A Changing Art Nineteenth-Century Painting Practice and Conservation Edited by Nicola Costaras, Kate Lowry, Helen Glanville, Pippa Balch, Victoria Sutcliffe and Polly Saltmarsh

CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSION

A Changing Art
Nineteenth-Century Painting Practice and Conservation
Edited by Nicola Costaras, Kate Lowry, Helen Glanville, Pippa Balch, Victoria Sutcliffe and Polly Saltmarsh 

London, Archetype Publications, 2017

Review by Giovanni Mazzaferro

Front cover image: Girl in a Red Kimono before a Mirror (private collection)

A Changing Art collects the proceedings of the international conference of the same name held in London, at the Wallace Collection in October 2016 and organized by the British Association of Paintings Conservator-Restorers (BAPCR). First the conference and then the book tried to cope with an increasingly evident need in the world of (not only British) conservators and restorers: the number of nineteenth-century paintings that need restoration, for the most disparate reasons, is growing exponentially. Faced with this phenomenon, the knowledge we have about the techniques with which these works were performed is very scarce. A thorough examination is therefore of the utmost essence, trying to combine literary sources, archival documents and, of course, laboratory analysis. The phenomenon - as logical - was investigated in the volume from a primarily English perspective: Sally Woodcock, in her Introduction, pointed out, for example, that at the time the conference was held, technical examinations had been already carried out on the works of only 23 British artists of the nineteenth century. Not only that: those artists were either primarily part of the group of the Pre-Raphaelites (who notoriously had made of the 'technique' a reason of distinction with respect to the mainstream art in England at the time) or were still 'eccentric' figures compared to the norm, like for instance Turner. In short, there was no wide-ranging analysis of the works of more 'normal' artists, i.e. those aligned with the Victorian tradition. What emerges from the reading of the essays (some 'generalist' pieces, others much more technical surveys) is that nineteenth-century painting literally saw an explosion in the number of operators in the art community, starting with artists but including also industrial colour makers, and colourmen, to which corresponded a variety of products and procedures that the contemporary restorer must keep well in mind when undertaking conservative interventions on the works of the period.

It remains to explain why we are reviewing a book like this (i.e. a book dedicated mainly to restorers) in a specialised blog on art literature. The answer is very simple: because the Victorian nineteenth century saw a very tight intertwine between the world of restoration on the one hand, rediscovery and publication of the main sources on artistic techniques, museum policies, promotion and art practice on the other one; a so close link that there were figures (such as that of Charles Lock Eastlake) who, in fact, made indeed history with reference to each of these aspects.

Below is a list of the essays in the volume, three of which will be the subject of a more in-depth examination. Most of the contributions concerned English artists, or foreign artists whose works were still present in English museums; however, references to other foreign realities are not lacking (see, for example, the essay on Giovanni Boldini).

• Sally Woodcock, Introduction;
• Jacob Simon, Restoration practice in museum and galleries in Britain in the nineteenth century;
• Nicola Costaras, ‘These pitchy pigments from their nature never harden’: a nineteenth-century perspective on premature cracking in oil paintings;
• Leslie Carlyle, Building visual evidence of past practices in the creation of oil paintings;
• Sally Woodcock, Alteration, restoration and why pictures foam: what conservators can learn from a Victorian artist’ colourman;
• Hayley Tomlinson, Sarah Herring and Gabriella Macaro, Ernest-Victor Hareux and the Barbizon artists;
• Gabriella Macaro, The Barbizon paintings at the National Gallery: a technical study;
• Rosalind Whitehouse, Oily drops on the window panes: celebrity portraiture in a murky climate;
• Nele Brodt e Katy Sanders-Blessley, Observations on Rudolf Swoboda’s painting technique;
• Nienke Woltman and Suzanne Veldink, George Hendrick Breitner at work: new insights;
• Adèle Wright, ‘Method cannot govern everything’. Delacroix: mid century modern master;
• Gianluca Poldi, Fabio Frezzato, Francesca Lo Russo, Enzo Savoia and Arianna Splendore, Giovanni Boldini: technique and conservation. A systematic scientific study;
• Roxane Sperber, The retouching practices of John Linnell: technique, patronage and practice from two works in the Yale Center for British Art;
• Lidwien Speleers, The cleaning of a solvent-sensitive painting by Jacob Maris;
• Michaela Straub, The conservation and research of two paintings by Alfred East RA.

