Oldenburg`s Soft Fan - Williamstown Art Conservation Center

Transcription

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 9 , N U M B E R 2 • FA L L 2 014
Oldenburg’s
Soft Fan
Williamstown Art Conservation Center | 1
Contents, Fall 2014
Art Conservator
Volume 9, Number 2 • Fall 2014
Director
T‌homas J. Branchick
Editor
Timothy Cahill
Art Direction and Production
Ed Atkeson/Berg Design
Photographer
Matthew Hamilton
Contributors
Graham C. Boettcher,
Melissa Horn,
Christine Puza,
Sandra Webber
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
6000 Peachtree Road
Atlanta, GA 30341
T: 404-733-4589
F: 678-547-1453
3 Director’s Letter
4 When the Grit Hits the Fan
Claes Oldenburg, Pop, and the conservation of the everyday
By Melissa Horn
8
Links to the Past
History and lore meet in a model of Shinnecock Hills Golf Course
Christine Puza
10 Burchfield’s Landscape Mysticism
12 WACC News & Notes
William Sidney Mount’s Eel Spearing; Bryant’s homestead wallpaper;
Abraham Lincoln’s stovepipe hat
16 Report from Atlanta
Dramatic measures save portrait by the “Artist of the Confederacy”
By Graham C. Boettcher
19
Tech Notes
From the Director
After more than ten years of planning and construction, the Clark Art Institute’s major new Clark
Center has opened and it is sensational. The new addition is a companion to our home here in the
(recently renamed) Lunder Center at Stone Hill, both being the creation of Japanese master architect
Tadao Ando. Clark Center includes new visitor facilities, a pair of excellent temporary exhibition
galleries, and an elegant, multi-tiered reflecting pool that mirrors the hills and sky of our Berkshire
landscape. The paintings of the permanent collection, many of which were on national tour, have been
returned to the reconfigured galleries of the original building, and I get great satisfaction in seeing old
friends (many of which I personally treated) back home. Among the inaugural exhibits was Make It
New: Abstract Paintings from the National Gallery of Art: 1950-1975, brilliantly installed in the glorious new subterranean gallery.
The presence at the Clark of Pollack, Rothko, and other major American abstractionists sent a powerful signal that a new day
had dawned at the venerable museum.
With a major retrospective of Paul Feely’s paintings opening this November at the Albright Knox Art Gallery in
Buffalo, New York, I spent the summer preparing more than a dozen of the artist’s large abstract canvases. Curious visitors
asked what I was doing outside the Center in shorts, tee shirt, and wet sandals, readying the paintings for display with
de-ionized water and sunshine. “You can do that and it works?” they asked. Yes it does, if you know the secret. This issue
of Art Conservator features the maquette for Claes Oldenberg’s Soft Fan sculptures — a historically significant piece of
early Pop art. The X-ray of the piece’s blade assembly makes a very graphic cover photo. The treatment was a team effort,
involving conservators from two departments working with our Lenett fellow from Williams College. It was one of our most
interesting projects for the annual Judith M. Lenett Memorial Fellowship, which celebrates its twentieth year at WACC. We
are extremely proud to offer this educational opportunity with Williams College and the Clark, and pleased to carry forward
the legacy and memory of Judith Lenett in such a worthy manner.
—Tom Branchick
Colormen and their Marks
Sandra Webber
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
X-ray image revealing construction of Claes Oldenburg’s
1965 Model for Soft Fan.
WACC director Thomas Branchick in shorts and sandals treating the large canvases of Paul Feeley under the summer sun.
2 | Art Conservator | Fall 2014
Cover Story
When the Grit Hits the Fan
Claes Oldenburg, Pop, and the conservation of the everyday
By Melissa Horn
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the Judith M. Lenett Memorial Fellowship, a joint project of the Williamstown
Art Conservation Center, Williams College, and The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Each academic year, the Lenett
Fellowship is awarded to a second-year student in the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art, to explore issues of
art conservation in the field of American art. Working closely with WACC conservators, each fellow spends two semesters conserving
and researching an American art object. This year’s Lenett Fellow, Melissa Horn, worked on Model for Soft Fan by Claes Oldenburg,
under the guidance of Leslie Paisley, WACC head paper conservator, and Hélène Gillette-Woodard, head objects conservator. The
project culminated in a public lecture by Ms. Horn at the Clark. The article below is adapted from that presentation. The full text of
the original lecture is available at www.williamstownart.org.
I
magine this: you walk into a museum and see a sculpture
on a pedestal— Model for Soft Fan, the label says,
from 1965, by the artist Claes Oldenburg. It depicts an
oscillating fan, with the usual blades, head, and body, but
it looks broken. In fact, it looks beyond broken: it seems
defeated, demoralized, crushed. But of course, it’s supposed
to be that way. Oldenburg worked during the 1960s, when a
playful new breed of Pop artists pulled, stretched, and broke
everyday objects to subvert and expand what we call art.
The drooping fan’s broken appearance was part of the work’s
artistic argument: it was, in other words, intentional.
Now imagine you walk into an art conservation lab and
see the same fan. You know the work is there because it needs
treatment—it must be broken. But wait. Doesn’t Oldenburg
play with brokenness? How do you know which parts need
fixing? If an artist meant for a piece to look damaged or
distorted, what does it mean to repair it?
In the conservation lab, such theoretical quandaries about
an artist’s intention take on a practical urgency. These sorts
of questions were, indeed, exactly what entered my mind
when I first encountered Oldenburg’s Model for Soft Fan at the
Williamstown Art Conservation Center.
The work is a maquette, a kind of three-dimensional
sketch, for two much larger works from 1967, called Giant
Soft Fan and Giant Soft Fan, Ghost Version. There are a lot of
differences between the maquette and the finished works. Our
fan—the model, owned by the Smith College Museum of Art
in Northampton, Massachusetts—is approximately two feet
high. The finished versions are ten feet high. Our fan is mostly
paper and cardboard. The larger fans are predominantly
vinyl. Maybe most significantly for conservation purposes, the
finished versions hang by a chain from the ceiling, whereas our
piece is adhered to a base.
Yet, curiously, at one point our model was more similar
to the final work than when it came to us. In the object file
for the fan, with past conservation reports and records of
ownership, we received an odd photograph of our maquette
hanging from a wall, tipped over backwards. We could only
guess at why it was exhibited this way. Did it fall over when it
was upright and just look better hung up? Or did the previous
owner know something about Oldenburg’s intention that we
didn’t? Regardless of the reason, it was clear to the curators at
Smith that gravity wasn’t doing the model any favors.
When the college museum accessioned the piece in 1979,
it was in danger of being ripped off its base by own weight.
In response to this threat, Smith curators had the work
conserved at another lab in the early 1980s. There, conservators
performed major repairs to return the piece to its standing
position. Over the intervening three decades, however, the fan
had slumped forward again. The main aim of our treatment
was to stabilize the structural integrity of the piece, to reverse
the fan’s forward slump and help prevent it from sagging in
the future.
A second major task was both cosmetic and chemical. The
piece was covered with a mysterious, dust-like white coating.
On closer inspection, the coating proved to be a chemical
efflorescence that had bloomed out from the paint itself. This
was the first issue I addressed. Because the maquette is made
Claes Oldenburg, Model for Soft Fan, 1965, after treatment.
primarily of paper elements, I worked with Leslie Paisley, head
of the WACC paper lab. She and I tackled the efflorescence.
Before beginning the treatment, we analyzed the sculpture
to understand how Oldenburg had fit all the elements
together. The fan’s base is constructed of a brown kraft-paper
bag, turned upside down and stapled to a cardboard ring.
Oldenburg then opened the bottom of a second bag to make a
cylinder and placed a circle of cardboard on either end of the
tube to form a kind of drum. Stapled shut, this construction
formed the head or motor housing of the maquette. To make
the fan blades, Oldenburg stapled four cardboard ovoids to
a central cross-shaped piece of cardboard. Finally, the loopy
shape that encircles the work represents the fan’s electrical cord
and is made from bits of clothesline held together by electrical
