Category: Conservation
Want to find a Raphael?
June 20 2012
Picture: National Gallery
The National Gallery has a new micro-site to show you how.
Extreme souvenir hunting
June 12 2012
Whilst looking for a video for the story below on the Trevi Fountain, I came across this choice piece of cultural tourism, at the Moro Fountain in Rome.
Things you shouldn't use as a coaster
June 8 2012
Picture: Christie's
Top of the list - drawings by Rembrandt. This slightly soiled example is yours for £50,000-£80,000 at Christie's next month. Of course, if it could be proved to have been Rembrandt's own coaster, then add a nought!
Update - it might indeed by Rembrandt's coaster (of sorts), for Christie's write:
The circular stain is an iron-gall ink stain, probably from the base of an ink-pot, so (while we can never know for sure) there is certainly a chance that the stain could be from the artist’s studio.
'Framing is presentation, not covering.'
June 1 2012
Following my post of the 18th Century miniaturist William Wood's hanging instructions, a reader sends in this note on the back of a painting by John Bratby. The last line is particularly noteworthy - how often have I found pictures shrunken by an over-generous frame rebate.
Prince Charles and Dumfries House
May 31 2012
Picture: ITV
In case you didn't see it, there was a good programme on ITV the other day on Prince Charles' decision to buy and save Dumfries House for the nation. You can watch it again here.
Briefly, in 2004 the Marquess of Bute decided he would sell the mansion and its contents, which included innumerable pieces of furniture made by Thomas Chippendale for the house. After much fundraising, a consortium led by the Prince bought the whole estate for £45m at the last minute. The fleet of trucks carrying everything from the pictures to the doorstops for auction at Christie's, with the catalogues already printed and mailed out, was turned back on the motorway at 1am. It was that close.
Now, the house has been restored and is open to visitors. The majority of the cash borrowed to buy the estate has been raised. In short, all is well, and Prince Charles has done a very Good Thing. You wouldn't think that, of course, if you read the Daily Mail, which called the venture a "£20m banana skin... a colossal error — one fuelled by vanity and hubris... a disastrous deal [and one which has left the Prince with] egg all over his face".
Some egg, some face.
An artist's instructions
May 31 2012
Picture: BG
Interesting to find these strict instructions on both viewing and preservation on the back of a portrait drawing by William Wood (1769-1810).
Every conservator's nightmare
May 29 2012
Picture: The Sun
An artist in the US has taken to painting the Queen in beer and curry.
A fragment of Henrietta Maria's lost Guido Reni?
May 29 2012
Pictures: Sotheby's
There's an intriguing lot coming up at Sotheby's New York next month, catalogued as 'Attributed to Guido Reni'. The picture purports to be a fragment from Guido Reni's long-lost 1637-40 painting Bacchus and Ariadne on the Island of Naxos, which was commissioned by Queen Henrietta Maria. It never arrived in London because of the Civil War, and not long after Henrietta Maria's death was cut up due to its salacious nature. The composition is known from an engraving (below). From the Sotheby's catalogue:
The present composition would appear to be the right hand extremity of Reni's original Bacchus and Ariadne, showing two faun followers of Bacchus with Silenus beyond, on his donkey, supported by two putti. Upon firsthand inspection of the work both Keith Christiansen and David Stone recognized the hand of Guido Reni in the faces of the fauns and in the hands holding the tambourine though suggested, as with the majority of Guido's large scale compositions, the likely involvement of his studio in the execution of certain passages. Camillo Manzitti, meanwhile is in favor of a full attribution to Guido Reni, believing this work to indeed be a fragment of the original. He furthermore suggested that the addition to the right edge of the painting was executed in order to centralize the figures within the composition andto avoid any concealment of Silenus by an eventual framing of the work.
