A P U B L I C A T I O N O F T H E W I L L I A M S T O W N A R T C O N S E R V A T I O N C E N T E R
VO LU M E 10 , N U M B E R 1 • S P R I N G 2 015
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Contents, Spring 2015
Art Conservator Volume 10, Number 1 • Spr 15 Director Thomas J. Branchick Editor Timothy Cahill Art Direction and Production Ed Atkeson/Berg Design Photographer Matthew Hamilton Contributors Mina Porell, Christine Puza, Sandra Webber, Haejeong Yoon Proofreader David Brickman Office Manager Rob Conzett Accounts Manager Teresa Haskins Printing Snyder Printer, Troy, NY Williamstown Art Conservation Center 227 South Street Williamstown, MA 01267 www.williamstownart.org T: 413-458-5741 F: 413-458-2314 Atlanta Art Conservation Center 6000 Peachtree Road Atlanta, GA 30341 T: 404-733-4589 F: 678-547-1453 All rights reserved. Text and photographs copyright © Williamstown Art Conservation Center (WACC), unless otherwise noted. Art Conservator is published twice yearly by WACC, Thomas J. Branchick, director. Material may not be reproduced in any form without written permission of Williamstown Art Conservation Center. WACC is a nonprofit, multi-service conservation center serving the needs of member museums, nonprofit institutions and laboratories, and the general public.
On the cover Lambert Sustris, Triumph of Learning, detail
2 | Art Conservator | Spring 2015
3 Director’s Letter 4 Lifting the Clouds
The Treatment of a Sixteenth-Century Venetian Mural Sandra Webber 8 Horn of Plenty
The History and Conservation of a Cornucopia Mirror Haejeong Yoon
12
Smallest Show on Earth
The Beech-Nut Small Circus 14 WACC News & Notes
The lustrous history of a Chinese lacquer table; Christo’s Valley Curtain 16 Report from Atlanta
Andrew Jackson’s celery vase made whole again Mina Porell
19
Tech Notes
Variety and Transition in Nineteenth-Century Underdrawings Sandra Webber
From the Director
This year has been one of transitions and departures. In April, after thirty-five years of service to the Center as a stellar paintings conservator, Sandy Webber retired to pursue her many other talents. She arrived in Williamstown shortly before I did, and we worked side by side for decades, collaborating, conferring, sometimes challenging each other. This issue of the magazine is a testament to her knowledge and skill, as it documents both her last major treatment (page 4) and her work as an art historian (page 19). She will be missed by me and the staff, and by our many member institutions who relied on her expertise. Speaking of long runs, Michael Conforti will retire in August after twenty years as director of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. He arrived at the museum in late 1984, and set about to transform the Clark into the world-class destination of programming and architecture it is today. His many remarkable achievements—which include a world-class research program, affiliations with many of the best US and European institutions, and exhibitions that attract international attention—are capped by the commission of two signature Tadao Ando buildings, the Clark Center and the Lunder Center at Stone Hill, our home since 2008. Bravo, Michael! Also departing the Clark after an exemplary career is Senior Curator Richard Rand, who has been named Associate Director for Collections at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Richard leaves a legacy of acquiring important works for the collection here, and in his new role he can definitely “go shopping” with gusto! We worked closely together and I wish him well. Before heading west, Richard oversaw the development of the blockbuster Van Gogh and Nature exhibition at the Clark, on view through September 13. Curator Richard Kendall and his team have put together the must-see show of the summer. It features some forty oil paintings from across Vincent’s prodigious career. The exhibit is capped by the painter’s image of a wheat field in a rain storm. The physical and emotional weather conveyed in this painting’s slashing strokes makes it an absolutely mesmerizing masterpiece. —Tom Branchick
The Lunder Center at Stone Hill has seen the installation of two Isamu Noguchi galvanized steel sculptures, on loan from the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in New York. From left, Cloud Mountain, and Chinese Sleeve #1. Williamstown Art Conservation Center | 3
Cover Story
Lifting the Clouds The Treatment of a Sixteenth-Century Venetian Mural By Sandra Webber It’s not every day that we see a group of thirty life-size Venetian scholars, robed in togas, arrive in the Center, but such was the case with the Triumph of Learning by Lambert Sustris. Gifted to the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College in 1917 by Charles M. Platt, the mural had been off view for many decades due to its unexhibitable condition. Sustris, born in Amsterdam around 1515-20, spent most of his career in Italy and Southern Europe, working by 1535 in Titian’s studio, and even receiving a typical Italian geographical moniker “Alberto de Olanda.” The canvas mural, comprised of two horizontal widths of fabric whip-stitched together, is one of a series of five murals that once graced a Venetian Palazzo. The images were inspired by a Greek philosophical work, attributed for centuries to Cebes Tebano, a fifth-century B.C. follower of Socrates, but now described as written several centuries later. The remaining companion murals are scattered throughout the world. The canvas was removed from the wall and attached to two glue-and-canvas linings and mounted to a substantial stretcher. While the removal date is unknown, the stretcher appears to be nineteenth-century in style and construction, and the varnish discoloration suggested the picture had not been treated for possibly one hundred fifty years. The original canvas has a pronounced herringbone pattern, a weave type seen only on Venetian paintings of this period. Extensions of seven-and-a-half inches across the top and three inches along the bottom had been added using a non-matching tabby weave fabric, and were probably contemporary with the linings. These additions, possibly compensating for losses during removal, had darkened more than the other retouchings and overpaint. The linings were structurally sound, which helped inform the decision to keep the picture at its present size, which also allowed for re-use of the existing frame. My first glance at the painting was one of dismay, thinking that much of the surface, obscured by darkened varnish and severe blanching, was lost. Subsequent cleaning tests revealed turquoise blue costumes and deep green foliage hidden under the densely blanched varnish, along with bright orange and pale pink robes
Lambert Sustris, Triumph of Learning, after treatment. 4 | Art Conservator | Spring 2015
darkened by the aged coatings. Mastic resin, known to be more sensitive to moisture than other natural resins, was suspected as the resin used for the varnish layers. Due to the size of the painting (about five-and-a-half feet by eleven-and-a-half feet), the hidden original surface, and budgeting concerns, the work was proposed in two phases and scheduled over a one-and-a-half-year period. Phase I involved the removal of the discolored and moisture-
affected coatings, and assessment and removal of over-painted areas. During cleaning it became obvious that the last restorer had covered up an artist out-painted building section above the left figural group, and had added a higher mountain range extending into the right sky, probably to cover the abrasion in the clouds. Small exposed losses showed the tugging and shattering damage associated with pulling a mounted canvas from a wall. Several