tape.
X-ray photography revealed that Oldenburg attached the
blades to the head by running a wire through both elements,
which he secured by wrapping around a nail on each side to
pull the wire taut. The X-ray also exposed a bright cross shape
attached to the blade construction and concealed by cardboard
and electrical tape; this turned out to be a metal insert created
by the previous conservators to give the blades added support.
Inspection revealed a second main element of that previous
treatment as well: additional internal support for the paper
bag that forms the fan’s base. The conservators had lined the
original bag with canvas to stiffen and protect the brittle kraft
paper; they then filled the cavity with polyethylene microbeads, which are like tiny packing peanuts, giving the internal
bag more mass and greater support in its upright position.
Detail of stearic acid “bloom” caused by crystallized fats
in the oil-based paint.
Now that we understood how the sculpture was made, we
turned to cleaning the white efflorescence. An efflorescence is
the dried remnants of a substance that has lost it moisture; in
this case, it was clearly something associated with the model’s
paint layer. The pattern of the bloom precisely followed the
original drip pattern of the paint. A detail photograph of one
area showed how the material crystallized on top of the paint
layer, thin in some places, but very thick in others, like little
piles of snow.
Analysis suggested that the crystalized material was
stearic acid, a saturated fat found in cocoa butter and shea
butter. What was this compound doing on the surface of our
sculpture? Interestingly, research revealed that ours was not
the only Oldenburg to have developed this kind of bloom. In
2009, a sculpture called Floor Cake made of painted canvas
showed the same powdery efflorescence on the cake’s chocolate
drop. Both our sculpture and the chocolate drop were painted
with an oil-based paint containing synthetic stearic acid. The
powdery efflorescence on these works is the result of the stearic
acid migrating out of the paint and crystallizing on the surface
of the sculpture.
(There is an irony to this efflorescence appearing on the
cake sculpture’s chocolate drop. The same thing happens
to the fat in actual chocolate as well, as anyone knows who
has opened an old bag of chocolate chips and found they
have turned all weird and white. This phenomenon is called
chocolate bloom, and it’s basically the same process: the cocoa
fat migrates out of the chocolate compound it had been a part
of and appears on the surface.)
Alkyd resin paints like the one on Model for Soft Fan
were manufactured as inexpensive paint for artists, but they
were also formulated as house paint. In fact, pretty much
every material in the maquette could have been purchased
in a hardware store. Oldenburg chose to work with common
materials manufactured to be inexpensive rather than last a
long time. This choice has had dire effects on the longevity of
his work. The phrase conservators use to describe a material
that deteriorates due to internal, intrinsic factors (as opposed
to external forces) is “inherent vice.” Very often, artists don’t
realize that a material is inherently unstable. Most of the
materials in the fan maquette possessed this problem.
Kraft paper bags, for example, like the ones Oldenburg
used, are made from ground wood pulp, which contains high
amounts of a compound called lignin. Lignin is acidic and over
time makes paper brittle and dark (think of old newspapers).
Corrugated cardboard is similarly acidic. Plastics, like the
mind, it was definitely Oldenburg’s intention that the fan never
electrical tape that covers parts of the fan, are disastrous from
look too perky.
a conservation standpoint. Plastics constitute a huge area of
What did the X-rays tell us about the fan’s structural
research in the conservation of modern and contemporary art, as
weaknesses? Because of how the piece was slumped over, the
artists used plastics with increasing frequency into the twentiethweak spot appeared to be at the neck, but in truth it was in the
century and our own. “Plastic” is a single word used to describe
joint where the blades met the head. The cross-shaped piece of
thousands of different types of synthetic compounds, each of
metal from the previous treatment was very thin, more like foil.
which can respond differently to aging. Artworks made from
Over time, it had flexed and caused the slumping. We needed to
plastic might warp, crack, become soft and sticky, or crumble
figure out another way to support the blades.
into powder. Plastic artifacts and works of art aren’t just dangers
Working now with Hélène Gillette-Woodard, head of
to themselves, but to things around them: the gases certain
the WACC objects lab, we decided on two options for the
compounds give off as they degrade can, for instance, corrode
structural treatment. The first involved contracting an external
metal.
mount maker to fabricate a thin piece of metal that would be
I cleaned the bloom with a fluffy brush made from goat
permanently
hair, working
attached to the
in broad, round
piece’s pedestal.
strokes to gently
The top of this
dislodge the
brace would be
majority of the
soldered to two
powder, which I
horseshoe-shaped
then vacuumed
pieces of metal
off. Because it
that would hold
was crystallized
up the blades
oil, the bloom
through a slight
made the brush
compression. This
feel thick and
solution would be
greasy, like dog
minimally invasive
fur. Using a
to the piece, which
variety of brush
was a benefit, but it
shapes and sizes
would also be quite
with stiff bristles
visible to viewers.
to navigate the
Lenett fellow Melissa Horn in the WACC objects department.
In option two,
work’s small
we would fabricate a new aluminum cross-shaped support, the
crannies, I worked my way into the cardboard’s corrugated
same shape as the earlier piece, but thicker and stronger. This
ridges, underneath the nails at the front and back of the plywood
cross-shaped insert would be totally hidden from sight and blend
base, and along the long, thin folds in the fan’s body.
in with the piece. We would still contract an external mount
Though I removed all the white particulates, we can’t know
maker to fabricate supports for the blades made of curved metal,
whether the paint is finished weeping stearic acid or if the bloom
which would be attached with a nut directly to the new cross
will reappear. Only time will tell if the sculpture will need to be
support. The mount would be much smaller and less visible, but
cleaned of its fatty acids again in the future.
we would have to dismantle the artwork to install it, a much
By this time, the fan and I had spent several weeks spent
more invasive treatment. The more invasive a procedure, the
together in the lab. We had gotten to know each other pretty
more inherent the risk that something might go wrong. Smith
well, and after a while I started to think of “it” as a “him.” I felt a
College chose this option anyway, for, despite being more risky, it
kind of sympathy: he had had a rough life, and even besides the
would provide the best support for the piece in the long run.
efflorescence and the mechanical problems, he had the pathetic
Hélène unwrapped Oldenburg’s original wire from one of the
air of a sad sack, Willy Loman-type character. It was clear that
in repairing the fan we needed to preserve its personality. To my
continued on page 18
Feature
Links to the Past
History and lore meet in a model of Shinnecock Hills Golf Course
by Christine Puza
Assistant Conservator of Furniture and Wood Objects
T
o golf aficionados, the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in
Southampton, New York, is one of the world’s legendary
venues. Built on the edge of Long Island Sound, it is a
traditional old links course of tall grass and stiff winds, and has
been the site of the prestigious U.S. Open four times across three
centuries. The club’s Stanford White-designed clubhouse was
built in 1892 and its first twelve-hole course laid out in 1895.
Shinnecock Hills was completely redesigned into a modern
eighteen-hole course in 1931, but it is still possible to survey the
original layout thanks to a topographical scale model that has
preserved its charm and romance. The grand three-dimensional
plaster map measures twelve feet by seven feet, and captures the
fairways, hazards, greens, and surrounding geography of the
“National Golf Links of America” as they appeared in 1911.
For decades the model had decorated the stately clubhouse,
until that building was renovated in 1991 and the old map moved
to an outbuilding for storage. By then, it had lost much of its
original power to conjure the past. At some point in its life, it
Conservator
Chistine
Puza inpaints
the plaster
relief map of
Shinnecock
Hills Golf Club.
had suffered severe damage at the midpoint of the lower portion,
which had been repaired with a rough layer of commercial plaster.
Thickly applied over the map’s central shoreline, this repair