John Constable, The Hay Wein, 1821, London, The National Gallery
Source: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/john-constable-the-hay-wain

Joseph Mallord William Turner, Rain, steam and speed, 1844, London, The National Gallery
Source: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/joseph-mallord-william-turner-rain-steam-and-speed-the-great-western-railway

Jacob Simon
Restoration practice in museum and galleries in Britain in the nineteenth century

The figure of the restorer, professionally distinct from that of the artist who, occasionally, deals with restoration, was linked in Great Britain with the birth of the great nineteenth-century English museums. It was marked by a series of particularly relevant dates: 1824, with the foundation of the National Gallery, 1838 with the opening to the public of the Royal Collection at Hampton Court and, again, 1852 (creation of the South Kensington Museum on the wave of the Universal Exhibition of the previous year) and 1855 (refoundation of the National Gallery). In this context, individual figures (but often even true dynasties) of restorers established themselves, such as the Seguier, Buttery and Reeve families. The choice of restorers, in principle, was entrusted to the knowledge of museum directors and not to actual competitions; in short, these were fiduciary duties, often kept for a whole professional life. In this sense it is known, for example, that Charles Lock Eastlake, president of the National Gallery, employed in these activities John Bentley, Charles Buttery, Henry Merritt and the Italian Raffaele Pinti. The problems faced by the restorers ranged from (all in all) traditional questions, such as the alteration and the darkening of the colours, to others which were without doubt new: think for example of the effect of environmental pollution on the artworks and that of the impact on them of use of heating and gas lighting (see Costaras' essay below). Then there was the need to fight pests, to solve problems of lining (even if it seems that lining was an activity assigned to special operators) and, above all, to try to limit the damage that could result from the use by the painter of poor materials or particular substances used as medium (see the megilp below). The professionalization of the restorer's profession also went hand in hand with the formation of a large public audience that read comments in the specialized magazines and gave opinions (often pulled out of the air) on the results of the restoration activity. How important the role of public opinion may have been is evidenced by the personal story of Eastlake himself. It is known that Eastlake was appointed Keeper of the National Gallery as early as 1843, but, starting in 1846, he was subject to severe criticism by large part of the press for cleaning activities of the artworks in the collection [1], so as to induce him to resign. Eastlake was truly an extraordinary connoisseur of artistic techniques and literature on the subject. His long stay in Italy for more than a decade had led him to make acquaintance with several eminent restorers – as Jacob Simon wrote - like the Roman Pietro Palmaroli, Ugo Baldi in Florence and Jakob Schlesinger in Berlin (page 6). Actually the list might be much longer. In the letters (1845-1846) that Mary Philadelphia Merrifield sent to her husband during her voyage to Italy (in search of manuscripts that would testify the techniques of the Ancient Masters), we can read for example that Eastlake advised her to contact Filippo Morini in Parma, professor of Painting at the local Academy. Morini's reputation as a restorer of Correggio's works was undoubtedly limited to his region, but evidently Eastlake had heard of him; probably Eastlake also knew that Morini was credited by the local press for having discovered "an amber paint unknown in our time" that allowed to reproduce "that vagueness and transparency so admired in the works of the Sixth Century Artists" [2]. Similarly, Eastlake knew of the existence of a manuscript written in 1833 by Giovanni Edwards O'Kelles, son of Pietro Edwards, the internationally renowned Venetian restorer, and had insisted with Merrifield on tracing it once she arrived in Venice. What is indeed peculiar is that Edwards’ manuscript had in fact almost immediately been taken out of circulation because of the (unfounded) accusations that it contained against the former director of the Academy, Leopoldo Cicognara [3]. How this came to the ears of the then Keeper of the National Gallery is really a mystery. And yet it is clear that the polemics on the cleaning of paintings dating back to the '40s left traces on Eastlake's behaviour in the 50s, so much so that he commissioned directly in Italy not always only conservative interventions, but also aimed at modifying particular aspects of the paintings that he was buying on behalf of the National Gallery, in order to make them more 'welcome' to the English public [4]. That the role of the restorer still remained far from how it is understood today is, moreover, evident not only because of these anything but infrequent 'retouches'. The importance of the good restorer was perceived not only with reference to the conservation of paintings, but also because he was able to get to know the secrets of the paintings of the ancient masters, through their physical destruction, and therefore to promote the level of contemporary art, making these procedures known. Speaking of Antonio Fidanza, for twenty-five years restorer in Brera, Merrifield herself wrote to her husband: "He is exactly the man I wanted to see; he has a great culture on knowledge handed down by tradition and a lot of practical experience, which comes from the number of old paintings that he destroyed - I meant, restored, but I'm sorry to say that the two terms are almost synonymous"[5].