losses were quite large and a few were thought to be voids where the canvas had been originally installed around architectural elements. Most satisfying was the revelation that the painting could be successfully brought back to life, despite the obvious work needed. Once the picture was cleaned and the paint layer condition revealed, Phase II was proposed, and the reconstruction of the image began. A layer of varnish was applied and a set of mid-
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treatment photographs was taken to record the actual state of the surface. The most glaring problem was the darkened and mismatched sky extension, whose solution came only at the end of the treatment. New fills, made of putty compounded to match the buff-colored original ground layer, were installed in losses and along the seam as needed. Inpainting was done using Golden acrylic colors, selected to best mimic the pale, higher-key palette used by Sustris. The tonality appears to deliberately resemble a fresco, another wall painting process familiar to Sustris. The choice of canvas for this series as an alternative to fresco may be related to the known humidity in Venice and its effects on fresco work. In keeping with an installation position considerably higher than eye-level, the brushwork is broad and sweeping, and rather thinly applied. During inpainting, the greatest challenge was not going too far or too fine with the restoration because, unlike an easel picture, this painting is not meant to be seen up close. Much of the sky inpainting involved skimming lightly over dark, abraded thread tops. Larger losses had to be repainted to match surrounding
areas, based on what was nearby and what remained of the original image. An effort was made to mask the sharp, dark line formed by the lower extension, and to make sure all the gentlemen had their legs and feet restored. Once most of the image was pulled together, it was time to address the large extension at the top edge. Many ideas had come and gone contemplating how or even if to apply a herringbone texture to this addition, so that it would blend better with the original fabric. A subtractive technique was finally selected, using a toned mixture of acrylic paint and molding paste. A three-quarterinch-wide flat sable brush was used to apply the paste in small sections, and a wooden sculpting tool was employed to remove enough to replicate the herringbone pattern. Working across the painting in narrow rows from left to right, it took several days to complete this underlayment pattern. White chalk was used to sketch some new cloud formations, along with color notations. The textured addition was then broadly painted in gestural strokes and colors similar to the original sky, with imitated dirt patterns applied last. A final layer of varnish was applied at the completion of the restoration, one that saturates the colors while keeping the low gloss that best suits this palette. After spending so long studying the surface (nearly three hundred hours), I wondered about the nature of the professions depicted and some of the working methods used for creating such a large-scale image, including the number of models used. The activities seem to represent the liberal arts and sciences, with astronomy, music, geometry, architecture, writing, and rhetoric possibly included, with Sophia as wisdom presiding in the center. Several of the older bearded men look very similar, suggesting the same model was used repeatedly. While no face is delineated very closely, one pair of more finely drawn young musicians standing at the right made me wonder if we were seeing a double portrait, perhaps either the son of the artist or a relative of the original patron. This mural is probably a survivor of a change in architectural design tastes, and the only one of the series known to be residing in the US. First painted for a building in late-Renaissance Venice, with its restoration completed we can now appreciate the beauty of this panorama of classical figures.
Detall of painting during treatment, showing abrasions and paint loss, and after treatment, with reconstruction. 6 | Art Conservator | Spring 2015
Paintings conservator Webber retires after thirty-five years
W
hen Sandra Webber arrived in Williamstown as a summer intern in 1978, the Williamstown Art Conservation
and have often aged quite well.” “Most conservation decisions are a balance between
Center was a small regional lab, barely a year old with just
preservation and judicial improvements,” Webber explained. “With
three conservators working in a remote corner of the Clark
large inpainting projects, I always felt I melded into the surface
Art Institute. Across thirty-five years of service, she witnessed
layers to see how the artist constructed the image. Observations
continual, dynamic growth at WACC, culminating in the esteemed
included the ground color, the brushwork and topography, the
organization now located in the Lunder Center at Stone Hill.
sheen, and of course which pigments were used (and would have
As Webber prepared to leave her easel for the last time and
been available in the period). This penetrating examination helped
retire as the Center’s senior paintings conservator, she reflected
especially with ‘resurrection conservation,’ as I comically referred
on her life in art conservation.
to projects which involved reconstructing parts of an image.
“Secretly, I always wanted to be a painter, but I wanted to be
However, restorations of this sort require more than intense
practical too.” Thinking she should go into commercial art, she
looking, and usually rely on working with other versions of the
studied many things at Massachusetts College of Art , eventually
image by the same artist or studio.”
graduating in 1972 with a degree in Illustration. A few years later
Webber identified her most memorable treatment as the
a suggestion from an antiques dealer friend guided her toward
c.1530 panel painting Saint Jerome in his Study, attributed to
her long-term career. She received her conservation training at
the studio of Antwerp master Joos van Cleve. The painting,
The Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at Harvard’s
in the collection of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at
Fogg Art Museum, and was one of the last two conservators to
Vassar College, arrived in the Center in 1986 marred by previous
go through their three-year apprenticeship program.
interventions which covered large areas of missing paint through
The training transformed her into a lifelong student of the science and craft of paintings. “People think paintings are flat art,
the central panel of the image. “After x-radiographs showed the extent of loss, I uncovered
but they’re very structured and layered.” Old Master materials
the original passages of the St. Jerome. Using two very exact
and techniques, long forsaken by modernists, were kept alive
versions, one painted from the same original cartoon, I was able
in Webber’s practice. She developed a particular affinity for
to reproduce the lost areas. I’m happy to say, thirty years later, the
paintings from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, citing
restoration is still undetectable.”
her opinion that the technique of oil painting reached its pinnacle
The same can be said for the many small miracles she worked
during that time period. “I love working on paintings from this era,
through her thirty-five years. Sandy Webber made a career of
because they’re so well crafted, so precise. They are jewel-like
reviving paintings that might otherwise have remained unseen.