covered the boundary between land and sea. Layers of repainting
had also taken away much of the model’s original luster.
Adding to the map’s historic importance is the identity of
its maker, Edwin E. Howell (1847- 1911). An early geographer
with the United States Geographical Service, Howell is believed
to have originated the concept of the topographical model
as a teaching tool in 1871 with a plaster map of the island of
Santo Domingo. In 1876, his relief map of the Grand Canyon
was prominently featured at the U.S. Centennial exposition
in Philadelphia, and he was honored at the 1904 World’s Fair
in St. Louis with a retrospective exhibit of fifty-six models.
Shinnecock Hills was his last work, completed shortly before
his death.
The treatment began with cross-sectional analysis of the
overpaint found present on nearly all surfaces. Examination
revealed at least four layers of added paint
on the surrounding green, non-relief
regions, and three distinct layers covering
the water. The wooden frame was also
heavily overpainted with black and white
commercial paints.
The removal of these later paint layers
to reveal the original surface comprised
the majority of the treatment.
Removing the overpaint also allowed
the extent of the damage present on the
lower portion to be evaluated. Except for
the main area of damage, the original
surface was intact and stable. Work on the
area of the previous repair, particularly in
the central part of the water, revealed that
most of the original surface comprising the
bay had been lost. Nearly all of Howell’s
elaborate hand lettering was also missing,
except for a few fragments on the far right
and left.
Fortunately, Shinnecock Hills had in
its records a photograph of the model,
taken around the time it was made, that
clearly showed what the damaged legend
had looked like. The photograph was
scanned and projected onto the surface
of the model, using the fragments of the
original lettering for registration. In this
way it was possible to achieve the correct
size and orientation to accurately restore
the missing text. The few original letters
that remained retained their color scheme
of black, white, and several shades of blue,
and these intact regions were referenced
Top, before treatment, overpaint obscures calligraphic details by cartographer Edwin
to aid in accurate color matching. This
E. Howell; at center, the same section restored by the author. Above, detail of an early
projection technique was also used to
photograph used to duplicate the original lettering.
recreate the shoreline where it had been
moss and a binding mixture of Jade 403 and Golden acrylics
replaced by the thick, obtrusive fill.
applied to the wire branches.
One of the treatment’s most engaging aspects was the
The end result of this extensive treatment is a model that is
replication of missing foliage and trees. Taking direct cues
structurally secure, visually complete, and faithful to Edwin H.
from what remained of the original trees, as well as applying
Howells’ original vision. The model will soon be on view over
techniques used in model train landscapes, small bundles of
the bar in the Shinnecock Hills clubhouse, where the world’s
fine-gauge copper wire were twisted together, cut into lengths,
top golfers will see it when the course hosts the 2018 U.S. Open
then partially untwisted on one end to form a tree shape. The
tournament.
leaves of the trees were made of finely chopped sphagnum
Feature
Burchfield’s Landscape Mysticism
I like to be able to advance and retreat just like a man writing
a book. I doubt that very few [writers] ever sit down and leave a
paragraph as it first comes into their head. They work over it, delete
things and add things.... I like to do that just as they do.
—Charles Burchfield
T
here was something at once contrary and visionary to
the solo exhibit presented by the Museum of Modern
Art in 1930, Charles Burchfield: Early Watercolors 1916
to 1918. The exhibition, the first one-artist show the stillnew museum ever mounted, contained paintings known to
very few. By then, Burchfield was renowned as one of the
“American Scene” genre realists that also included Edward
Hopper and Grant Wood. But the MoMA show had nothing
to do with Burchfield’s popular and saleable style of realism.
Instead, it presented landscape paintings that were vivid,
surreal, hallucinatory. Burchfield, who had turned to his more
conventional style in part to support his family, was much
closer in temperament to this earlier, more exuberant work. He
declared 1917, when so many of the exhibit’s best paintings were created, his “Golden Year.”
In 1943, as Burchfield turned 50, those youthful paintings called to him again. In middle age, he
abandoned genre painting altogether and returned to his first love, the early watercolors. The master
artist, now much more confident of his talent and vision, regarded the Golden Year pictures and
determined they were not complete. Adding broad strips of paper around the perimeter of the existing
small paintings, he transformed the originals into the nuclei of larger, more fully imagined works.
Burchfield called these expanded pictures “reconstructions.” He explained that the smaller pictures,
“had a germ of an idea in them … that hadn’t quite come off. By adding to them then I could make
them work.”
In 1948, Burchfield augmented one of the 1917 paintings with some two feet of additional paper to
produce his masterful Summer Afternoon. By then, he had fully entered a kind of mystical union with
nature, evidenced in how the four-foot painting buzzes, shimmers, vibrates and quakes with esoteric
fecundity. “An artist must paint not what he sees in nature, but what is there,” Burchfield declared. “To
do so, he must invent symbols, which, if properly used, make his work seem even more real than what is
in front of him.”
The painting, in the collection of the Williams College Museum of Art, arrived at the paper lab
at the Williamstown Art Conservation Center in generally excellent condition after a conservation
treatment in the 1980s to remove it from the artist’s original masonite support. After twenty years it had
begun to sag and distort. Treatment to prepare it for an exhibition involved humidifying the paper to
relax and expand the distortions before relining with bast-fibered Japanese paper and remounting with a
release layer to a paper-faced aluminum honeycomb panel. The thicker and more stable panel returned
the painting to plane, but necessitated modifications to the original Burchfield-made frame. WACC’s
furniture and frames department modified the frame to accommodate Static Dispersive Acrylic glazing
and the new thicker support panel.
Above, Charles Burchfield’s Summer Afternoon, 1948, and at right, detail showing the artist’s signature.
WACC News & Notes
A rejuvenated masterpiece of antebellum America
William Sidney Mount (1807-1868) was a pioneer among
York Times critic John Canady observed that “nothing, with Mount,
its celebration of the landscape, its mood of tense
American painters for depicting African Americans with a
is quite as simple as it first looks.”
tranquility, and its interracial and intergenerational
Mount’s depictions of African Americans can appear simplistic
themes, the 1845 oil-on-canvas is, in Adams’s words,
and scorn that characterized his era’s imagination. In the decades
and vaguely offensive to twenty-first century eyes, but in
“perhaps Mount’s most enduring contribution to
before the Civil War, Mount increasingly challenged these
antebellum America his portrayals pushed the envelope of racial
American art.” The artist noted that the scene was
pernicious stereotypes, elevating black men and women to the
sympathy. He had grown up close to black men as servants and
based on his childhood memories of being taught to
center of his pictures, often as the main characters of his affable,
slaves in the years before New York outlawed slavery in 1827,
spearfish by an “old Negro by the name of Hector,” a
idealized rustic scenes.
and his earliest scenes, made only a few years after the new law,
man who deftly and patiently plied his craft, “with all
fell prey to benign but servile black caricatures. As his thought
the philosophy of a Crane.”
Mount was one of America’s first important genre painters,
Cour tesy Trustees of Reser vations
measure of respect, released from the overt dismissal, derision,
taking as his subject daily life in rural Long Island, where he
matured over the next two decades, Mount’s depictions of race
Mount’s crowning achievement is one of the
was born and lived much of his life. While his pictures lack the
took on ever-greater pathos. If the artist cannot be said to have
gems of the collection at the Fenimore Art Museum
Conservator treats wallpaper in home of poet Bryant
sophistication of the great genre artists of Europe, from Brueghel
portrayed African Americans as entirely equal to whites, his
in Cooperstown, New York, which received a grant
to Chardin, they rose entirely out of American soil, capturing