Although there are indeed variances in detail between Bolognini's engraving and the present composition, these would appear incidental. The drapery over the hip of the right hand figure may have been added later and so too the still life of flask and glass of wine, perhaps subsequent to the painting's division in order to bestow the fragment with the more cohesive and traditional composition of a Bacchanal. Yet the presence of a tambourine, under the feet of the larger faun and still visible to the naked eye below the paint surface, provides a compelling argument in favor ofthe fragment's origin. This corresponds with the engraving closely and may have been covered over at the time the other changes were made. This Two Fauns in a Bacchic Dance is not the first fragment from the composition tosurvive; in 2002, Denis Mahon and Andrea Emiliani discovered a fragment portraying the beautiful and vulnerable figure of Ariadne, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna.The addition to the left hand edge of the Ariadnecanvas shows that, far from being obliterated, the canvas had been carefully cut to preserve the figures, presumablyto facilitate their sale as individual fragments. It too is painted on a heavy weave canvas that appears to correspond to that used in the present picture.
The estimate is $100,000-150,000. The picture has been given several cleaning tests, presumably to tempt the trade. It's hard to be conclusive from the photo, but the drapery over the larger faun's groin appears to be a later addition. In which case, the painting is closer to the engraving. I find the case quite convincing.
A Jacobean bargain?
May 24 2012
Picture: Savills
This is a bit off-topic, but we like discussing anything old here. A reader writes:
Not sure this is quite 'on topic' for your blog, but I noticed in Country Life yesterday that Apethorpe Hall in Northamptonshire has been put up for sale by English Heritage, through Savills, for £2.5m.
It's an amazing building but years of neglect left it on the verge of ruin, such that English Heritage compulsorily purchased it in 2004, under the 1990 Planning Act, only the second time these powers had been used. It cost £3.6m, plus a further £4m restoring the basic fabric. So £7.6m in all.
If the house goes for the asking price - and it will only be sold to someone willing to commit to further very expensive work, who's happy to let the public in for 28 days a year, can deal with some annoying trees that are owned separately, and doesn't mind that it comes with next to no land - the taxpayer will have lost over £5m.
Who will save this important ancient pile? Remember, there's room for plenty of pictures if you do!
Update - a reader writes:
One of your readers wrote;
".....and doesn't mind that it comes with next to no land"
Yes, only 45 acres according to the details - barely worth employing a gardener then.
'The Happy Museum Project' leaves me sad
May 23 2012
Picture: The Happy Museum
Did you know about the Happy Museum Project? I didn't. But I do now, and I can't say I feel ecstatically happy. The Happy Museum Paper has been published, written by a learned team, and funded by a well meaning foundation. Like many of these museum world papers, it is a jargon-filled, impossible-to-read exercise in navel-gazing, twinned with right-on thinking and impossible idealism. Here, for example, is one of the paper's top ten tips to being a happy museum:
5. Lead on innovation towards transition
Ride the inevitable changes by positively embracing the need for innovation. Show that museums don’t have to be only storehouses of the past but can also be hubs of innovation. Test ways that assets like your collections, staff and communities can be imaginatively applied to current problems. For example, could you work with corporate sponsors to develop products and services that are high well-being, low-carbon?
If anyone cares to send in a translation of what this actually means in practice, I'd be most grateful. Of course, you won't be surprised to hear that the root of all this is the premise that museums shouldn't exist to educate and entertain with their collections - that's way too patronising. Here's the Happy Museum view of museums:
Museums are more accustomed to telling than to listening. Understandably, they see themselves as the ‘impartial expert’ whose role is to educate their visitors and, in many cases, they have become adept at presenting information to their visitors in an engaging and accessible way. However, they may be less adept at helping audiences find answers for themselves. [...] Treating visitors as passive consumers underestimates their capacity. Too often there is a one-way monologue whereas what is needed is dialogue that produces lasting change in both visitor and the museum itself. (Museums may be surprised to find that they have as much to learn from their audience as the audience does from them!).
