 20 2012
Picture: Borjanos Studies Centre
From The Telegraph:
An internet petition to keep the repair job garnered widespread support and seizing an opportunity to swell its coffers, the church began levying a 4 euro (£3) entrance fee on visitors, earning 2,000 euros in the first four days.
Lawyers acting for Mrs Gimenez now insist she should be entitled to a cut of the profits, which she wants to go towards a charity of her choice.
"She just wants the church to conform to the law," lawyer Enrique Trebolle said. "If this means economic compensation she wants it to be for charitable purposes".
Her lawyer added that she would want any money made from the painting to go towards Muscular atrophy charities, because her son suffers from the condition.
Spot the difference - new Vernet discovered
September 19 2012
Picture: Telegraph
In The Telegraph, Colin Gleadell has news of an impressive new discovery by my fellow London dealer Theo Johns:
Spotted high up on a wall at Sotheby’s last year, the painting of a shipwreck and its survivors was attributed to “the Studio of Claude-Joseph Vernet”, a French artist who catered for the 18th-century romantic taste for the “terrible” and the picturesque. Although signed, it was thought not to be by Vernet, but by one of his studio assistants. Consequently, it was knocked down to London dealer Theo Johns, for just £25,000.
Since then, Johns has had the painting cleaned to reveal one of Vernet’s trademark lighthouses perched on a cliff (pictured above), which, for some unknown reason, had been painted over in the 20th century. Johns then tracked the painting’s exhibition history and found it had been included in the 1926 catalogue raisonne of the artist’s work. It is now on offer for £400,000, which is par for the course for a large, early shipwreck scene by Vernet, an artist who is represented in museums the world over.
More details and better photos here.
No more holes - search for 'Leonardo' mural ends
September 17 2012
Picture: National Geographic
I learn from the ever-indispensable Three Pipe Problem that the search for Leonardo's mural, The Battle of Anghiari, has ended. The news comes from a few small announcements in Italian press, and means that the National Geographic Channel is no longer funding any research. This is surely a Good Thing. The initial results were rather blown out of proportion (for more see Martin Kemp's view here). But it was all good fun while it lasted.
X-ray reveals Velasquez original
September 17 2012
Picture: Meadows Museum, Dallas
Intriguing story in The Washington Post about Velazquez's portraits of Philip IV, which are known in a number of autograph versions. An x-ray of a version in Dallas has apparently proved that it is the first. It will be exhibited alongside a version from the Prado in a new show, which runs until January 13th. Regular readers will remember the Met's restoration of their version, which saw them upgrade the attribution to Velazquez in full.
Who painted this?
September 12 2012
Picture: Your Paintings/Glasgow Museums
Here's a tricky connoisseurship test. I've just come across this picture on the PCF/Your Paintings website. It's listed as copy of a self-portrait by John Baptist de Medina - although you'd be hard pressed to tell from the photo. It must be covered with a very old layer of consolidating material. Still, when the venerable Public Catalogue Foundation said they were going to photograph every publicly owned oil painting in Britain, they certainly meant it.
A reader who is helping the PCF with attributions and identifications has sent in these mystery pictures, and asks the AHN sleuths for some crowd-sourcing assistance; see here, here, here, here, here, and here. Can anyone make any breakthroughs?
Update - Art historian James Mulraine wonders if the neoclassical scene might be by Rosa di Tivoli (1655-1706).
More on that 'Leonardo' sculpture
September 10 2012
Picture: davincihorseandrider.com
Following my report on the 'Leonardo' sculpture last week, and the potentially reckless taking of a modern mould from a fragile 16thC beeswax original, a distinguished sculptor writes:
To make a mould directly from such a complex wax if genuinely by Da Vinci as Pedretti alleges, would - as you say - be reckless.
Even the most minutely detailed 'piece mould' would risk damaging the original as 'walls' would have to be built on the surface of the original wax to mark the boundaries of each part of the mould.
Though there is clearly a wire armature inside -visible where one foot has fallen off, other extremities would also be at risk during the process if the armature was missing in them too.
However Museums and others can now make non-invasive, non contact replicas of even the smallest 3D objects by laser scanning followed by rapid prototyping using an SLA (stereolithography) file generated and processed from the laser scan.
Replicas can be made directly in wax built up in layers by a form of 3D printing. Following skilled finishing to match the surface of the original, these wax replicas could then be used to make bronzes by the traditional 'lost wax' process. Because the 3D information is digitised replicas can also be easily generated in different sizes.