pictures did evince a deepening consciousness of shared humanity
to have the painting returned to near-original luster.
This past summer, Leslie Paisley, WACC head paper conservator,
the young county’s simplicity and naiveté. Modern scholars and
and acknowledged the psychological isolation of segregation.
WACC head paintings conservator Tom Branchick
critics also read political and social commentary embedded in the
pictures’ charms. Surveying a retrospective exhibition in 1969, New
In Eel Spearing at Setauket, Mount created, as scholar Karen
M. Adams has written, “a black figure of unmitigated dignity.” For
was well acquainted with the work, having first
studied it in 1979 while enrolled at the thenCooperstown Graduate Program in Art Conservation.
“I’ve known the painting forever,” said Branchick.
The treatment required undoing past conservation
that had robbed the picture of numerous small but
distinctive painterly details and subtle effects of
color and light. “Mount’s presence was obscured.
The precision of his draftsmanship had been
compromised by earlier fills and inpainting,”
Branchick explained. “And the varnish was too thick,
all wrong—the picture had gone cloudy.”
Branchick removed layers of grime, varnish, and
awkward inpainting, slowly cleaning the surface back
to Mount’s own pigments and brushstrokes. Before
inpainting losses, some from more than fifty years
ago, he covered the surface with a “barrier layer” of
varnish. This synthetic coating serves not to seal the
picture so much as reveal its full chromatic range, as
a saturating rain intensifies the colors in a garden.
“The barrier layer is the most important layer in a
conservation treatment,” Branchick said. “Otherwise,
you cannot see the true colors put there by the artist.”
The treatment proceeded with inpainting to return
fine detail to, for instance, the small rocks and surface
ripples near the shallows, and restore color matches
in the water and sky. The flat, occluded appearance
the painting had worn for decades was replaced with
a renewed brilliance and sense of depth. “People
can see it now,” said Branchick. “It was extremely
satisfying to bring Mount back.”
William Sidney Mount, Eel Spearing at Setauket,
1845, after treatment.
completed a two-year project stabilizing the original wallpaper at the
Bryant Homestead, home of American poet and editor William Cullen
Bryant (1794-1878). The final phase of conservation and reinstallation of
the wallpaper in Bryant’s library took place in July.
The historic house, in Cummington, Massachusetts, was Bryant’s
boyhood home. There he matured as a poet, writing what are considered
America’s first great lyric poems. For fifty years, Bryant was editor
and publisher of the New York Evening Post, a progressive voice for
labor reform, urban greenspace, and abolition. Late in his life, Bryant
repurchased the homestead and significantly expanded it, summering
there for thirteen years. After his death, the house stayed in the family until
it was placed with the Trustees of Reservations, a Massachusetts land
trust.
The textured gilt wallpaper with flocked border is original to Bryant’s
library, where the poet worked on free-verse translations of Homer
during his retirement. The library is the one fully original room in the
house museum, containing furniture, books, art, and other furnishings as
Bryant left them. More than a decade ago, efforts began to preserve the
paper, which had badly deteriorated due to the environment and house
construction. Forty-nine separate pieces of wallpaper were removed,
each piece labeled and documented as to its exact placement.
With assistance from a Save America’s Treasures grant from the
National Park Service, the pieces were brought to WACC to remove
stains, realign tears, and fill and line the paper overall to provide support.
As sections were completed, Paisley and historic wallpaper consultant
Robert Kelly, of Lee, Massachusetts, studied the previous installation,
measured, prepared and lined the walls to accept the paper, and finally
reinstalled the lined wallpaper, replacing each piece in its exact location.
The reinstallation required additional filling and inpainting by Paisley
on-site.
In an interview with the Berkshire Eagle, Paisley said the project
piqued her imagination about Bryant. “He looked up and saw this exact
wallpaper while he was writing,” she said. It is rare to find a nineteenthcentury house with its original wall covering, she noted, making the
restoration particularly significant.
WACC News & Notes
WACC Staff
Treatment Report
Object:
Abraham Lincoln’s Stovepipe Hat
Owner:
Hildene: The Lincoln Family Home
Conservators:
Gretchen Guidess and Leslie Paisley
Description:
Man’s black, narrow-brimmed top hat with columnar crown, trimmed with black grosgrain ribbon at base
and along brim. Maker’s label inside crown depicts an eagle over a wreath above the inscription, “Siger
& Nichols /88 Maiden Lane/New York.” The hat is made from glossy black pile textile that covers a paper
card support. The appearance of the textile suggests it is silk, with a looped, uncut pile reminiscent of fur.
The textile is seamed diagonally along the rise of the hat and is likely seamed around the top and brim. Hat
structure appears to be entirely supported by card stock to form the stovepipe-shaped crown and brim. A
leather headband with wire edge is sewn into the interior. The interior is lined with “silked paper,” an open
weave silk gauze adhered to a paper backing.
Condition:
Fair. The card structure supporting the interior crown is compromised with tears and folds. Some
creases are likely a relic of crushing or similar compression. This damage lends the hat a slight crumpled
appearance to its exterior.
Treatment:
1. Paper conservator Paisley created a curved support to provide for the hat during repair.
2. The leather inner-band was lifted to gain access to previous mends of the lining and deep creases in the
outer structure.
3. Creases were stabilized with heavyweight Japanese paper adhered with wheat-starch paste and
copolymer adhesive.
4. Paper repairs were pressed with polyester fabric, blotter paper curved to match inside of hat, and small
cloth-covered lead weights. Significant reduction in the creases was achieved but disturbances in the
outer fabric layer will always remain.
5. Paper breaks on the inside of the hat were repaired with remoistenable tissue ‘bandages.’ Previous
patches of Japanese paper were dampened and removed where possible, to access tears and allow
more planar repair, minimizing appearance of the deeper deformations in the hat structure.
6. Areas on the inside of the hat wall lining not easily accessible otherwise were repaired using Japanese
paper toned to minimize its appearance.
7. The repaired paper lining was tucked back under the hatband.
8. The areas along the leather hatband were reattached and stabilized with hollow, spine-type repairs
using toned Japanese paper, also attaching torn and loose elements where accessible. This stabilization
will protect this vulnerable location during future handling.
9. Textile conservator Guidess designed and constructed a clear acrylic mount to protect the hat during
storage, display, and travel.
Note: Future repairs to the paper lining are possible only as long as the leather band is sufficiently supple to
allow manipulation, but as the leather is becoming brittle with age, the window of opportunity for this work is
T‌homas J. Branchick
Director; Conservator of
Paintings/Dept. Head
Mary Catherine Betz
Associate Conservator of
Paintings
Nate Brulé
Office Assistant; Technician
John Conzett
Office Manager
Kristan Goolsby
Administrative Assistant;
Photographer/Atlanta
Hélène Gillette-Woodard
Conservator of Objects/Dept.
Head
Hugh Glover
Conservator of Furniture and
Wood Objects/Dept. Head
Gretchen Guidess
Assistant Conservator for Objects
and Textiles
Matthew Hamilton
Photographer
Teresa Haskins
Accounts Manager
Rebecca Johnston
Conservator of Paper
Henry Klein
Conservation Technician
Montserrat Le Mense
Conservator of Paintings
Leslie Paisley
Conservator of Paper/Dept. Head
Mina Porell
Pre-program Intern; Technician/
Atlanta
Christine Puza
Assistant Conservator of Furniture
and Wood Objects
Michelle Savant
Conservator of Objects/Atlanta
closing.
Larry Shutts
Conservator of Paintings/Atlanta
Treatment Report is an editorial feature based on conservators’ reports. Wording may not be verbatim.
Sandra L. Webber
Report from Atlanta
Dramatic measures save portrait by the “Artist of the Confederacy”
By Graham C. Boettcher
The most successful and prolific artist to work in Alabama
Alabama, where he established a portrait studio. Marion was
Marschall’s return from Europe,
nearly insoluble polyurethane
prior to the Civil War was the German-born portraitist Nicola
known then as the “Athens of the South,” because it was home
and is signed “N. Marschall 1859”
coating. Polyurethane is for sealing
Marschall (1829-1917), who catered to the wealthy families of
