Here is the painting in all its glory in the IMA’s Early American galleries. So what went on behind the scenes to get it here? About 85 hours of careful conservation work.

The painting installed in the IMA’s Early American Galleries.

Conservation work always begins with a thorough examination. A conservator has to understand the layers of the materials that comprise the painting, and have an understanding of how those materials age and what sort of damage, if any, they incurred. In short, the examination breaks down the construction and condition for all the layers that make up the painting. Paintings are composite objects and include a variety of materials. For traditional oil paintings, these include a fabric support mounted to an auxiliary wooden stretcher or strainer, a ground or preparatory layer, paint layers, and a varnish layer.

The painting before treatment. The colors look muted and hazy under heavy layers of dirt, soot, and discolored varnish.

Raking light image before treatment. The painting had large planar distortions in the canvas and the there were prominent mechanical cracks in the ground and paint layers.

Once the examination was complete, the first step was to address any structural issues. In the case of Roesen’s Still Life, there was a small tear in the canvas and there were some areas where the paint was actively flaking and several cracks in the paint that were unstable. The importance of addressing structural concerns is quite simple: you want to prevent further damage to the object.

Stabilization, or consolidation, involves the application of an adhesive to the areas of flaking or insecure paint. This is often done by adding the adhesive to the specific area with a small brush. The adhesive chosen depends on a great number of factors including the original materials for the painting, the strength of the adhesive, what solvent is necessary for the adhesive, and whether or not the adhesive needs to be heated during or after application, to name a few.

Once a painting is stable, the treatment stages that have a more aesthetic impact can be carried out. For the Roesen, this stage of treatment began with the removal of dirt and soot from the varnished surface of the painting. This was done with an aqueous solution with a slightly elevated pH that had the addition of chelators (that’s where the coursework in chemistry comes in handy).

After stabilizing any areas of flaking paint, the heavy layers of dirt and soot were removed from the surface of the varnished painting. Look how bright the red flowers appear once the dirt is removed.

Once the dirt and soot were removed, I was able to then remove the discolored natural resin varnish. This was done with a mixture of organic solvents that were selected after careful testing. Here, I’d like to recount that importance of that initial examination. The understanding of what the materials are that comprise the painting is paramount when carrying out a conservation treatment.

The visual effects that the layers of dirt and discolored varnish have on the appearance of the painting are quite dramatic.  Those darkened and hazy layer not only affect the colors, but the tonal balance as well.  The yellowed varnish made the painting appear very flat.  This is especially noticeable in the pink flowers, as you can see in the images below.

After the heavy dirt and soot were cleaned, the yellowed varnish was removed subtle details and nuances of color could once again be appreciated.

The visual effects that the yellowed varnish had on the artist’s palette were quite profound. In this image, you can see some of the pink roses cleaned and compare them to one that still has its varnish (in the lower left). After the varnish is removed, you can see the cool undertones and a translucency to the soft petals.

After the layers of dirt, soot, and discolored varnish were removed, it was time to address those large undulation distortions in the canvas. This was done with controlled, local humidification. But first, the painting needed to temporarily be taken off its stretcher.

Here the painting is temporarily taken off its stretcher so that the large, undulating distortions could be reduced.

One of the common problems that cause bulges and distortions in the canvas is dirt and debris that becomes trapped between the stretcher bars and the canvas.  Roesen’s Still Life was no exception. In fact, you can see what was behind the stretcher in the image below.

Trapped beneath the stretcher and the canvas, along the bottom of the painting, there was an accumulation of dirt, dust, and debris. In this case, there were wings and casings from bugs (dead long ago) and bits of dried evergreen (probably from decorative greenery hung near the painting when it was still in a private collection).

Debris, such as the organic materials found behind the stretcher on the Roesen, is very reactive to moisture.  If exposed to high humidity, these materials will hold moisture for a long time, which can cause further distortions in the canvas and lead to cracking and flaking paint.

The dirt, dust, and debris were vacuumed from the back of the painting.

The dirt and debris were vacuumed from the reverse of the painting. After the vacuuming was complete, the localized humidity was carried out to remove the distortions. The distortions can have an effect on the structural stability of the many layers comprising the painting, but it also has a visual impact. The bulges can cast shadows and distort the spatial depth of the composition. Once the distortions were removed, the painting was re-stretched back onto its original stretcher.

After the application of a new coating of varnish, the compensation began. The painting was in relatively good condition. The areas that needed visual reintegration included the small tear in the lower left and areas where there were prominent cracks in the paint.  There were small losses of paint surrounding the tear. These areas had to be filled to adjust the depth of the missing paint and ground. The fills are textured to match the surface of the surrounding original paint.

In this image, the prominent cracks in the paint appear as light-colored lines in the blue flower bud and just below the bud. The lines appear lighter because you can see the ground or preparatory layer in the crack.

Inpainting is carried out with stable conservation colors and a very small brush. This stage of treatment is approached so that the materials and technique make the inpainting reversible. This is done mainly for ethical reasons, as highlighted in the AIC’s code of ethics and guidelines for practice. When inpainting, color is added only where the original is missing or damaged.

In this image you can see the process of inpainting, where new, stable colors are added only to areas where the original is damaged or missing.

For reference, here’s the painting again before treatment.

Here is the painting after treatment. By comparison to the image taken before treatment, the painting has more vibrant colors, the subtlety and details are legible once again, and the spatial depth is much improved.

The treatment produced wonderful results, both structurally and visually. The cracked and flaking paint was secured and the undulation distortions in the canvas were reduced, making the painting stable structurally. So much original vibrancy and detail were reveal by removing the discoloring layers of dirt and yellowed varnish. Now the painting can be safely displayed and thoroughly enjoyed by our visitors.