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Feature
Horn of Plenty The History and Conservation of a Cornucopia Mirror By Haejeong Yoon Each academic year, a second-year student at the Williams College/Clark Art Institute Graduate Program in the History of Art is awarded the Judith M. Lenett Memorial Fellowship in Art Conservation by the Williamstown Art Conservation Center. The twosemester fellowship provides the student with the opportunity to research and conserve an American art object. This year’s Lenett Fellow, Haejeong Yoon, worked on an 1820 decorative mirror in the collection of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. She was supervised by Hugh Glover, chief conservator of furniture and wood objects, with the aid of Christine Puza, assistant conservator in the same department. The project culminated in a public lecture at the Clark, from which the article below was adapted.
I
n 1997, Florence C. Chambers, daughter of American antiques collector George A. Cluett (1873-1955), donated a gilded-frame mirror as part of a gift of decorative objects to the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. The mirror, which measures forty-one by forty inches and weighs nearly seventeen pounds with the glass, was brought to the Williamstown Art Conservation Center for treatment prior to exhibition. The elaborately rendered frame features a carved-wood crest of wheat emanating from matching horns of plenty on either side. The abundant wheat crests symmetrically meet at the top, with the wheat stalks in the center facing upward while those on each side gently bend as they overflow the horns. The horns’ open bells are delicately ruffled and the middle sections display a “spiraling-coin” design, accentuating the decorative intricacy. Below the coin embellishment, the lower sections of the horns are distinctively textured with an imbricated pattern of laurel leaves and berries, finished by twisted ropes fastened at the bottom with a ring. The “horn of plenty,” or cornucopia, motif symbolizes affluence, abundance, and the hope for a large harvest. The form extends to antiquity; a Greek vase from 440 BCE depicts a man holding a horn of fruit, as do Roman coins and statues from the first century. Rubens’ 1630 painting Abundantia illustrates an allegory of the Roman goddess holding a horn overflowing with fruits, and Poussin’s The Nurture of Jupiter (1635-37) depicts the god suckling a goat. The painting reimagines a Greek myth where a man holds a goat by its horns so it will stay in place to suckle young Jupiter. The curatorial file offered limited information about the mirror’s history. No definite maker or provenance was included, though the file indicated it was made in Salem in the 8 | Art Conservator | Spring 2015
early nineteenth century. The cornucopia motif appealed to Americans of that era, who found its depiction of abundance appropriate as a symbol of a rapidly growing nation, with its tremendous resources and talent. A photo taken in George Cluett’s Williamstown residence revealed that the mirror once hung in the dining room above a sideboard, suggesting it served an ornamental rather than practical function. What we call a mirror today was called a looking glass in the past, a descriptor more typically associated with glass plates with reflective coatings. In the early nineteenth century, the technique of manufacturing thick, ornamental reflecting glass had not yet developed in the US, and American demands were satisfied by imports from Europe. Such mirrors were expensive and precious objects. The focus of my project was the ornate frame. To remove the glass, the mirror was placed face down on a styrofoam pad and the three-piece backing board removed. On the hidden face of the backing board we discovered five paper fragments of unknown age glued to the board. Some of the paper was obviously attached to the board to cover cracks and knots to keep dust from entering; one such piece covering a join was likely from a previous restoration. Notably, four of the paper pieces were printed in archaic German script and were partially ripped, making them difficult to read. While I continued with the treatment, the photo lab applied infrared imagery and digital amplification to the inscriptions. More on those findings below. Inspection revealed that the frame was constructed using traditional materials and methods: softwood, animal glue, nails, and simple wood joints. From the front, the frame looked like a single piece of intricately carved wood. From behind, however, it was easier to observe that the mirror is, in truth,
Georg Steinhauser, gilded cornucopia mirror frame, after treatment. Williamstown Art Conservation Center | 9
were generally very dark and lackluster, the result of a layer of bronze overpaint obscuring the previous gilding layers. The gold surface had abraded and discolored, and a previous restoration had employed the bright paint to make the frame appear new. Gold leaf is expensive, whereas bronze paint is much cheaper, so we might conjecture that the bronze paint on the top surface was applied to create a bright, gold-like effect without costing a lot of money. The effort would have been effective at first, but the bronze paint did not keep its luster over time. To remove the bronze paint, I used a non-aqueous paint stripper and Xylene. I gently applied the solvent to the wheat sheaves until the surface became soft. I could then remove the softened bronze paint with cotton swabs. The treatment revealed the bright gilded surface, as well as sections where the gilded layer had been worn off or abraded and the original wood had become visible. I also found previously repaired sections of wheat that had been damaged or broken off and replaced with molded plaster. Some of these repairs were crudely done and also required restoration. With Hugh Glover, head of the wood objects department and my supervisor on Detail of mirror before treatment, showing missing wheat ears and broken tips. Opposite, the project, we decided to repair ten Lenett Fellow Haejeong Yoon at work in the WACC furniture lab. of the most conspicuously damaged wheat pieces. The original wheat crest was hand-carved wood, but varying sizes. There was a large crack underneath each of reproducing replacements using the original carving technique the ruffled horns and another on the surface near the coin was