to three colleges. These included the Marion Female Institute,
on the apron of the chair in the
floors, not paintings; it is made to
Alabama’s “Black Belt,” so named because of the rich black
where Marschall joined the faculty as an instructor of art,
foreground. The portrait is unusual in
be insoluble and walked on. It goes
soil that gave rise to the cotton plantations that were the
language, and music. In 1857, Marschall returned to Europe and
Marschall’s body of work because he
yellow very quickly and is a terrible
state’s mainstay. Marschall is often referred to as the “Artist
studied painting in Düsseldorf, Munich, Rome, and Paris, before
seldom included props or extraneous
saturator. Luckily in this case, the
of the Confederacy,” because of a long-held belief that he
returning to Marion in 1859.
elements such as furniture.
painting had been varnished with
designed the Confederacy’s first national flag, as well as its first
This portrait depicts Mary Susan Robbins (1856-1918)—
a natural resin beforehand, so the
During the Civil War, Marschall’s
military uniform, claims that for years have been the subject of
known as Susie—daughter of Selma, Alabama, merchant
artistic skills were employed as chief
floor sealant did not have very
discussion and dispute.
John Robbins and his wife Rebecca. One of three portraits
draftsman of maps and fortifications
good adhesion. Larry removed it
commissioned by the Robbins family (the portrait of Mr. Robbins
for the Second Alabama Regiment
mechanically using adhesive tape,
Germany, Marschall immigrated to the United States in 1849,
was damaged beyond repair and discarded by the family;
of Engineers. After the war, he
like getting one’s eyebrows waxed. arriving first in New Orleans, then heading to Mobile to live with
while the portrait of Mrs. Robbins is in the collection of the
continued to live in Marion, but
a relative. By August 1851, Marschall had relocated to Marion,
Birmingham Museum of Art), it was painted immediately after
increasingly sought work outside
lifted from the fiberboard backing,
the Black Belt, probably because
Larry had to work in reverse by
the region’s post-war economy was
cutting away the board. Using a
devastated. This may have ultimately
table saw with a stacked dado cutter,
occasioned the artist’s 1873 move
he thinned the panel to 1/16-inch
to Louisville, Kentucky, where he
thickness. The remaining board was
remained until his death, establishing
shaved off with planes and chisels,
a lucrative career as portraitist of that
releasing the painted canvas. The
city’s elites.
As tastes shifted or families
moved away from the Black Belt,
many of Marschall’s portraits
were stored in the less-than-ideal
conditions of basements and attics.
The damage sustained in such
storage from heat, handling, and
mildew might then be exacerbated
by do-it-yourself repairs or heavyhanded professional restorations.
The Robbins portrait is an exemplar
of such misguided treatment. The
painting was brought to the Atlanta
Since the painting could not be
Collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art; Gift of Dr. Joseph B. Beaird, Jr. and Family 2006.27
The son of a wealthy tobacco merchant from St. Wendel,
Art Conservation Center badly torn,
overcleaned (including scrubbing the paint away to the ground in
the background), badly repainted, and coated with polyurethane.
Additionally, it had been glued to 1/4-inch fiberboard (a.k.a.
painting could then be lined with a
second layer of canvas, reinforced
with a polyester film interleaf. Once
stabilized, the portrait underwent
extensive inpainting to restore its
appearance. The earlier, destructive
overcleaning had been done inside
the frame, leaving a hidden edge
untouched and in original condition;
this was used as a color guide
for the restoration. To reproduce
the background, Larry used a
splatter technique with highly dilute
retouching paint, flicking the brush
over the canvas while protecting the
main image with a polyester mask.
The conservation treatment was dramatic and labor-intensive,
but successfully returned the historic painting to exhibition quality.
Masonite) with a water-based adhesive, which had shrunk the
linen canvas, resulting in tenting and paint loss.
Treatment by AACC paintings conservator Larry Shutts
began with cleaning to remove the extensive repainting and
Graham C. Boettcher, Ph.D. is Chief Curator and The William Cary
Hulsey Curator of American Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art.
AACC paintings conservator Larry Shutts contributed to this report.
This page, Nicola Marschall’s Portrait of Mary Susan Robbins, 1859, as it arrived at the Atlanta Art Conservation
Center, top, and after treatment. Opposite, detail during treatment showing fills prior to inpainting.
Tech Notes, Fall 2014
Oldenburg continued from page 8
When asked about comparative examples, we explained
nails that held it, unthreaded the blades from the wire, and
that Oldenburg made another model for a fan sculpture that
set the blades aside to rest and return to whatever shape was
is pretty straight up and down, but the finished versions of
most natural for them. Removing the blades gave us visual
our fan were droopy and hung from the ceiling. Our mount
access to the spacer between the blades and the head, which
maker said something to the effect of, well, then, what are
we discovered was merely the top of a squeeze bottle of glue,
you saving?
covered in black paint and electrical tape. Yet another instance
His point resonated with me. In the field of art history,
of Oldenburg using whatever was at hand.
we avoid pinning a work’s meaning to an artist’s intention.
The new cross-shaped insert contained a small hole in the
Poststructuralist theory declared the “author” dead in the
middle for the wire to pass through. The insert was covered
1960s, and since then we’ve regarded with great skepticism
in black electrical tape to blend in with the rest of the piece.
anyone who claims to know what a work is “about” based
Between the tape and the metal we placed a layer of PeCap, a
on what its artist
synthetic woven fabric
intended. When faced
used as a protective
with the material object,
barrier. It’s inert, stiff,
however, we must set
and doesn’t respond to
aside such theoretical
moisture. Adhesive was
ambiguity to deal with
applied to this assembly
more practical concerns.
and it was clamped till
In contemporary
dry.
conservation, you have to
Time had come for
figure out exactly what it
reassembly, but as we
is that needs saving, even
began to thread the
if preserving the work
blades back onto the
means compromising,
wire, we found that in
to some degree, the
stabilizing and relaxing
material object. Concept,
them they wanted to
for many artists, trumps
position themselves
construction.
differently from their
We ended up placing
previous arrangement. If Before-treatment photograph, documenting extent of the efflorescence.
the blades somewhere
we forced the blades into
between entirely upright and entirely drooping. Our position
the same position they had been previously, they would look
was slightly different from the one in which the blades were
too upright and not in the spirit of the piece. We consulted a
originally adhered, but still allowed them to retain their
documentary photo that showed the fan at Oldenburg’s 1969
slightly downward cast. The mount is completely invisible
Museum of Modern Art retrospective, which suggested how
from the front of the piece. The new metal inserts that we used
we might position the blades on the board to make them look
to sandwich the blades were supportive enough that we only
more as they were originally. As we moved the blades this way
and that, I recalled a discussion Hélène, Leslie and I had had at needed the mount to support a single side.
In an artist’s statement from 1961, Oldenburg wrote, “I am
the beginning of the project.
for art that is smoked, like a cigarette, smells, like a pair of
Our mount maker had come into the lab and asked about
shoes. I am for art that flaps like a flag, or helps blow noses,
the project. We discussed how we might stop the blades from
like a handkerchief. I am for art that is put on and taken off,
slumping forward and how we didn’t know for certain what
like pants, which develops holes, like socks, which is eaten, like
the piece looked like when Oldenburg had made it. We also
a piece of pie.”
explained that the piece was a sketch, so it didn’t seem to have
Model for Soft Fan isn’t exactly the same as when it was made
a great density of intention to begin with—it seemed more like
in 1965. But I think Oldenburg would be okay with that.
a process piece than something that was fully finished.
Colormen and their Marks
A survey of nineteenth-century European paintings in the Clark Art Institute
By Sandra Webber
Comprehensive examinations for the Sterling and
Francine Clark Art Institute’s Nineteenth Century
European Paintings catalog provided an opportunity for
comparative study of the artists’ preparatory materials