The specialization of the profession, in short, was still far from identifying the figure of the restorer as developed through the twentieth century.

David Wilkie, The letter of introduction, 1813, Scottish National Gallery
Source: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/lQFgrxakxziNug

John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1852, Londra, Tate Britain
Source: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/lQFgrxakxziNug

Nicola Costaras
‘These pitchy pigments from their nature never harden’: a nineteenth century perspective on premature cracking in oil paintings

One of the most discussed phenomena, during the nineteenth century English, was the early cracking of many paintings executed by English painters at the end of the eighteenth century: the main example, in this sense, was represented by the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792). Since 1813 - as Costaras wrote - "the British Institution staged an exhibition of Sir Joshua Reynolds' paintings which included pictures with technical problems, in an attempt to warn artists of the perils of emulating his technique" (p.22). Costaras referred in particular to the theses of Richard Redgrave (1804-1888), artist and inspector general for art since 1857, whose professional experience took place for a long time in the South Kensington Museum (the current Victoria and Albert Museum). According to Redgrave, the problem was the use of bitumen and megilp (a mixture of boiled oil and resinous varnish), which the artists (starting from Reynolds, in fact) found particularly effective both to provide a particularly translucent appearance to the pigments and to give the pictorial surface a colloidal consistency that allowed frequent and repeated changes in the course of the work. In a 1869 text, Redgrave wrote clearly that the bituminous pigments, which had the consistency of pitch, never dry up and maintain their fluidity, tending to contract or expand according to temperature changes. According to Redgrave himself, the potential danger of using such tools emerged in particular when a layer of varnish was applied on the painted surface. As I will explain later, the South Kensigton inspector's theses were not new, and they had illustrious precedents. The fact is that not everyone was willing to accept the idea that the ruin of Reynolds' paintings (and of those who followed this technique) was inherent in the materials used and not to be attributed to exogenous factors. In particular, and with particular reference to South Kensington, the damage caused by heating and illumination systems was also discussed. Starting from 1859, for example, the museum began to make three openings in the evening every week, which also involved the installation of a gas lighting system produced naturally by coal. The circumstance raised a wide debate, which to tell the truth was not limited to mere technical aspects, but, more generally, concerned the decorum of the museum and the type of public so induced to enter it (the National Gallery - according to critics - had become similar, in similar situations, a shelter from the cold for the needy and the place where mothers brought their children to play). It seems particularly interesting to me that, against widespread but generic, accusations, Reynolds, in agreement with Eastlake, resorted to the most modern technology to try to measure the alleged damage caused by gas: the cracks in the paintings were in fact photographed one by one at regular intervals for three years in a row, revealing at the end that the bad conditions of conservation of the works were not due to exogenous factors.

Joshua Reynolds, Lord Heathfield of Gibaltrar, 1787, London, National Gallery
Source: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/sir-joshua-reynolds-lord-heathfield-of-gibraltar

Richard Redgrave, Gulliver Exhibited to the Brobdingnag Farmer, 1835, London, Victoria and Albert Museum
Surce: Wikimedia Commons

We mentioned Redgrave's convictions about the megilp. I would like here briefly to recall the convictions expressed in the press by the artist and art critic John Eagles (and shared, for example, by Mrs. Merrifield) since 1839. In that year, the English translation of De la Peinture à l'Huile by JF Merimée was published, with the title On Oil Painting. Proving that the use of bituminous substances was not really just an English issue, Merimée essentially discussed the implications of products very similar to those used by Reynolds. Both reviewing the work, and commenting on the English translation of Cennino Cennini edited by Mary Philadelphia Merrifieldfive years later, Eagles lashed out against the use of megilp, indicating it as the main responsible for the unfortunate situation of the British paintings of the eighteenth century and supporting, instead, the need to recover the proceedings of the Old Masters.