Wrong on so many levels
September 3 2012
Video: Leonardo da Vinci Equestrian LLC
A US company is offering 'original' casts of a sculpture they say is by Leonardo. The casts derive from what the company calls a 'rapidly detoriorating' beeswax sculpture which was attributed to Leonardo some years ago by Professor Carlo Pedretti. Despite the apparently fragile condition of the beeswax sculpture, which remains in a mysterious private collection in Switzerland, a mould was (recklessly?) taken by a business consortium with the intention of selling reproductions. This mould, which is now being hailed as 'the original mold' of Leonardo's sculpture, now belongs to a Mr. Richard A. Lewis of Indianopolis who, through a Las Vegas company called Art Encounter, is offering 'original' casts in bronze for between $25,000 and $35,000. The whole operation has been blessed by Leonardo scholar Professor Carlo Pedretti, who has declared the casts to be 'perfect, perfect, perfect!'. However, he evidently has not told them what the word 'original' really means.
The revered 'original mold' and casts will soon be embarking on a 'world tour' (er, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York and London) this autumn. The casts are available in four limited editions of 996. Sign up to buy yours here! More news reports here and here.
Update - a reader sends me this note from the College Art Association (CAA) on the ethics of making such casts. It concludes:
Posthumous castings from finished bronzes, unauthorized casts such as those made as a result of work being in the public domain, enlargements unsupported by verifiable instructions from the artist, posthumous translating of a carving into bronze, or work in any material other than wax, terra cotta, and plaster that is bronze cast for the first time, are undesirable.
The CAA is always keen to present itself as the mother of all art historical bodies, and even calls for legislation to protect the principles in its casting guidelines. Should the CAA have a word with the makers of these casts, or even Professor Pedretti about his involvement?
Update II - an interesting response from a sculptor here.
The Cecilia Prize
August 30 2012
Picture: www.ceciliaprize.com
This is fantastic - you too can have a go at restoring the famous Ecce Homo. Can you do a better job than Cecilia Gimenez?
Wilton House
August 28 2012
Apologies for the slow service lately - today I took the day off and went to Wilton House. If you haven't been it's well worth a trip. The picture collection, including a parade of Van Dycks, is first-class, and in most of the rooms there are no rope barriers, and it's possible to get up close to the paintings. I wasn't allowed to take photos, so I can't make a very useful report here. But I was impressed by the emphasis Wilton places on its pictures - there's a special painting guide book (a bargain at £3), and the room guides seem to know a great deal about the art. It was quite a contrast to some historic houses, where one can often struggle to find out basic artist information.
Close-ups of that dodgy restoration
August 23 2012
The lady filmed by the fountain is the 'restorer'. She says she needs more time to 'finish' her work. No!
Someone should do a Downfall-type spoof on this.
Here's my contribution to the story on BBC radio earlier today, 1 hr 57 minutes in here.
Update: apparently there's a petition to keep the fresco as it is. Great idea - it should become the town's new masterpiece. you can even follow the fresco on Twitter.
Titian and the restorer from hell
August 2 2012
Picture: National Gallery
Last week we had an interesting story about a Titian in Canada being re-attributed to the great master, following conservation and the removal of later over-paint. I discussed how important it is to fully understand condition before attributing pictures, and how a good picture in bad condition can often be judged merely as a bad picture by scholars.
I've always felt that a similar case to the Canada example might be Titian's Portrait of Vendramin Family, now at the National Gallery. Forever called 'Titian' (even by Charles I's top Titian connoisseur, Van Dyck, who once owned it), it is now labelled as 'Titian and Workshop' by the Gallery. You can zoom in on the painting here. The group of three awkward looking boys on the left are considered to be too weak to be by Titian himself, as are the two furthest on the right. The Gallery says they 'must be by the artist's workshop'.
It's just a hunch, but I'm not so sure. We know Titian employed studio assistants quite widely, but personally I find it hard to believe that he would have allowed five portraits to be painted so badly by his workshop, for what was obviously an important commission. If we are to find workshop assistance in such a picture, it is perhaps more likely to be in the drapery or background. In their present condition, the portraits in question (especailly the three on the left) are so awkward as to make one wonder why Titian would allow the picture to leave the studio looking like that, when the rest of it is so good by comparison.
It seems more likely to me that we are dealing here with a question of condition. The five children seem to have suffered so much damage over time that they now look clumsy, and it is thus impossible to make a firm attribution as they presently appear. Furthermore, I've just come across this interesting reference to the picture in the diary of Joseph Farington from 1818, when it belonged to the Duke of Northumberland. Farington records looking at the picture with the artist Benjamin West:
He sd. that picture was totally ruined by a Frenchman who was employed to clean it. He painted over it & substituted His heavy colours for the charming tints of Titian. Nothing remains of the original but a Candle stick & part of the upper corner of the right hand of the picture as seen when looking at it.
The picture was cleaned in the '70s, and much over-paint removed. But I'd love to know more about the condition of the three heads on the left, and the two on the right. One of National Gallery's excellent Technical Bulletins on the picture would be fascinating, with full paint analysis to determine what is and isn't original paint. I haven't looked at the picture with magnifiers and torches, but I'd be willing to place a bet that, at the very least, the three heads on the left are to a substantial degree damaged and re-painted by a later hand.