Now I'm all in favour of museums listening to feedback from visitors. But the idea that museums should cease to see themselves as purveyors of expertise and information not available elsewhere is, if you take it to its logical conclusion, profoundly dangerous. The best response to all this can be found in an anonymous comment on the Museums Association website:
Anonymous (MA Member), 23.05.2012, 13:56
I never signed up to be a social worker.
"The Happy Museum" project was very exciting - for the first couple of pages. Yes, of course the primary purpose of museums is to improve lives, and it's thrilling when they do. But the project's call to turn our backs on collections in favour of communities (whatever they might be) left me with a bad taste in the mouth, which Maurice's article has strongly reinforced.
I came to work in museums because I love old things, their beauty and what they can teach us, and I have aways had a strong belief in their value in bringing joy and insight to society. As a curator, I have always understood my purpose to be the care, study and interpretation of collections. It now seems that the skills and knowledge of collections curators are redundant (as well as the collections themselves), and that we are expected to abandon everything we hold dear (including the loyal audiences who have always enjoyed and sustained museums) to become social workers.
Finally, just when you thought things were getting loony enough, we have the article alluded to in the comment above, by Maurice Davies, the Museums Association's head of policy, who suggests that in these austere times it may be better to close a museum, and forget about looking after the collections therein, because:
Working on Museums 2020 [the Museums Association’s campaign to formulate a vision for the next decade] has led me to think that the core business of museums (like any service organisation) is in fact to have an impact - to make a difference to people’s lives.
How about this: if times ever get so tough that we can no longer have it all, perhaps it should be the building - and collections care - that we let go, giving priority instead to Keith Merrin’s “facilitating communities to celebrate their own heritage”?
Is this Titian in the corner of his masterpiece?
May 18 2012
Picture: Telegraph
Probably not, but it's a great story. Conservation of Titian's 1558 masterpiece, The Martyrdom of St Lawrence [Santa Maria Assunta, Venice] has revealed a head in the lower left hand corner that looks a little bit like Titian. Full details here.
How not to move a statue
May 15 2012
From Brecht, in Belgium.
New Turner hang at Tate
May 14 2012
Picture: BG
I went recently to the Turner extension at Tate Britain to admire their new hang. If you haven't already been, go too. It's a triumph. For the first time in many years, the galleries have a cohesive narrative, and highlight not only the best of Turner's work in an engaging and fresh manner, but also reveal a number of new discoveries. An example is the above reclining nude, cleaned for the first time, and, wonderfully, hung unframed in all its unfinished glory (you can see a photo of it before cleaning here - if Francis Bacon had painted that, it would sell for £50m). Gone, thankfully, are the curious 19th C 'Romantic' works by lesser painters that the Tate had shoved into the Turner galleries during their renovations. And gone too is the mawkish shade of green that dominated the rooms, now replaced by cool blues and greys. It's reassuring to see Tate doing something so well. Now we just need to hope that the cohesiveness of the hang is not disturbed in future years, as happens too often.
Preparing a painting for exhibition
May 7 2012
Video: Royal Collection
A new video from the Royal Collection shows how great care is taken when transporting masterpieces. The picture in question is a Canaletto from the Royal Collection, sent for display at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. Presumably, therefore, it didn't have far to go.
These days, most public collections insist on this sort of treatment, no matter how short the distance travelled, or how insignificant the item. It's one reason why loan exhibitions have become so inordinately expensive. Some collections, though, do manage to maintain a sense of proportion. Some years ago, we had a loan exhibition of Tudor art at our gallery; one item, a miniature of no enormous value, had to be flown first class with an accompanying curator in a specially constructed crate. The transportation bill was about the same as the item's value. The most valuable exhibit, on the other hand, came in a curator's handbag via the Tube.
Cleaning Poussin
May 3 2012
In Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria has spent a year restoring Poussin's Crossing of the Red Sea. The video above shows its unveiling - and it's nice to see a museum making such an effort to show the results of conservation to the public. Here is an excellent site charting the restoration process. You can even watch a video of it being varnished. More galleries should follow this example.