and techniques and their suppliers. For this survey,
three hundred fifty oil paintings were selected, spanning
the decades between 1790 and 1910. Two-thirds of the
paintings are French, twenty percent are British, and the
remaining are by various European artists, some working
in France. About forty percent of the paintings date
between 1870 and 1890, and many are quite small, due to
Mr. Clark’s preference for small pictures. There were two
hundred eight canvas supports, one hundred four wood
panels, and thirty-eight other cellulosic supports ranging
from paper and cardboards to millboard.1
Commercial purveyors had been manufacturing and selling artist materials and tools since at least the
1700s. The nineteenth century saw the invention and manufacture of many new supplies, including the
largest expansion of the artist’s palette in a single century. Some shops specialized in preparing the colors,
hand- and machine-grinding the dry pigments into a workable paste, hence their trade name, “colormen.”
Commercially prepared paints became more prevalent after collapsible tin tubes were introduced in 1841,
allowing for longer storage life. Many shops sold an array of materials besides paints, and a few also focused
on manufacturing and preparing the painting supports. These suppliers maintained two addresses, the
principle one being their salesroom, with a production workshop located in a second building. The larger
firms may have provided smaller shops with such items as factory-primed canvas, which required considerable
floor space to produce. These businesses were often passed down in families, with numerous name changes as
in-laws took over older shops, companies were bought out, or mergers took place. During this period it was
not unusual that the role of the colorman also encompass framing and even specialized restoration services,
such as lining. All sixteen of the oils-on-paper in the survey had been lined onto stretched canvases, possibly
by colormen, allowing them to be framed as paintings without mats and glazing. Some shops were also
picture dealers, providing formal or informal exhibition space, which offered a method of extending credit
to working artists. Relationships between individual artists or groups of artists sometimes centered around a
particular colorman, especially if his wares had a consistent reputation for quality.2
Most of the materials seen in this survey were purchased in major metropolitan shops, primarily London
and Paris. By the mid-nineteenth century London’s colormen were fewer and larger in scale, relying more on
marketing and distribution, while many small independent art suppliers could still be found in Paris.3 By the
early twentieth century, several large firms had emerged in England and France, a few of which are still in the
business of making artist colors. The English firm of Winsor and Newton, established in 1832, still maintains
Figure 1
a worldwide reputation for quality goods, as does
the merged French company Lefranc and Bourgeois,
which originated as a small shop in 1773.4
These companies sometimes marked the backs of
their prepared supports, usually with a black stamp
or stencil, displaying their name and address, and
occasionally their available wares and services (Fig.
1). Most stamps were about 3-by-5 inches in size and
often oval in shape, with the address and wares in
smaller type surrounding the colorman’s name. A
few later stamps, such as Hardy-Alan’s, appeared in
the shape of an artist’s palette and English colormen
sometimes used printed-paper labels. Rarely the
marks took other forms such as the small brand used
by the Italian panel maker Giosi.
A total of fifty-three supplier’s marks were
recorded in the survey; twenty-four on canvases,
twenty-five on wood panels, and four on the
remaining supports. The central placement of most
canvas stamps suggests that they were applied after
the primed fabric had been stretched, probably
by the shop selling the end product. However,
some stamps may also reflect the actual preparer,
a colorman with enough workshop space to size
and ground rolls of fabric.5 Canvas had begun its
use as an acceptable oil painting support during
the fifteenth century and had overtaken wood as
the favorite support by the second quarter of the
seventeenth century. Artists from the early decades
of the nineteenth century were using coarser,
more open weave fabrics that they were often
priming themselves. After 1840 the linens became
finer and tighter in weave with the introduction
of power looms, and most artists bought their
canvases already primed and stretched, just as they
do today. Various ground colors, opacities, and
surface textures were available on the commercially
prepared supports, with the majority being oilbased. About half of the surveyed canvases had
the most commonly seen off-white ground color.
Among the artists using other ground colors, John
Constable was notable for his consistent use of
various shades of pink. Considering that seventy
percent of the two hundred eight canvases are
lined, there are probably a considerable number of
additional stamps hidden from view.
Wood panels prepared by specialized workshops
Na me of Suppl ier
C l a r k Pa i n t i n g
—APRIN 43 Rue de (--val) Paris, (pein)dres & Toiles
Jean Beraud, Seaside Café, 1884, canvas with an unusual original
stretcher design. accompanied by a second partial stamp “chass---erges”, probably the stretcher maker
(oval stamp on stretcher) [colors and canvas]
B or R (on a white paper label)
The letter, buried under the white paint daub, likely indicates one
initial of the supplier.
Camille Pissarro, The Artist’s Palette with a Landscape, 1878-80,
rectangular mahogany palette with thumb hole.
?--& PERE Rue---- 8, Paris tableaux (large stamp)
Jean-Louis Forain, Walk in the Sun, 1880-83, mahogany panel.
ALEXANDRE 146 Avenue de Neuilly bis (Seine) Paris brosserie
et plumeaux coulours fines et vernis toiles a peindre
encaderments (stamp) [colors, varnishes, canvas, brushes, frames]
Francisco Domingo y Margués, Drinking Song, 1890, mahogany
panel.
BELOT No 3 Rue de L’Arbre Sec Paris (Oval stamp) [manufacturer
and seller of varnish and colors at this address until 1834]
Pierre Joseph, Redouté Flowers, 1820, canvas.
P. CONTET 34 Rue Lafayette Paris (Stamp)
Camille Pissarro, Port of Rouen: Unloading Wood, 1898, canvas. Also
a large “33” stamp.
Camille Pissarro, Le Pont Neuf, 1902, canvas.
(1se?) CORNU 13 Rue Laffitte Paris
Constant Troyon, Going to Market on a Misty Morning, 1851,
mahogany panel. stamped across cradle bars
[possibly a dealer]
[colorman, framer, dealer, at this address 1887-? [Contet took over
Latouche’s shop]
Tableaux dessin (stamp) [colorman, art dealer or restorer?]
DEFORGE 8 Boulevard Montmartre, Ateliér Rue Clichy No 7
Paris (Stamp) [Bertrand Deforge, Manufacturer & seller of varnish &
Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Pena, Two Great Oaks, 1854, canvas.
DEFORGE-CARPENTIERS 8 Boulevard Montmartre, Atelier Rue
Camille Pissarro, Road de Versailles, Louveciennes, 1870, canvas.
Carolus-Duran, Spanish Woman, 1876, mahogany panel.
colors, seller of curiosities, at this address 1841-1857.]
Clichy 7 Paris (stamp) [Marie-Charles-Edouard. Manufacturers and
sellers of colors, painting dealers, framer, under this stamp at this
address from 1858-1869]
Na me of Suppl ier
C l a r k Pa i n t i n g
HARDY-ALAN 56 Rue de Cherche Midi Paris (Dorure
Pierre Bonnard, Women with Dog, 1891, canvas. (partial stamp
on stretcher)
Victoria Dubourg, Roses, 1875-1900, canvas. (large canvas stamp
accompanied by “6” (portrait size), stretcher also marked “dorure
encadrements”.) Also dealer stamp: F. & J. Tempelaere 70 Blvd
Malesherbes Paris.
Henri Fantin-Latour, Bowl of Roses on a Marble Table, 1885,
canvas. (large palette-shaped stamp applied before stretching: may
indicate the canvas preparer) Also dealer stamp: F. & J. Tempelaere 70
Blvd Malesherbes, Paris.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jacques Fray, 1904, canvas. (stamp on
stretcher)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Self Portrait, 1899, canvas. (canvas stamp)
encadrements), (sometimes a very large palette shaped stamp)
[Framer, gilder, colorman, canvas preparer?, at this address by the
dated paintings, from at least 1889-1904] [There was an E. Hardy &
G.Milori colorshop first at 261-263 rue du Paradis from 1861-1889, then
at 16 tur Bourg-Tibourg until at least 1899]
LATOUCHE 34 Rue de Lafayette (Paris) toiles-encadrements
(Stamp) [colors, frames, art dealer at this address 1870 -1886.]
Ferdinand Heilbuth, A Lady with Flowers, 1875-80, mahogany
panel.
LUNIOT GANNE panneaux de chene Pre Oté a Barbizon) (oval
surround on stamp) [Victoire Ganne & Joseph-Bernard Luniot, (oak)
panel makers?, also owners of a hostel in Barbizon area
Charles Emile Jacque, Interior, 1852, oak panel. Also dealer stamp:
F. & J. Tempelaere 70 Blvd Malesherbes Paris.
Jean Francois Millet, The Knitting Lesson, 1860, oak panel.
MOIRINAT 484? Faubourg St Honore Paris (Stamp)
Jules Breton, Jeanne Calvet, 1865, millboard.