neither timely nor financially viable. The most effective decorations. There were also some broken and missing pieces way to make repairs was to mold new wheat components throughout, exposing the white inner layer of the frame. using molded epoxy resins, a job that Hugh handled. After Loosening and cracking of the gilding layers had occurred as replacements were molded and trimmed, the repairs were put in a result of continuous expansion and contraction of the wood place with glue and small clamps. from changes in humidity. Because gilding layers respond It was then time to turn to what for me was the climax of differently to atmospheric changes than wood, cracks and the year-long project, the gilding. eventual losses of the gold leaf are not uncommon. The carved We conducted gildings on two separate occasions, first the portions also contained missing ears of wheat that needed wheat crest, then the horns. The original gilding of the wheat replacement. crest was water gilding, but we opted for oil gilding to protect The frame’s surface had deteriorated from decades of the original gold layer. Oil gilding is removable, so conservators handling and surface grime. Cosmetically, the wheat leaves constructed of twenty to twenty-five separate wooden pieces, fitted with interlocking edges and glued in place. The oval-shaped structure consists of four joined pieces of wood that form the base of the frame. The sheaves of wheat are individually carved and gilded and attached to the crest with nails. Two lower sections, the coin and laurel-leaf decorations, are made of “compo,” a cookie dough-like composite of animal glue and linseed oil molded into intricate forms and adhered to the wood frame. The mirror arrived from the Clark with the frame structurally sound overall, though with surface cracks of
10 | Art Conservator | Spring 2015
working on the object in the future can remove what we did and approach the piece with yet undeveloped techniques. To prepare for oil gilding, I first painted the surface with a burnt-sienna pigment. Once dried, an oil-based sizing adhesive was applied on the surface and allowed to cure for twelve hours, after which the surface was sticky and ready for gilding. Gilding tools included a suede cushion surrounded by parchment, a knife, a short flat brush made of squirrel tail called a tip brush, a soft brush for smoothing, and a “book” of gold leaf. Gold leaf is a delicate material, easily crumpled by even a breath. The suede cushion used for cutting and handling the gold was protected by white parchment to block all air currents. How thin is a sheet of gold leaf? A thousand sheets are equivalent to the thickness of a single sheet of printer paper. I gently took a leaf from the book and placed it on the suede cushion to cut a rectangular piece with the gilder’s knife. If the knife has grease on it, the gold leaf immediately sticks and the leaf gets damaged, so I had to be scrupulous about using a clean blade. I gently lifted the cut piece of leaf with the tip brush and applied the gold to the wheat. It immediately stuck to the
surface almost like it was getting sucked in. I gently dabbed the gold against the wheat surface with a soft brush. Although the newly gilded areas were shiny and beautiful, our goal was to match the repairs to the rest of frame. In other words, we had to create the illusion that the re-gilded surfaces were two hundred years old and matched the other wheat crest. I rubbed the new surface lightly with my finger, being careful not to cause major damage to the area because the gold leaf is vulnerable to even a little friction. The area turned a darker tone with the grease and pressure from my hand. The job was finished by air brushing a raw umber pigment mixed with gray powder to create a dusty effect. The tricky part that remained was repairing the twisted horns and ropes on the frame bottom. Since there was a lot of conspicuous damage from cracks and dark stains, I first cleaned the surface, then filled the large losses. In order to make a cohesive surface color, I cleaned the laurel berry decoration as well. Fractured areas underneath the ruffled horns required consolidation, so I filled the cracks using gold-colored soft continued on page 18
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Feature
12 | Art Conservator | Spring 2015
Smallest Show on Earth Complete in every detail from clowns to calliope! Wild animals, performing elephants, acrobats, aerial artists, musicians, prancing horses, all in the gayest circus trappings! New! Different! A unique combination of artistry and mechanical ingenuity! ... When the Beech-Nut Circus visits your city, be sure to see it. We believe you will enjoy it almost as much as you do the fine flavor and quality of BEECHNUT GUM and CANDY. —1936 Beech-Nut advertisement
F
ive Beech-Nut Circuses crisscrossed the country’s highways throughout the 1930s. In small towns and large cities, the signature yellow buses arrived with speakers blaring a wheezy, candy-corn recording of an old calliope. In each bus, behind oversize windows, a version of the miniature Beech-Nut Circus rose in three rings, rounded by an electric train featuring boxcars of clowns and flatcars of spearmint gum. The sight was charming, astounding, slightly daft. A photograph from the 1930s shows businessmen in fedoras gathered three rows deep to gaze at the sight. They don’t just look curious. They are spellbound. “The Smallest Show on Earth,” as he billed it, was the brainstorm of Bartlett Arkell, a Barnum of everything from baby food to chewing tobacco, and a man loyal to his home town of Canajoharie, where his food empire was founded and thrived. He gave the upstate New York village its own art museum, complete with American paintings by Homer, Cassatt, Sargent, Inness, O’Keeffe. The Arkell Museum also holds the Americana and advertising history that is the Beech-Nut archives, including the four circus wagons and other big-top attractions brought to the WACC objects department for cleaning, stabilization, and repair. The red-and-gold wagons are a throwback to a time when lions, monkeys, gorillas, and polar bears on show behind bars fired the imagination. Today, the animals in their gilded cages inspire pathos and maybe a little dismay, but some nostalgia too, for a time when even the selling of chewing gum was done with evangelical zeal and childlike wonder.