Special thanks again to Conner Prairie for their long-term loan of this painting.

Click here to see the first conservation blog post about this treatment.

Before this more than 2,000 year old artwork came into my Objects and Variable Art conservation lab, it was safely stored in two separate boxes—one box contained the ceramic vessel, the other contained the 9 pieces that were detached from it.  There’s a photograph in the historical files dating to the early part of the 20^th century showing how the vase was assembled when it was acquired in 1928.

My job was to carefully re-assemble these pieces and fill the missing areas to make the joints appear more seamless.  Finally, I inpainted my fills to make them less visible (if you get up really close to the case, you can see my work).

Aaron Steele, the IMA’s Digital Assets Specialist & Associate Photographer, photographed this object before and after my conservation treatment up in his photo studio.  Have a look:

Before treatment photographs

After treatment photographs

During the muggiest weeks of August we completed a pretty major treatment on one of the more important sculptures on the Oldfields estate, the Three Graces. Consisting of a solid piece of carved white marble perched on a limestone base, the sculpture had become pretty dirty over recent years. Here’s how it look before we got started:

Side note #1, though we have a good idea of when and why the sculpture was placed in this important location of Percival Gallagher’s landscape design we don’t have a clear sense of who actually made it. (Side note #2, I desperately wanted to put a link to Gallagher’s Wikipedia article, but sadly one doesn’t exist. There is some info on him in the book Pioneers of American Landscape Design, published by LALH)

While Bradley Brooks has completed considerable research on this sculpture, he remains stumped as to who actually carved it. Do you know anything about it? Who carved it, when and where? Have you seen one like it before, if so where?

Here’s an official request for information from Bradley:

“During the 1920s, Oldfields owner Hugh Landon selected a figural group of the three Graces to serve as the terminus of an elm allée that extended from the front of the house. We have no documentation of the sculpture’s origin, though it was probably newly produced. At one time, the sculpture was thought to be a copy of a work by Thorvaldsen, but it is almost certainly modeled on a painting of the subject by Canova, though it bears little resemblance to his well-known sculpture of the Graces. We would love to know who first rendered this version of the Graces as a sculpture. Thanks for your assistance!”

Side note #3, you can learn much more about the landscape and the Lilly House in Bradley’s fine book Oldfields, which I think is only available through the IMA’s gift shops.

Below is an image of Canova’s first version of the sculpture on display in the Hermitage. While you can go the Hermitage’s web page and see the official image, this one is from Haylstorm’s Head’s photostream on Flickr.com:

I agree with Bradley, this doesn’t look much like ours: the poses of the three figures are rather different from ours, and this one has, well, more dimensionality.

Side note #4, I think we are fortunate that our version of the three Graces has so far suffered no controversy by comparison to the second Canova version that was formerly owned by the Woburn Abbey. Maybe there is some benefit to our anonymity.

Here’s an image of the painting by Canova to which Bradley refers, The Grazie and Venus dance before Mars:

This painting is located at the Canova Museum at Possagno, Italy and is listed as being painted in tempera with a date of 1798?. I grabbed this image from their web page. Again, I agree with Bradley that there are similarities between the painting and our Graces, with the poses and gestures. What do you think? Here’s a close-up of ours:

But I digress; I wanted to tell you how we cleaned this marble sculpture and its base last summer. Because the sculpture has been exposed to the elements for the last 80 years or so, the surface of the statue has become somewhat granular and is sugaring (it actually feels like granules of sugar). The areas that are not affected as much by precipitation (which, in Indiana, is slightly acidic) are noticeably different upon inspection. It is in these areas that you can feel how smooth the surface of the sculpture would have been when it was newly carved.

** A point of caution here (and side note #5): since I work in conservation, I’m allowed to touch the sculptures if I need to, but we kindly ask that visitors not touch them. Imagine if everyone decided to touch a sculpture; eventually it would get worn away and possibly destroyed. Besides, the IMA has an excellent security staff that keeps a close eye on all of the artworks. If you want to meet some of the folks in PSD, watch this video and you’ll also feel the Need for Reed! **

As I was saying, we noticed that there was a significant amount of dirt and biological growth on the upper half of all three figures (you can clearly see this in the pictures). This distorted much of the detail in the carving and made the sculptures look a lot less beautiful. The backside of the figures had more dirt and biological growth than the front.

To remove this dirt, grime, and biological growth, the sculpture and base were washed with Orvus WA Paste and gently scrubbed with plastic-bristle brushes. This removed a considerable amount of dirt and grime, and some of the biological growth.

The sculpture and base were then washed with Prosoco brand products to remove the rest of dirt and biological growth. Finally, the sculpture and base were rinsed with a Prosoco after wash product.

Here’s how it looked when we were done:

Obviously, the sculpture now appears whiter, as much of the dirt, grime, and biological growth has been removed. However, some remains in the areas that were heavily soiled, for example, on the chests of the three figures, and on the back of the sculptures.

I think the appearance of limestone base also was greatly improved. However some of the spots of concentrated biological growth were difficult to completely remove (if you look carefully you can see some of these spots on the base).

Here’s a look from up top showing the green space that the Graces look onto all day:

Side note #6, I looked around on Flickr.com to see if I could find any recent pictures of our sculpture, but only found ones from before we worked on it. Here’s what I found when I searched. I’m a fan of amysbirds “Narnia” picture, but there are a few others that were cool, like zenluvsfun’s black and white image and susannelein’s close up.

Finally, I’d like to say thanks to Cyd for working with me last summer, getting lots done, and have a little bit of fun along the way. I would show you a picture of the two of us working on the sculpture but we didn’t take any pictures while working. I don’t think either one of us would be pleased to see pictures of ourselves from those hot, summer days – we were both sweaty and kind of gross through the whole thing.