Corrective Retouching

I did a handful of projects that required inpainting losses, applying glazes to re-establish visual harmony, or retouching accretions that were distracting. These are outlined below.

Every Saturday

Every Saturday by Arthur B. Davies was generally stable, however it had an extremely yellowed varnish that had flaked off in areas. It was no longer actively flaking but the losses in the varnish created sharp shapes between the yellowed varnish present and the areas of loss. There was not enough time within the reinstall to consider a varnish removal, plus previous reports indicated it would be a tricky removal on top of the tight deadline. There were areas of previous varnish removal attempts that left behind odd soft edged shapes that were less yellow than their surroundings. I needed to reduce the apperance of these shapes to not distract from the original composition. I used yellow glazes of Gamblin in isopropanol to aesthetically reintegrate the areas of flaked off varnish. I also dotted back some of the soft edges of the old attempts at varnish removal to make the shapes less apparent

Every Saturday by Arthur B. Davies, 1985-1986 - AT

Retouching Every Saturday

PC: Ellen Nigro

Before retouching (L), After retouching (R)

Before retouching (L), After retouching (R)

Before retouching (top), After retouching (bottom)

Polish Girl

Polish Girl by Ivan G. Olinsky required some minor fills and inpainting (Flügger and Gamblin Conservation colors with Isopropanol).

Inpainting the Polish Girl, PC: Emily Landry

Before (top), and after (bottom) retouching

Before (top), and after (bottom) retouching

Loss before fill (top) filled loss (center), inpainted fill (bottom)

Before (left) and after (right) inpainting

Filled area before (left) and after (right) inpainting

Governor Lewis Morris

Governor Lewis Morris had suffered various tears that had been mended with a wax-resin lining, then filled with bulked B-72 and inpainted with dry pigments in PVA-AYAC. The fills were not textured to mimic the canvas texture and after some time the inpainting shifted to be much more grey than its surroundings. The previous repairs were the first thing you notice, distracting from the painting itself. I was tasked with reducing the visibility of the previous treatment while understanding that I could not make them fully disappear without addressing the texture issues of the fill. I used glazes of Gamblin Conservation Colors with isopropanol to fine tune the previous retouching and better integrate the paint around the fills that had multiple pinpoint losses that scattered light and inadvertently highlighted the adjacent fills.

Governor Lewis Morris by John Watson, BT

Governor Lewis Morris by John Watson, BT - circled areas of interest

Governor Lewis Morris by John Watson, AT

Miss Whiting

There were marks on the sitter’s face that the curator found distracting. Under magnification, I found the dark marks were pooled areas of darkened varnish. There was no reason to alter the varnish otherwise, so I retouched the dark spots using Gamblin Conservation Colors with Isopropanol to visually reduce the appearance of the dark marks.

Miss Whiting by George Copeland Ault, 1923

Dark spots under magnification

Before corrective retouching

After corrective retouching