Restoring Canada's only Titian
July 25 2012
Picture: Ottawa Citizen
Here's a fascinating tale - restoration has revealed that a downgraded Titian at the National Gallery of Canada really is by Titian. Previously, it was thought to be a copy of a version in the Prado, due to its deletorious condition. But work by the Gallery's restorer Stephen Gritt has led to its reattribution. From the Ottawa Citizen:
[The picture] was a mess — dirty, water-damaged (not irreparably), and the victim of earlier, regrettably bad restoration. It looked, Gritt says, like “it was dragged through the hedge backwards.” Its sorry state, and the royal pedigree of the Madrid Titian, contributed to a drift in scholarly opinion, and by the 1980s the Ottawa Titian was considered a copy of the other. Then came a side-by-side comparison in Washington, D.C. in 1991.
“The general consensus of everyone in the room was that the Prado was probably the real one by Titian and the Ottawa painting was a copy of it,” Gritt says. “So pretty much that was the lid on the coffin being tightened.”
The Ottawa Titian, now not a Titian at all, sat in its grimy, faded glory in storage. Curators at another gallery asked to borrow it, but backed out when they saw its condition. Oh, the indignity. Then, one morning, a glimmer of redemption arrived in the daily mail.
In 2003 a Toronto man wrote to the gallery’s then deputy-director, David Franklin, to ask why the only Titian in Canada was not on display. The reply — that scholarly opinion no longer considered it to be a Titian, and that it was too dirty to hang in public — could have been the end of it. Enter Stephen Gritt.
Gritt, who is from London, England and joined the gallery that same year, kept thinking about the tenuous Titian as he restored other important paintings, such as Tom Thomson’s iconic Jack Pine and, in 2007, Veronese’s Petrobelli Altarpiece. (Veronese also painted a portrait of Barbaro.)
In 2009, Gritt formally put up the Titian and began hundreds of hours of work to undo four centuries of degradation. Gradually, the vibrancy of the original portrait emerged – the nobleman’s perhaps pensive expression, with a sliver of crimson red neckpiece showing beneath his dark cloak. This, Gritt believed, was no workshop copy.
The team turned to X-rays, which see beneath the surface of a painting, and they showed evidence of changes made by the artist during production. For example, Gritt says, “you can see him wrestling over how to paint the nose, because Daniele has a peculiar nose.” Such changes made no sense if the Ottawa Titian was a copy, as a copy would directly echo an original.
Gritt brought the X-rays to Madrid and, with a Prado specialist, compared them in light of these new revelations. “Those really subtle shifts, things that were adjusted by millimetres, the Prado painting doesn’t have them,” he says. “It’s really rather direct.” The conclusion was clear. The Madrid Titian is a copy, and the Ottawa portrait is re-established as Titian’s original Barbaro.
You can see a video of Stephen Gritt talking about the restoration process here. Rather unhelpfully, there is no image of the painting on the National Gallery of Canada's website, so we can make no examination of the attribution ourselves. But if the Canada picture really is by Titian, then it would appear that this is another example of scholars not understanding condition. In my experience, a picture's condition is the number one reason attributions get wrongly downgraded.
Undertsanding condition should be the first skill any serious art historian aspires to learn (at least those studying Old Masters). If I were teaching the art historians of the future, I would make it compulsory for every student to spend a term in a conservation studio. You cannot judge any painting until you are sure you are looking at the artist's original intentions - and it is fact that most Old Masters have at some point suffered from either a degree of damage, or worse, the attentions of later ham-fisted restorers. It's interesting to note that in this case, Harold Wethey catalogued the Canada picture as Titian in full in his 1971 Titian catalogue raisonne.
Please, don't try this at home
July 24 2012
Yikes - lurking on the internet is this video, which tells you to clean your painting with a baguette. Yes, a baguette. Over four thousand people have watched it. Which means that someone, somewhere has wrecked their favourite Old Master with a piece of bread.
Update - a reader writes:
OMG!!!
Titian studio piece restored at Dulwich
July 10 2012
Picture: Dulwich Picture Gallery
A new display opens at Dulwich Picture Gallery today, showcasing the conservation of a Titian workshop piece, Venus and Adonis. The exhibition will:
...celebrate the conservation of Venus and Adonis, a painting produced by Titian’s workshop after the celebrated prototype painted by Titian for Philip II, King of Spain in 1554. The painting has been in storage since the early twentieth century and was in desperate need of restoration, as can be seen from the photograph. The removal of discoloured varnishes and retouchings has revealed the work to be an evocative rendition of an episode from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, centring upon the last meeting of the ill-fated lovers Venus and Adonis. This was the most famous of Titian’s poesies, his series of mythological paintings that he envisaged as visual equivalents to poetry. The Dulwich version stands as an example of early artistic massproduction, providing striking comparison to the Andy Warhol Portfolios exhibition.