Objects conservator Gretchen Guidess works on a Beech-Nut Circus animal wagon. Below, the circus after treatment. Williamstown Art Conservation Center | 13
WACC News & Notes
Reviving the lustrous history of a Chinese lacquer table
C
hinese export sewing tables, such as this mid-nineteenth
drawings, and pressed leaf and flower specimens (some of which
century example from Historic Deerfield, were a common sight
were found inside the sewing table and conserved by the WACC
in the parlors of middle class Victorian ladies. Composed of Asian
paper lab as part of a separate treatment).
lacquer, richly decorated with gold, and typically filled with ivory
Tragedy struck in October 1849, when James contracted a
sewing accouterment, these lavish objects were a not-so-subtle
fatal fever while on the return voyage. Following his wishes, Eliza
indicator of their owners’ class, wealth, and taste for the exotic.
refused to allow him to be buried at sea, insisting that he be
The tables were made specifically for the Western market in
interred back home in Gloucester. Tensions rose between her and
the southern trade city of Canton, now known as Guangzhou,
the crew, almost to the point of mutiny, but with the help of one of
and mass-produced in various styles. The Deerfield table is an
the sailors the decision was made to take Eliza and James to the
unusual example in that the legs and stretcher are elaborately
island of St. Helena. There, she stayed at the American consulate
pierced and carved with lotuses, dragons, and other Chinese
residence while a lead casket was made for her husband’s
iconography. Tables of this type typically have either simple turned
remains, departing finally in January 1850 to take her husband to
pedestal or lyre-shaped legs; the stretcher is generally flat and
his final resting place. Eliza lived in Gloucester for the rest of her
decorated with floral motifs.
life. She never remarried.
The most unique part of this table’s history is the woman
The table had a number of issues typical of lacquer objects
who owned it, Eliza Brown Clarkson (1824-1907), of Gloucester,
of this age and type. There was widespread lifting, cracking, and
Massachusetts. Unlike other women of her day, who ordered
tenting of the lacquer layers, and cracks present in the wood core.
sewing tables through an import-export merchant, Eliza travelled
A brown and degraded natural resin varnish had been applied
to Canton to purchase directly from the workshop. Her husband
unevenly overall, obscuring the brightness and variegation of
was James A. Clarkson, a ship captain, and in 1849 they travelled
the gold beneath. The silk workbag was missing and the ivory
on the ship Marathon, making stops in Java and the Philippines
accessories dirty and broken. The most significant and visually
on their way to China. Eliza documented her voyage with writings,
distracting damage, however, was the crumbling and cleavage of
14 | Art Conservator | Spring 2015
the slightly raised gold decoration on the main case of the table. The decorations were releasing from the black lacquer base layer below, causing unsightly black holes in the design. In many cases, only the outline of the shape remained. This degradation and loss was most apparent on the top, where the lacquer had been most broken down by light exposure and repeated abrasion from cleaning. The ivory accouterment were cleaned with ethanol and deionized water, and broken components secured with B-72. Insecure lacquer was humidified as needed to bring it back into alignment as much as possible, and secured with high-tack fish glue. Degraded varnish was removed with solvents until no longer visible under UV. A protective and separating layer of five-percent B-72 in xylene was spray applied, and B-72 in xylene applied over areas of loss. The losses were then filled as indicated with bulked polymer adhesives and toned with acrylic resin tinted with dry pigments. Matching the soft glimmer of the raised gold decoration on the case of the table proved to be a special challenge. Acrylic
Valley Curtain was the first public art project by artists
paints gave only a marginally acceptable match; gilding with
Christo and Jeanne-Claude completed in the United States.
gold leaf produced too hard a shine, even after toning; and all
In 1972, working with a crew of iron workers, they draped
mica pigments tested had particles that were too large, lending
more than 200,000 square feet of orange woven nylon across
a coarse glitter effect. In the end, gold itself produced the most
a mountain valley in the Colorado Rockies. As preparatory
acceptable match. Oil size applied to the toned fills was cured
sketches, and to fund the project, Christo made a series
until tacky, then superfine gold dust was applied to the surface.
of finely-wrought collages depicting the sculpture’s final
As a final step in the treatment, a workbag was fabricated out
installation. Valley Curtain, 1971 was one of three Christo works
of red silk and fitted into the drawer. Luckily, numerous remnants
from the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University
of the original workbag remained inside the drawer. Protected
brought to WACC for conservation. The collage’s large central
from light and large enough for comparison, these scraps made it
element depicts the project in elevation, with the curtain
possible to choose a fabric similar in weave and color to the original.
represented by the actual orange fabric stapled to a paper-
With the disfiguring varnish no longer obscuring the sheen
board support and enhanced with graphite, colored pencils,
and variegation of the gold, losses compensated for, and the
and crayons. The collage is inscribed by the artist, “Valley
replica workbag suspended from the undercarriage of the table,
Curtain (Project for Colorado) Rifle, Grand Hogback, 216 Miles
one can imagine how the table might have appeared to Eliza so
West From Denver, Seven Miles North from Rifle, Christo 1971.”
long ago on distant Cantonese shores.
Paper conservator Rebecca Johnston cleaned, stabilized, and —Christine Puza
archivally mounted the collage to a dimensionally stable, paper-
Assistant Conservator, Furniture and Wood Objects
faced aluminum honeycomb panel. To protect the light sensitive diazotype image below, and to replicate the artists exhibition
Above, the Clarkson lacquer table with silk workbag, after treatment. Opposite, a detail of the intricate gold and lacquer design work.
format, the work was reframed within a custom-made float frame with a UV-blocking acrylic bonnet. Williamstown Art Conservation Center | 15
Report from Atlanta
Andrew Jackson’s celery vase made whole again By Mina Porell Pre-program Intern, AACC In 1825, Benjamin Bakewell, of the renowned Philadelphia
matching vases would have been a cherished addition to a
glassmakers Bakewell, Page, and Bakewell, sent a pair of tall
nineteenth-century formal dining table, for their aesthetic appeal
celery vases to Rachel Jackson, wife of future US President
and symbolism. Offering a condiment of celery in such fine
Andrew Jackson. A skilled artisan had blown, cut, and engraved
glassware was reserved only for the most affluent members of
the two glass vases with “RJ,” their new owner’s monogram,
society.
inscribed in a diamond-shaped shield as a token of Mr. Bakewell’s esteem for the future First Lady.