Update: get the full lowdown on the painting from David Packwood here.
Analysing Durer
May 1 2012
Picture: Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremburg
To coincide with an exciting new exhibition on Albrecht Durer, in Nuremberg from 24th May to 2nd September, new research has revealed previously unknown aspects of Durer's technique. In his 1493 Self-portrait (x-rayed above), researchers discovered that on occasions he painted with his thumb and the ball of his hand. Full details in Der Speigel here.
How to clean a Monet
April 30 2012
Picture: Washington Post/US National Gallery of Art
Ann Hoenigswald, a restorer at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, tells The Washington Post how a subtly discoloured varnish can change the whole meaning of a picture:
Claude Monet painted “The Bridge at Argenteuil” in 1874 with its blue water and sky and its white clouds and sail. Yet by the 21st century, the important painting was looking dull and needed to be cleaned.
“It struck me it was much too yellow. What disturbed me was that yellow varnish had accumulated in the interstices of the brushwork. With the magnifying loupe and the microscope, you see how thick the varnish layer was and how it altered the intention of the artist,” said Hoenigswald, senior conservator of paintings at the National Gallery, who works on the fading canvases.
Now that the refreshed Monet has been rehung in the newly arranged 19th Century French Galleries, Hoenigswald talks about her satisfaction with revealing the artist’s intentions.
‘There’s a return to the palette which was intended by the artist. The whites were no longer yellow, the blues were no longer green and the purple shadows emerged, as did the crisp texture of the brushwork,” she explained. “However, what is always the most striking is the sense of space which is reestablished when the discolored varnish is removed. It is particularly apparent in landscapes. The relationship between foreground, middle ground and background makes sense again.”
Museums - lock up your jades
April 19 2012
Picture: PA/Mail
The dizzying demand from China for antique jade is having alarming implications for museum security. Recently, thieves stole millions of pounds worth of jade from Durham University. And now up to £18m worth has been stolen from the Fitzwilliam. More here.
The Sun, naturally has the best headline:
'£18m jade snatch by merciless Ming gang'
Here, incidentally, is a heretical thought. Given the sudden and astronomical rise in value of these previously rather neglected items, and given the fact that UK museums have literally tons of the stuff, should they consider selling some of it, perhaps to bolster acquisition funds?
Exclusive - A new Titian at the National Gallery?
April 11 2012
Picture: National Gallery
One of my sharper-eyed readers has alerted me to the new upgrading of a Titian at the National Gallery. For may years thought to be a copy, recent conservation has convinced the National Gallery that this portrait of a man thought to be Girolamo Fracostoro can be displayed as 'Attributed to Titian'.
I'm not a Titian specialist, but I can see that the argument has merits. The composition is of course very Titian-like for a work of the 1520s, and the handling of the cape and elements of the face seems right. However, the main problem with the picture is its condition. In parts, particularly the darks (which are the softest pigments, and are the first to be lost in over-cleaning) there is little left to see but bare canvas. So it's unlikely we can ever really be sure about the attribution.
You can see the picture in room 12. There is no illustration online at the National Gallery, but the above is a photo prior to restoration.
The one thing we should return?
April 10 2012
Picture: Adrian Pingstone
There was news this weekend that the Turkish government has formally requested the return of a 1st century BC stone relief, the Samsat Stele, which is held in the British Museum. The Stele thus joins the Elgin Marbles as an artefact of international dispute.
I'm generally not one for repatriating items such as the Marbles. But I've always thought that 'Cleopatra's Needle' in London probably should be returned to Egypt. Unlike objects in the British Museum, it is not preserved for study by scholars, or a destination for the world's tourists. Instead, it is largely forgotten, hidden by trees, and eaten by pollution to such an extent that its hieroglyphics have become unreadable. I doubt many would notice if it was replaced by a replica. Would you miss it?
