Who knew the Federalist had an art critic. An interesting article where an art conservator is interviewed The interview discusses the conservation process as well as becoming an art conservator.
The block link includes only a portion of the article, please follow the source link to read the full online article.
Source: The FederalistWN: Let’s talk about this painting, from the time you got it, to where we are now.
KG: Well, the painting was in poor shape. It needed some imagination to see the potential in it. But I think you’re correct, and we can establish that it’s northern Italian, 17th century, by a provincial artist.
WN: Nice. I like being right.
KG: The canvas was all hand-made, and the paint was very fragile and flaking. With old paintings it doesn’t take much to damage them, because the canvas itself can get very brittle with age so that it no longer supports the paint. And once the canvas is dry and fragile, any pressure on it can cause breaks, tears, and further deterioration.
Basically there are two components in restoration: one is conservation, where we stop the damage and deterioration of the painting, and stabilize it, and then there’s the restoration component, where we clean it and infill the missing parts, turning it back into the painting that it once was. Your painting needed both, conservation and restoration, very badly. So the first thing to do here was just to stabilize the paint layer, and then line the canvas properly.
WN: Can you explain what lining is?
KG: Lining is adding a new piece of linen to the back of the painting. Since your painting was so fragile and had multiple fractures and flaking, and some tears in the canvas as well, what we had to do was add a layer of Mylar, which is an inert piece of plastic that we put in as a support layer.
Nobody will ever see it, because it’s sandwiched in between the original canvas of the painting and the new canvas on the back. It adds strength and it’s fully reversible, if it needs to be removed later. That’s the current thinking in restoration, that everything we do has to be reversible.
Then there was the inpainting to do, to fill in the missing areas. Your painting was painted in oils, but we don’t use oil paint in restoration, because we try to distinguish between the original and the new. Some Old Masters that were restored in the past were restored using oils, but it’s often impossible to remove this, because the oil becomes a part of the canvas.
That’s why now, the proper restoration method is not to use oils, but acrylic pigments, which are chemically very different from the oils and take different solvents. Later you can clean off the restoration safely, if needed, without damaging the original oil paint. Sometimes we use watercolors as well. It really depends on the project.
WN: What do you think had happened to this painting over the centuries, to get it in the state that it was in when you first got it?
KG: Time is the worst enemy of art. So you have the natural processes that are happening to any painting, which is exacerbated by not having the painting in a climate-controlled environment. The chemistry of the pigments means that a normal temperature range is insignificant when it comes to causing changes.
But really it’s about dryness and humidity. Over time, if you take a painting from New York, where it’s relatively dry, to Florida, where it’s very humid, within a few days the painting reacts, it absorbs water from the environment, the canvas enlarges, and pulls the paint apart. And then as it dries—say, if you put it in a heated room—the canvas shrinks back. This constant push and pull creates a craquelure, in addition to the normal chemical craquelure that occurs as the paint dries.
As the paint dries, the topmost layer dries first, and then it slows down the middle layers, so there’s a very specific but normal chemical process involved. It’s like wrinkles on your face: you can’t avoid them, unfortunately, but they’re normal.
As your painting aged and got dirty, the varnish was completely soaked in, meaning no one had touched the varnish in over a century. Dust and grime, fireplaces, candles, smoking, all affected it. It was kept in an environment that was very dry, so probably at some point the owner just put it in an attic, because it wasn’t very attractive anymore. It did have a previous restoration, over 100 years ago before it got so bad, because somebody recognized the value of it.
WN: Back when people still appreciated artistic skill.
KG: People used to recognize that paintings like these were valuable: the materials were expensive and the artists were expensive. In Old Masters, there are no bad paintings. It’s not like in Modern and Contemporary Art, where everybody is an artist these days. In 17th century Italy this was not so: to get a commission you had to be good, you had to be trained, and it took a lifetime to be trained as an artist.
WN: And also just to build up a clientele.
KG: Right, exactly. So the painting had been restored before, by someone who recognized the value of it, but it was overcleaned. Varnishes have to be cleaned off of old paintings periodically, every 40 to 100 years, depending on the condition.
Over the years, all old paintings have been cleaned, but before organic chemistry very abrasive soaps and ammonia were used to clean paintings, so a lot of Old Masters have suffered in the hands of “restorers.”
How One Becomes a Painting Restorer
WN: I’m curious, with respect to your career path, did you always intend to do art restoration, or did that came to you later?
KG: Well, I came from a former communist bloc country, Czechoslovakia, and under the system there when I grew up, the regime made sure that they captured children with talent early on. So starting around the second grade, there were specialized government commissions going from classroom to classroom, looking out for children who showed artistic talent, athletic ability, or musical talent, to place them in specialized after-school programs.
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