2 MULLER, Paris (red stencil) [colorman or dealer]
Jules Breton, Jeanne Calvet, 1865, millboard.
NEWMAN, Soho Square London (round stamp with Newman crest)
[James Newman & Co., 17 Gerrard St Soho London, manufacturer
of colors, pencils and brushes, seller of supports, from 1785-1936, when
merged with Reeves]
John Constable, Sketch of the Opening of Waterloo Bridge, 1829,
canvas fragment.
Ange OTTOZ 2 Rue de la Michodière Paris (Stamp) [manufacturer
Johan Barthold, Jongkind Frigates, 1855-60, canvas. Also stamp for
dealer Gustave Tempelaere 23 Rue Laffitte Paris.
and seller of colors and varnishes at this address 1827-1856, and with
workshop at 11 rue Helder from 1857-1869]
(Batignolles from 1868) Paris (large oval stamp) [maker and seller of
colors, canvas under this name at this address 1866-69]
Paul Seignac, The Sick Child, 1870-76, mahogany panel.
Eduardo Zamacois y Zabala, Platonic Love, 1870, mahogany panel.
Also stamp for Beugniet 10 Rue Laffitte Paris (frame maker, dealer,
restorer. Print publisher) at this address 1851-1891)
paintings dealer, restorer, at this address 1867-1874]
DEFORGE-CARPENTIERS, 6 Rue Halevy, Atelier (62) rue
Legendre (Batignolles) Paris Couleurs fines et toiles peindre (Large
Alphonse de Neuville, Champigny 2 Dec. 1870, 1875-77, mahogany
panel.
(Stamp) [color maker and seller, at this address 1862-1870]
Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas, Portrait of a Man, c.1875-80,
canvas.
REY et CIE 51 Rue de Larochefoucauld, 64 Rue Notre-Damede-Lorette Paris (stamp) [seller of colors and possibly canvas, at this
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Woman with a Fan, 1879, canvas. (primed
reverse of canvas suggests colorman preparation)
REY-PERROD 51 Rue de Larochefoucauld, 64 Rue Notre-Dame
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Marie-Therese Durand-Ruel Sewing, 1882,
canvas.
DEFORGE-CARPENTIERS 8 Montmartre, Atelier 62 Rue Legendre
oval stamp) [Colors, wood-gilding, framer, painting dealer, restorer, at
this location from 1871-1879]
PAUL DENIS succr Maison Merlin 10 Rue de Médicis Paris
Fabrique de coloueurs, toiles, articles de dessin. (stamps and
brands) [manufacturer and seller of colors, canvas, drawing materials]
Olivier de Penne, Hunting Hounds, 1850-97, mahogany panel. (large
oval stamp)
Olivier de Penne, Two Pointers, 1850-97, canvas. (large oval stamp)
Olivier de Penne, End of the Hunt, 1850-97, oak panel. (small brand
impressed into end grain)
DUBUS 60 Blvd Malesherbes Paris Couleurs Fine toiles &
Peindre..tableaux & Restauration (stamp) [Seller of colors, canvas,
Gustave Caillebotte, Seine at Argentueil, 1892, canvas.
E.DUPRÉ ---- Paris (Stamp)
Daniel Hernandez, The Model, 1900, canvas. (Accompanied by a
smaller stamp “Modele Depose B” on stretcher from Bourgeois Aine,
1870s-1890s.
dealer?, and restoration services]
DURAND (Paris?) Brosses, Pinceau, Etoiles et Coulours (Oval
stamp) [Seller of brushes, pencils (small brushes), canvas, colors]
Daniel Hernandez, Woman in the Bois de Boulogne, 1885, canvas.
(Accompanied by smaller stamp “Modele Depose B” on stretcher)
F (stamp) [colorman? possibly Foinet? see below]
Daniel Hernandez, Pierrette, 1878, mahogany panel.
FG 415 (stamp) [Unknown if colorman]
Eugene Isabey, Landing Stage on the Jetty, 1860, mahogany panel.
PAUL FOINET (van Eyck) 54 Rue N.D. des Champs Paris toiles &
couleurs fines (stamp)
Carolus-Duran, The Artist’s Gardener, 1893, canvas.
[seller of colors, canvas]
Fines Etoiles --- - & tableaux (arch-shaped stamp) [colors, canvas,
Jerome OTTOZ 22 Rue Labruyère, Paris Md de Couleurs Fines
address 1877-1880]
Paris-de-Lorette, (stamp) seller of colors, painting restorer. At this
address c. 1882-c. 1885.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Tama, the Japanese Dog, c. 1876, canvas.
Also stamped “8”, (portrait size).
CHARLES ROBERSON AND CO. 99 Longacre Road London,
manufacturer of water and oil colors materials for drawing &
painting [In business from 1819 to 1975]
William Fettes Douglas, Women in Church, 1860s, composition
board. (Stamp)
Emile Friant, Madame Seymour, 1889, mahogany panel. (stamped
paper label)
ROWNEY MANUFACTURERS, London (stamp)
[in business since 1783, merged with Daler in 1983]
Frederick Goodall, Mother and Children (The Picnic), 1851,
mahogany panel.
ROWNEY AND CO. (impressed brand)
Adolphe-Charles-Eduardo Steinhall, The Bibliophile, 1890,
mahogany panel.
P. THOMINET Cousin Freres Succr 100 Avenue Victor Hugo Paris
Toiles à peindre et colours fines (stamp) [Colors, canvas] Pierre-Georges Jeanniot, The Coming Storm, 1905, canvas.
Accompanied by a stamp from the framer L. Prevotés, 167 Rue de
Pompe, Paris.
VIEILLE 26 rue Breda Paris Md de Couleurs Re-entoile et
Restaure les Tableaux (stamp) [H. Vieille. manufacturer and seller
Alfred Stevens, Woman in White, 1872, laminate cardboard . (stamp
reads 30 rue Breda)
of colors, relining and restoration, at this address 1865-1872]
A. Garcia (impressed mark) [Spanish photographer]
Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, Beach at Valencia, 1904, portion of a
standard grey cardboard photo mount.
GIOSI, Roma (Branded into wood)
Jose Garcia y Ramos, Inside the Bullring, Seville, c. 1880, hardwood
panel
G & C (oval stamp with numerals) (panel maker, colorman, or dealer?)
Jean-Francois Millet, Young Girl Guarding Her Sheep, 1862, oak
panel. Accompanied by numerals “9506”
Lucius Rossi, Woman Reading, 1875, mahogany panel. Accompanied
by numerals “10014”
(panel maker or colorman)
Alexis OTTOZ 46 Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette Paris Coulours
VIEILLE 35 rue Laval Paris Md de Couleurs entoile et restaure les
tableax (oval stamp)
[H. Vieille, son-in-law and successor to Ferrod, maker and seller of
colors, canvas, restoration at this address 1873-1878]
H. VIEILLE & E. TROISGROS rue de Lavel 35 (Paris) colours. toiles,
panneaux (palette shaped stamp) [Sold colors, panels & canvas,
under these names at this address from 1879-1883]
Alphonse de Neuville, Grenadier, 1875-76, mahogany panel. Also
stamp of Beugniet 10 Rue Lafitte Paris, (frame maker, restorer, dealer,
print publisher)
Alfred Stevens, Mother and Child, 1875-80, mahogany panel.
Alfred Stevens, Fall (one of 4 seasons), 1877, canvas. (seen during
relining)
Giovanni Boldini, Madame Celine Leclanche, 1881, canvas.
continued in use by artists well into the nineteenth
century, and were especially favored by the
Barbizon painters.6 Panels were also particularly
desirable for small, detailed cabinet paintings, such
as those by Meissonier, as ground applications
could be finished to a smoother surface than on
canvas. Of the one hundred four wood panels
surveyed, sixty-six were visually identified as
mahogany, a more dimensionally stable wood than
temperate climate species, due to the continuous
tropical growing season. Although the majority
of mahogany panels (sixty-one percent) were
used by artists working in Paris, the earliest
mahogany support in the Clark collection is a
small John Constable from 1821.7 The mahogany
panels also fell most often into the standardized
sizes, suggesting mahogany may have been the
wood favored by panel-making workshops in the
second half of the century. While most of the
surveyed panels had some type of ground layer,
thirteen mahogany supports had no priming, with
the warm wood color often used as part of the
composition. Most commercially prepared panels
had chamfers cut on all four reverse edges, varying
in width from 1/4- to 3/4-inch, and the backs were
factory coated with varnish or a red-brown or gray
paint or stain.
Among the painters who employed wooden
supports, Boldini, Forain, Goupil, de Jonge,
Seignac, and Stevens seemed to have preferred
mahogany. All four Millet paintings were done
on oak panels, one stamped G & C, and another
marked Luniot Ganne, the name of a fabricator
and supplier in the Barbizon area. Three dePenne
paintings all bear the same Paul Denis colorman’s
mark, although they include one mahogany and
one oak panel, and a canvas. It is also fair to
assume that several wood panels have had their
stamps removed during major restorations. About
twenty percent of the panels had been thinned
and either backed with a secondary panel and/
or cradled as part of a restoration. A few cradles
were installed as part of the original commercial
production as a built-in protection against
warping.8
The backs of the supports might also be
marked with a black numeral designating a
standard size. Thirteen of the paintings in this survey had such numbers, although not all accompanied a
colorman’s shop stamp. French and English supports had been sold for many years in a number of standardized
proportions and sizes. For example, the popular English portrait dimensions were known by names, such as
the 30-by-25-inch bust length, the 36-by-28-inch “Kit-Kat” (a portrait including the hands but less than halflength), and the 50-by-40-inch half-length. The French sold their supports in three categories with a common