The descendants of the former US President have treasured the two vases as family heirlooms. One of the vessels was gifted
The elegant vessels are further embellished with intricate
in pristine shape to The Hermitage, the Tennessee mansion
botanical motifs. Tasseled garlands of carnations, daisies and
of Andrew Jackson, now a historic museum. Its counterpart
rosettes with abundant foliage surround the top portion of the
remained in possession of family members living in Atlanta. At
glass. Four sets of stylized V-shaped tulips flank the monogram
the time the second vase arrived at the Atlanta Art Conservation
shield. Their deeply cut petals and incised crosshatch pattern
Center, its original elegance had been disfigured. Dust and grime
enhance the reflective brilliance of the crystal-clear glass. Such
obscured the lustrous surface, and a likely fall had shattered
The Bakewell celery vase, showing damage before treatment, and the remarkable transformation afterward. 16 | Art Conservator | Spring 2015
WACC Staff
it into fifteen pieces, with one large section representing two-thirds of the former whole. A half-century ago an ill-advised repair had attempted to reassemble the broken object. Unfortunately, the liberally glued and misaligned fragments became even more unsightly as the adhesive deteriorated and darkened with age. This accentuated the damage and called attention to three gaping areas of loss. To say the least, the missing pieces disrupted the harmonious rhythm of the glass’s decoration. Upon careful examination, object conservator Michelle Savant determined that the old adhesive was not only visually distracting, but also threatened the fragile glass. She suggested removing the adhesive, casting new fills, and reassembling the fragments with a better suited adhesive. Sensing that this would be a challenging yet rewarding project for a preprogram intern, Michelle tasked me with treating the celery vase. The challenges began almost immediately, when we discovered the surface of the glass significantly compromised by the old repair. Numerous small pits under the aged adhesive and the fragments’ rounded break-edges both indicated that the glass had deteriorated. The adhesive had penetrated the interstices of the pits and some of the engraved elements, so neither a water soak nor solvent cleaning could remove the yellowed material. To complicate matters, the glass was quite sensitive to abrasion and easily scratched, even by a fingernail. This necessitated slow and careful removal of the tenacious residues under a microscope, using scalpels, wooden picks, and a soft brush. The crux of the complicated treatment was molding and casting the lost fragments. After temporarily assembling the shards, molds were taken from the intact areas of the object. The molds were then used to produce intermediary plaster fills, which were fitted into the areas of loss. New silicone rubber molds were made from these interim plaster pieces and the final fills were cast in clear conservation-grade epoxy. After several attempts, all the missing pieces were recreated. Some required additional engraving by hand to reproduce the matte effect and visual continuity of the original etched motifs. Once the authentic fragments and cast fills were in place, the vase was assembled using epoxy resin adhesive. The piece was made whole again, this time retaining the integrity of its sparkling glass surface and shield, floral, and leaf motifs. The Jackson descendants were so pleased with the treatment they said they intend to gift the vase to The Hermitage, where it can rejoin its mate. I felt grateful and proud to be part of restoring its visual and structural integrity to a
Thomas Branchick Director; Conservator of Paintings/Dept. Head Nafice Adams Office Assistant /Atlanta Mary Catherine Betz Conservator of Paintings Nate Brulé Office Assistant/Technician Rachel Childers Pre-Program Intern—Paper Rob Conzett Office Manager Hélène Gillette-Woodard Conservator of Objects/Dept. Head Hugh Glover Conservator of Furniture and Wood Objects/Dept. Head Gretchen Guidess Associate Conservator for Objects & Textiles Matthew Hamilton Photography Technician Terry Haskins Assistant to the Director/ Accounts Manager Rebecca Johnston Conservator of Paper Henry Klein Conservation Technician Montserrat Le Mense Conservator of Paintings Leslie Paisley Conservator of Paper/Dept. Head Christine Puza Associate Conservator of Furniture and Wood Objects
level equal to the vase’s historic and cultural importance.
Michelle Savant Conservator of Objects/Atlanta
Mina Porell begins studies at the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in
Larry Shutts Conservator of Paintings/Atlanta
Art Conservation in September.
Williamstown Art Conservation Center | 17
Cornucopia continued from page 11 wax and a small metal spatula. The same process was repeated throughout the surface where cracks appeared. Each fill was leveled to adjacent surfaces, then coated with gesso followed by bole—a mixture of powdered red clay and glue made of rabbit skin—which allowed the gold to be burnished afterward for brilliance. The process is called water gilding because the bole is damped with water just before the gold leaf is applied. The fills were covered with gold leaf and toned to blend in with the existing color. In the midst of the treatment, translation continued on the German fragments found on the inner side of the frame’s backing board. This was complicated by the fact that the notes were written with the old German calligraphic script Fraktur.
The presence of this German script raised numerous questions about the origins of the object. I could find no connection between this mirror and Salem, as the curatorial information suggested. There was, however, a surge of German immigrants into America in the early nineteenth century, many of whom worked in the furniture industry. It would not have been unusual to use German-language paper to patch the object. A clue to the mirror’s origin came from the first line of the most legible note on the center top of the backing board, which read in part: “Stein..user ... und Spi...fabrikant…” and “Stas.. No 42 in ..men.” The “No 42” looked like a street address. I began to suspect the fragment could be the label of the mirror maker. Some detective work led me to the Christie’s art auction website, which listed a mirror that solved the mystery. The design was close to our mirror, and the label was intact. It translated as: G. Steinhauser, sculptor and mirror manufacturer, produces all types of mirrors, console tables, consoles for table clocks, curtain rods, chandeliers, wall sconces, makes new frames around old glass, and applies old glass onto new. Soge-Street No. 42 Bremen. Georg Steinhauser was a woodcarver, frame sculptor, and mirror manufacturer in Bremen, Germany, where he also owned a mirror-glass factory. He never lived or worked in the US. From this we concluded that the mirror was of German origin, not American, which created a bit of a stir around my project. By definition, the Lenett fellowship is designated for the treatment of an American artwork. In what way could this be considered an American object? The answer came in the booming trade for German furniture in the United States in the early nineteenth century. If the Chambers/Cluett mirror is not a work of American manufacture, it is an artifact of American taste. It was tailored for and sold to American consumers who desired German craftsmanship, not unlike Oriental export porcelain made for the American market. Thus we may consider the piece an American object despite its apparent foreign provenance. The mirror will be on view in the American collection following the renovation of the Clark’s Manton building later this year.