Sally Woodcock
Alteration, restoration and why pictures foam: what conservators can learn from a Victorian artists’ colourman

Sally Woodcock’s survey was based on an examination of the archive of the firm of Charles Roberson: Roberson opened in 1820 his activity of production and resale of colours, soon becoming one of the most famous operators in the sector. His archive has been preserved almost completely with reference to the period from 1820 to 1939 and is now kept at the Hamilton Kerr Institute of the Fitzwilliam Museum. The first thing one would take note of, after a quantitative analysis of the archive, is the explosion of the number of customers holding an account opened at Roberson (see p. 2); naturally it can be assumed that the high number of customers was due to the good performance of the business, but there is no doubt that the amount of practitioners art in various capacities (from professionals to amateurs) increased steadily in the central fifty years of the Nineteenth century. The author's analysis, however, concerned more than anything else the qualitative aspects and aimed to highlight the variety of the cases practiced at the time, as it is clear from the order books of Roberson. It follows that contemporary restorers must be particularly careful when approaching works of the time. For example, there were frequent situations in which the works were not performed on standard canvases, but on multi-layer ones, often made ad hoc; from the maestro ledgers of Roberson it appeared particularly common (much more than the technical literature would hold today) the case of canvases on which paper was applied. There were also frequent interventions to resize the supports by adding strips of canvas sewn at a later time, when the artist realizes, obviously, that the planned dimensions were not sufficient. In other words, there was a series of 'tailor-made' interventions that actually integrated the work in its originality (often such interventions can be justified also by long intervals of time spent in the processing of paintings), which the restorer would need to recognize as such, and not as interventions of subsequent restorations. Undoubtedly, the most problematic aspect was linked to the need to recognize the medium used in the work process. The industrial production of colours and vehicles soon led to a proliferation of hundreds of types of products, made by subjects competing with each other, and often distinguished only by the use of a different name. We have seen something similar with reference to tempera painting at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century in Painting in Tempera, c. 1900. Oil painting was no exception. We know a lot about some of these mediums (Roberson's medium, for example, was extremely common), but trade marks like 'Eliza Turk's Florentine medium', 'Miller's silica medium', 'Pyne's Mc Guilp', 'Edouard mixtion' and 'Van Eyck's glass medium' correspond to products that became largely obsolete by the end of the nineteenth century and of which we do not know the characteristics well, thus risking not recognizing their original use and putting in place uncorrected conservation interventions. Among the many, the author focused in particular on the Marble Medium by Edmund Thomas Parris and the Spirit Fresco by Thomas Gambier Parry. Of course the tools to promote the use of new products - I might add, in addition to what Woodcock wrote - could be the most disparate: from the endorsement of famous artists used as testimonials to advertising in specialized magazines. I feel it deserves to be reported that the same colour traders issued specialized publications at popular prices and in large quantities, often signed by authors well-known in art circles; these publications were real manuals aimed at the amateur, but in the last thirty pages they also contained the complete catalogue of the retailer / publisher. I will confine myself here to the case of Mary Philadelphia Merrifield's Practical Directions for Portrait Painting in Water-Colours printed by Winsor and Newton in 1851 (Merrifield had already gained international fame) in which the second part of the work, numbered separately, contained an Illustrated List of Colours and Materials, for Drawing and Water-Colour Painting, Manufactured and Sold by Winsor and Newton, 38 Rathbone Place, London. Merrifield’s name  guaranteed a wide distribution of the work, especially among a female audience, traditionally very involved in the technique of watercolour. Historians of artistic techniques and colour sellers therefore appear to be bound by much narrower ties than, at first sight, one might think.

NOTES

[1] See S. Avery-Quash, J. Sheldon, Art for the Nation. The Eastlakes and the Victorian Art World, London, The National Gallery, 2011, in particular pp. 46-47

[2] See G. Mazzaferro, La donna che amava i colori. Mary Philadelphia Merrifield. Lettere dall'Italia (1845-1846), Milan, Officina Libraria, 2018, p. 176 and note 9.

[3] See G. Mazzaferro, The Fine Arts in Venice in the manuscripts of Pietro and Giovanni Edwards, Florence, goWare, 2015.

[4] See Avery-Quash, Sheldon, Art for the Nation quoted. p. 150.

[5] See  Mazzaferro, La donna che amava i colori. quoted., p. 69.