height measurement and different widths designated for three painting genres, portrait, landscape, and marine.
The distribution of surveyed pictures on standard French sizes suggests the portrait widths were the most
popular, regardless of subject. The French centimeter measurements were often close to an English equivalent,
for example the French portrait size #25 was similar to the English 30-by-25-inch bust length, suggesting the
standards may have been universal.9 Many of these proportions are still commercially prepared and employed by
artists today.
Many colormen’s addresses and marks are datable due to business directories and historical reference
publications. This can be of use in placing an undated painting into the right period of an artist’s body of work.
The accompanying appendix cites the artists and paintings found with each listed supplier’s mark. In the listing,
the bold type indicates the actual text of the colorman mark recorded during the survey. With so many French
paintings in the collection, it is not surprising that most of the stamps cite Parisian establishments.
Members of the Consortium
Williamstown
2. Stéphanie Constantin, “The Barbizon Painters: A Guide to their Suppliers”, Studies in Conservation, Vol 46, (IIC, London (2001), 49-56. Iris Shaefer, Caroline von SaintGeorge and Katja Lewerentz, Painting Light: The Hidden Techniques of the Impressionists, (Skira, Milan, 2008), p. 47-48, 65-66.
3. On a London map dated 1791, about ten colorman shop locations were cited, some not surviving far into the nineteenth century. Those that did survive consolidated and
merged to form a handful of firms, some of which are still in business. By contrast, a Paris directory for 1850 listed two hundred seventy-six paint dealers, and later in the
century there were still many small colorman shops in business. Don Pavey, with Peter J. Staples, The Colormen’s Story, (Rickett and Colman Leisure Ltd, Whealdstone,
1984), p. 27. Schaefer, et al, 1 Painting Light, p 43. Constantin, “Barbizon Painters Suppliers”, p. 49-56.
4. Constantin, The Barbizon Painters: Suppliers. Pavey, The Colormen’s Story, p.18.
5. Alexander W. Katlan, American Artists’ Materials Vol II: A Guide to Stretchers, Panels, Millboards, and Stencil Marks, (Sound View Press, Madison CT, 1992), p. 296.
Schaefer, et al, Painting Light, p 45.
6. Schaefer, et al, Painting Light, .p 53.
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art,
MA 01267
Cornell University
—Ithaca, NY
Addison Gallery of American Art,
Phillips Academy
—Andover, MA
Albany Institute of History & Art
—Albany, NY
Alice T. Miner Colonial Collection
—Chazy, NY
T‌he Arkell Museum
—Canajoharie, NY
Arnot Art Museum
—Elmira, NY
Art Complex Museum
—Duxbury, MA
Bennington Museum
—Bennington, VT
—Pittsfield, MA
Bowdoin College Museum of Art
—Brunswick, ME
8. Mahogany panels in the late nineteenth century could be purchased unprimed, primed, or cradled from Bourgeios Ainé., for example. Schaefer, et al, Painting Light, p. 53-55.
T‌he Cheney Homestead of the
Manchester Historical Society
Colby College Museum of Art
—Waterville, ME
T‌he Daura Gallery at Lynchburg
Part one of a two-part series. Next: Underdrawings.
Eric Carle Museum of Picture
—Hartford, CT
College
—Lynchburg, VA
Book Art
—Amherst, MA
Farnesworth Art Museum
on the two-volume Catalog of Nineteenth Century European Paintings
in the Clark Art Institute (Yale, 2013). Every painting was thoroughly
examined from the support to the varnish, using ultraviolet light,
infrared reflectography, microscopy, and, where necessary,
X-radiography. Her technical reports, which accompany each of the
three hundred sixty-six oil painting catalog entries, were the basis for
the data compiled and analyzed in this article.
Dartmouth College
—Hanover, NH
T‌he Hyde Collection
—Glens Falls, NY
T‌he Lawrenceville School
—Lawrenceville, NJ
—Rockland, ME
Western Art
Roland Gibson Gallery, State
—Potsdam, NY
Springfield Library and Museums
Association
Sterling and Francine Clark Art
Institute
Morris Foundation
University of Rochester
—Rochester, NY
Middlebury College Museum of Art
—Middlebury, VT
Mount Holyoke College Art Museum
—South Hadley, MA
—Ogdensburg, NY
Gershon Benjamin Foundation,
—Clayton, GA
corporations and individuals; to
conduct educational programs with
—Williamstown, MA
respect to the care and conservation of works of art and objects of
cultural interest; to participate in the
—Lenox, MA
training of conservators; to promote
Union College
the importance of conservation
—Schenectady, NY
and increase the awareness of
Vermont Historical Society
—Montpelier, VT
the issues pertinent to collections
Vermont Museum and Gallery
care; and to conduct research and
Alliance
disseminate knowledge to advance
—Shelburne, VT
Williams College Museum of Art
the profession.
—Williamstown, MA
—Utica, NY
Museum of Connecticut History
—Hartford, CT
Neuberger Museum,
Atlanta Art Conservation Center
Purchase College, State University
6000 Peachtree Road
of New York
Atlanta, GA 30341
—Purchase, NY
New Hampshire Historical Society
—Concord, NH
New York State Office of General
Services, Empire State Plaza Art
Collection
—Albany, NY
Norman Rockwell Museum at
Stockbridge
—Stockbridge, MA
Alabama Historical Commission
—Montgomery, AL
Booth Western Art Museum
—Cartersville, GA
Brenau University
—Gainesville, GA
Columbia Museum of Art
—Columbia, SC
T‌he Columbus Museum
—Columbus, GA
—Poughkeepsie, NY
other nonprofit organizations,
Amherst College
—Amherst, MA
and related conservation services
for member institutions, and for
—Springfield, MA
High Museum of Art
Frederic Remington Art Museum
examination, treatment, consultation
—Northampton, MA
Picker Art Gallery,
Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center,
of our cultural heritage; to provide
Smith College Museum of Art,
Colgate University
Vassar College
conserve and maintain the objects
Suzy Frelinghuysen and George L.K.
Memorial Art Gallery,
‌he mission of the Williamstown
Art Conservation Center, a
nonprofit institution, is to protect,
University of New York
—Cooperstown, NY
—Ticonderoga, NY
T
—Corning, NY
Fenimore Art Museum
Fort Ticonderoga
Mission Statement
T‌he Rockwell Museum of
Mead Art Museum,
Institute
—Deerfield, MA
Addresses and colormen information: S. Constantin “The Barbizon Painters: A Guide to Their Suppliers”, Studies in Conservation, 46 (2001) 49-67. Sally A. Woodcock, “The
Roberson Archive: Content and Significance,” Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice, University of Leiden, Netherlands, 1995, publisher: Getty
Conservation Institute. Peter J. Staples, The Artist’s Colorman’s Story, Rechitt Colman Leisure Ltd, London, 1984.
years. From 2001 to 2012, she worked with a team of art historians
Hood Museum of Art,
Deerfield Academy
Connecticut Historical Society
Williamstown Art Conservation Center for more than thirty-four
—Deerfield, MA
Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts
9. Winsor and Newton 1853 advertisement, in Henry Mogford, Instructions for Cleaning, Repairing, Lining and Restoring Oil Paintings, (Schultze and Co for Winsor and
Newton, London, 1853), appendix pp 2-3. Kurt Wehlte, The Materials and Techniques of Painting, translated by Ursus Dix, (van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1982), p. 344-45.
Sandra Webber has been a paintings conservator with the
Historic Deerfield, Inc.
Charles P. Russell Gallery,
—Manchester, CT
7. The wood identifications were made by the author, with the assistance of Hugh Glover of Williamstown Art Conservation Center’s Furniture Department, and Alexander
Carlisle, formerly of the same department.
—Hartford, CT
227 South Street, Williamstown,
Berkshire Museum
1. Data collected and analyzed by the author. Robert Sterling Clark Day Diaries 1919-1945, 3 transcribed volumes, Clark Art Institute Curatorial Dept.
Harriet Beecher Stowe Center,
—Hamilton, NY
Portland Museum of Art
—Portland, ME
Preservation Society of Newport
County
—Newport, RI
Rhode Island School of Design
Museum of Art
—Providence, RI
—Atlanta, GA
Mason-Scharfenstein Museum of Art
—Demorest, GA
Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts
—Montgomery, AL
Morris Museum of Art
—Augusta, GA
Telfair Museum of Art
—Savannah, GA
W W W . W I L L I A M S T O W N A R T. O R G
VISIT US ONLINE:
CHANGE SERVICE REQUESTED
W I L L I A M S TO W N , M A 0 1 2 67
227 SOUTH STR E ET
W I L L I A M S T O W N A R T C O N S E R V AT I O N C E N T E R
A R T C O N S E R VAT O R
PE R M IT # 370
ALBANY NY
PA I D
U . S . P O S TA G E
ORG.
NON-PROFIT

Oldenburg`s Soft Fan - Williamstown Art Conservation Center

Transcription

Similar documents

The ELEMENTS of art - Mr Grimm Visual Arts Classes Vance High

Memberships from Coast to Coast and Everywhere In Between

Complex simplicity in the art of Yunizar

A b out this Stamp Rally

what kind of `real`?

30.3 Modernism and Realism

Saturday, June 16th 2:00 to 5:00 pm Tickets: $15

Untitled - Clifton Diocese

Lucy Raven - School of Art

Paintbrush Ball Invitation - Museum of Art and Archaeology