Top, infrared photograph of partial label revealing the mirror’s German maker. Above, the author looks on as Hugh Glover demonstrates gilding technique. 18 | Art Conservator | Spring 2015
Tech Notes, Spring 2015
Variety and Transition in NineteenthCentury Underdrawings From the Clark Art Institute’s Nineteenth-Century European Paintings Sandra Webber This essay is the second of two studies taken from the technical examinations of three hundred fifty European paintings, dating from 1790 to 1910, and collected over a ten-year period for the 2012 Catalog of the Clark Art Institute’s Nineteenth Century Paintings. The first essay (Art Conservator, Fall 2014) discussed artists’ colormen—their shops, wares, and individual marks, as well as the dispersion of supports found in the collection. Once a support was prepared, either by the artist or the colorman, the rest of a painting’s fabrication rested with the artist. For figurative work, which encompasses all the pictures in this study, some form of preparatory drawing is common, whether it’s as precise as pen and ink or as broad as a few strokes of paint. Researchers have long been fascinated with the underdrawings painters use to lay out their images and how these relate to existing drawings and paintings. This elusive layer, which allows us to understand the origin and development of an image, can also help with authentication. The drawing style reveals whether an artist worked methodically or freely, and whether or not he reworked the image, either in the drawing or painting stages. Each painting in the survey was scanned using a Hamamatsu Infrared Vidicon camera with a black-and-white monitor, and was fully examined under a high-powered Wild stereo microscope. Evidence not detectable with the first method is sometimes revealed on close visual inspection at the edges of forms or in thinly painted passages. Strictly speaking, mediums considered for underdrawing are those capable of forming lines, and have traditionally included charcoal, graphite, and various inks applied with either a pen or small brush. A sketch or wash-drawing can overlay or accompany an underdrawing, but it can also stand alone on a large or broadlycomposed image. Sketch or wash materials can include diluted ink, water color, thinned oil paint, or even more full-bodied oil paint outlines. The sketch is often a warm brown or neutral gray tone, which allows the artist to further define and shade the compositional elements. Underdrawings and sketch colors are often visible in normal light only along the outlines of forms, where the final brushwork stops short of the drawing lines or where sketch colors are left as part of the final image. Of the three hundred fifty paintings, two hundred fifty (seventy-one percent) have either line-work drawing or a brushed sketch, or both, below the final paint film. Of the total number, one hundred seventy-nine surfaces (fifty-one percent)
Williamstown Art Conservation Center | 19
Tech Notes, Spring 2015
Figure 1: Infrared reflectograph of Camille Pissarro’s The Louvre from the Pont Neuf, showing the charcoal underdrawing. Photo: Michael Agee/Clark Art Institute
showed some form of drawing medium, either as actual lines or residual deposits. Charcoal, the most common medium, was found on eighty-nine paintings, while another fifty-three surfaces were identified as having graphite lines. An additional seventeen paintings had lines of unidentifiable media, visually either charcoal or graphite. Thirty-seven drawings were executed in various inks, and several were drawn with unusual media, such as the red conté crayon or chalk on Renoir’s Study for Tannhauser. At least twenty paintings had two different drawing media, usually one reinforcing the other. The use of layout grids for the transfer or enlargement of a sketch to the painting support was seen on five pictures. This is most visible on Barye’s Tiger at Rest, which is primarily a drawing, and less detectable where van Gogh used a grid to enlarge a small sketch for his Terrace in the Luxembourg Gardens. Pictures including those by Monet, Madrazo, and most Pissarros showed no evidence of drawing media, however paint sketches, now hidden or incorporated into the image, may have been used. It is also likely that some heavily painted surfaces evaded the detection of preliminary drawings. Although a hundred paintings (twenty-nine percent of the total) revealed no underdrawing or sketch, it is possible that some paintings with dark grounds or imprimaturas may have had lines in white chalk that disappeared during the painting process. While many charcoal underdrawings were mere remnants or brief placement indicators, some pictures were fully detailed, including alterations. Charcoal is a loose, dusty medium, subject to smudging. This may account for the many painted sketches found in conjunction with charcoal, possibly to seal the friable lines in place. Sometimes the only remaining traces of a charcoal sketch were splintered carbon particles deposited at the edges of final paint strokes. Complete charcoal drawings were found on a number of paintings, varying from the delicate line-work on Goya’s Autumn (The Grape Harvest) and Zamacois’ Platonic Love, to the heavy, exposed lines on Weissenbruch’s Washing Clothes. Carriere’s Le Petit D’Artagnon showed position changes in the figure between the charcoal drawing and the final composition, evidence to most scholars of an original artwork. One of the most popular compositions in the collection, Alma-Tadema’s The Women of Amphissa, has an elaborate charcoal underdrawing. Viewed through the use of infrared reflectography and X-radiography, these changes suggest the artist worked out many facets of the composition during both the drawing and painting stages. After looking at most of the directly painted Pissarros, it was a surprise to find a rather complete charcoal underdrawing on his late painting, The Louvre from the Pont Neuf. The lines provided
20 | Art Conservator | Spring 2015
a guide to the proper architectural perspective, as well as the spacing of the arches spanning the bridge (Figure 1). Graphite pencils, made commercially available in the 1790s by the English colorman Rowney,1 are capable of producing a sharper, paler, and more delicate line than the softer, wider charcoal sticks. This weight of line was desirable for tightly composed images such as small cabinet paintings, where detail was emphasized. It is fair to say that the use of graphite was concentrated primarily on paintings from the earlier part of the century. Instances of graphite were identified by their appearance in infrared reflectography, combined with their slightly metallic luster under magnification. Images with complete graphite underdrawings include Delacroix’s Sketch of Two Horses Fighting in a Stormy Landscape, Constable’s Malvern Hall, Dedreaux’s Equestrians in the Forest, and perhaps surprisingly, Renoir’s Thérèse Berard (Figure 2). However, like the various numbered artist pencils today, graphite can be made softer to produce a wider, darker line, resembling charcoal. Pollard’s 1828 coaching scene Tom Thumb with Peter Brown and his Wife in a Gig, drawn with a dark graphite, even included the reminder notation “14 spokes” next to the wheels of the vehicle. Although the medium is not clearly identified, the mass of thin, overlapping lines on Daumier’s The Print Collectors resemble graphite and reveal that the artist worked rapidly and extensively over the entire layout.2 Underdrawing lines done in carbon black ink are usually quite sharp-edged and distinctive in infrared viewing, but are often impossible to see or correctly identify if done with brownish, iron-gall ink. As a drawing medium, ink lines could be applied with a brush or several types of pen, and inks were also used to produce brush-applied gray and brown washes. Brushed black ink lines were found on Puvis de Chavanne’s Death and the Maidens, while Drölling’s The Letter shows the use of both brown and black ink lines applied by a nibbed pen. The preparatory drawing for Gêrome’s Fellah Women Drawing Water was done in black pen and ink, while the more spare line work of his The Slave Market was executed in blue ink. Both Mother and Child paintings by Merle show the use of black ink, identifiable under magnification by the splitting and flaking of the ink deposits. The blue ink underdrawing on Daumier’s An Artist is very distinctive, as is the bright blue on the Bonnard Women with a Dog, except the latter is clearly applied by a nibbed pen and intended as part of the final image. The use of various inks to define parts of the final image was noted on twenty-six paintings, often coinciding with artists who used ink as an underdawing medium, such as Meissonier and Drölling. In the two Loir scenes At the Seashore, black, brown, and blue inks were selectively used to accent painted details of similar color. Ink was also found on at least twenty-four signatures in this collection, often detectable by a slight resistance to the oily paint film, in the form of skips or beads in the ink strokes. Of the one hundred twenty-five paintings with an ink wash or thinned paint sketch, about half were visibly covering underdrawing lines, while the other half were stand-alone preparatory layers. Many were done in the traditional warm-tone range of reddish-browns, a technique recommended for centuries in academies and artist’s handbooks, and still taught today.3 While a painted sketch or outline might serve some of the same purposes as a drawing, it was generally far less detailed than a completely worked-up line drawing. Blue paint outlines, running below the final colors, were detected on Gauguin’s Young Christian Girl, two Toulouse Lautrecs, a Pissarro, and thirteen of the thirty-two Renoirs. Even on the most impressionistic of plein-air work, such as Monet’s Tulip Fields at Sassenheim or his Rouen Cathedral, The Façade in Sunlight, there is evidence that thin bands of paint were laid down on Williamstown Art Conservation Center | 21
Figure 2: Infrared reflectograph of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Thérèse Berard, showing the graphite underdrawing. Photo: Michael Agee/Clark Art Institute
the canvas first, locating the various color zones and shapes for what would become thickly painted passages. Imprimatura or broad toning layers applied between the ground and the final paint are usually done with diluted oil paint. Differing from a sketch, these thin under-colors are usually visible in low magnification lying beneath entire zones of the image. Imprimaturas were found on fifty-eight paintings, and while most appeared to cover the whole surface, some were locally-applied colors seen below specific portions of the image, such as the flesh or foreground landscape passages. This does not rule out the possibility that hidden imprimatura layers may exist on more heavily painted images. The most commonly seen tone was a warm reddish-brown, which makes a good base for traditionally executed portraits, where it adds luminosity to thinly shaded areas of flesh, and for landscape work, where it contributes a warm mid-tone, useful for uniting foreground details. A full-covering, dark brown imprimatura is detectable on Carriere’s Le Petit D’Artagnan and Bodinier’s Théodore Jubin. Some painters may have preferred to work up an image from a warm-toned base color rather than an off-white ground, in a manner reminiscent of the toned papers used for chiaroscuro drawings. Because of changes in artistic training and the emergence of freer painting styles as the nineteenth century progressed, we might expect to find some shifts in the choice of preferred sketching medium, as well as a decreasing frequency in the use of underdrawings. While these trends do seem to be upheld by this study, the type and extent of underdrawing used on paintings relies mainly on the style and confidence of the individual artist, and as such, continues in use in all of its varieties to this day. 1. Pavey, Don, with Peter J. Staples, The Colormen’s Story, Rickett and Colman, Whealdstone, 1984, p. 10. 2. Aviva Burnstock and William Bradford, “An Examination of the Relationship between the Materials and Techniques used for Works on Paper, Canvas and Panel by Honore Daumier”, Painting Techniques: History, Materials and Studio Practice, 1998 Dublin IIC conference (IIC, London, 1998), pp. 217-222. 3. e.g., Anonymous American (after Bouvier), Handbook of Young Artists and Amateurs, John Wiley, New York, 1854, p 276, and Merrifield, Mrs. Mary P., Original Treatises On the Arts of Painting, Dover reprint, New York, 1967, Vol 1, p. ccxciv.
22 | Art Conservator | Spring 2015
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