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Miscreants and Hotentots: Restorers and Restoration Attitudes and Practices in 17th and 18th Century England
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MuseumManagementand Curatorship,Vol.16,No. 1, 35-44, 1997 O1997ElsevierScienceLtd.All rightsreserved Printed in GreatBritain 0260-4779/97$17.00+ 0.00
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Miscreants and Hotentots: Restorers and Restoration Attitudes and Practices in 17th and 18th Century England M. KIRBY TALLEY JR
Our present always has an element of the d~jhvu in it, and this confirms to some extent the veracity of the saying: “1’histoire se kp~t”. The contemporary conservation profession believes—and justly so—that it has made many crucial advances in the past forty years or so of its still young existence. And yet, the profession—if that is the correct term in an historical context—is much older than a mere forty or fifty years, Many of the conservation issues which we take very seriously, or which we consider as being our discoveries, or unique to our particular situation today, were, of course, known to, pondered over, dealt with, and relevant to our predecessors in the field. In the space allowed I can only hope to give an overview of some of these issues, a sort of pot-pourri composed of diverse exotic scents, which will bring home how much has changed, and how much has remained the same. Vasari in his Lives of the Painters, Sculptors,and Architects, first published in 1550, created the notion of ‘Old Masters’ and while virtuosi in the 16th century collected antique sculpture, objets d’art, and curios, as far as painting was concerned they were primarily patrons of contemporary artists. It was not until the 17th century that collecting as a phenomenon which we still understand and practice got under way, Charles I, the Earl of Arundel, Henry Clay Frick, and William Randolph Hearst would have understood one another—at least as far as for collecting is concerned. The idea that an older work of art is ~ p:ss:on mtruxwcally better and therefore more expensive than a new production became fashionable in the 17th century, and by the 18th century was an ironclad code for connoisseurs and collectors. People appreciated works of art for what Alois Riegl in The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Its Origin, 1903, termed their “Age Value”. If Old Masters were indeed more valuable than contemporary art, it follows that there would have been a genuine concern among collectors for buying and maintaining them in good condition. Writing to his son in 1751, Lord Chesterfield discusses the proposed purchase of two portraits, one of a man by Titian “in good preservation”, and the other of a woman, “an indifferent and damaged picture”. Since he only wanted these portraits as “furniture for a particular room”, Lord Chesterfield was not too concerned about the woman who, “if she is not too much damaged, I can have her tolerably repaired, as many
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a fine woman is by a skilful hand here”. “Repaired” in this context is undoubtedly an euphemism for tarted up or extensively re-painted, an approach which often went under the name of restoration in the 17th and 18th centuries. Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92), who considered himself an experienced picture cleaner, remarked to Lord Ossory in 1786 that Van Dyck’s Pembroke Family at Wilton and Titian’s Vendramin Family at Northumberland House “from being pictures of inestimable value, they are now hardly worth the rank of good copies; however, this is so to painters’ eyes only”. As an artist and marchand amateur, Reynolds probably used “value” to cover both the artistic and the financial worth of the pictures after restoration. Of note is Reynolds’s conviction that only experienced artists were capable of judging pictures accurately as to their aesthetic merits and physical condition. This is an attitude common to artists and most writers on art in the 17th and 18th centuries who both railed at and ridiculed the wiles of dealers and restorers and the gullibility of most connoisseurs and collectors. Not all restoration was detrimental however, and Sig. O’Kelly Edwards, son of Sig. Pietro Edwards (1745-1821) of English descent and a picture restorer to the Venetian Republic, remarks in a lecture given at the Venetian Academy of Fine Arts in 1812 that through good restoration “many valuable works of art, now admired, and formerly considered useless or entirely lost, were recovered”. That this was, regrettably, not usually the case cannot be disputed. For better or worse, restorers as we have come to use that term first made their debut as a budding profession in the early 17th century. From then on they played a major role in how people looked at pictures and how pictures looked to people. Sir George Beaumont (1753–1827), an art patron and talented amateur landscapist, once quipped: “A good picture, like a good fiddle, should be brown”. Beaumont’s aesthetic was to have a profound influence on how the 19th century looked at paintings and how paintings were to look in the 19th and 20th centuries. Early in its career, the National Gallery, London, used a mixture of “mastic in turpentine and boiled linseed oil” created by William Sequier, a restorer. This became known as “The Gallery Varnish” and provided a deep golden glow for Old Masters. When Charles Eastlake, R. A., became Keeper of the National Gallery in 1844 he initiated a cleaning programme which was to result in the first ‘Cleaning Controversy’ of 1846–53. People liked their pictures brown and were to continue to do so for a long time. Many people, among the professionals and public, still do as is witnessed by the on-going cleaning controversies, the Sistine Chapel frescoes imbroglio being the most vociferous of recent date. While Beaumont’s aesthetic was to affect how people—long after his death—were to look at pictures, and how pictures were to look, it was derived from a tradition firmly rooted in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1711 Joseph Addison published a piece in The Spectatorin which he dreamt he went to an imaginary gallery with the works of the living on one side and the works of the dead on the other. On the side of the living many artists were busy, among them Vanity [French] and Avarice [quick workers]. “On the Side of the Dead Painters I could not discover more than one Person at work, who was exceeding slow in his Motions , and wonderfully nice in his Touches”. This person was Time who, adding “Touch after Touch [upon the paintings] without Rest or Intermission, . . . wore off insensibly every little disagreeable gloss that hung upon a Figure: He also added such a beautiful Brown to the Shades, and
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Mellowness to the Colours, that he made every Picture appear more perfect than when it came fresh from the Master’s Pencil”. Many conservators today who are sympathetic to Riegl’s concept of “Age Value” confuse this value with original condition, a concept not unknown to the 17th and 18th century mind. In his Second Discourse, 1769, Reynolds cautioned, “that old pictures deservedly celebrated for their colouring, are often so changed by dirt and varnish, that we ought not to wonder if they do not appear equal to their reputation in the eyes of unexperienced painters, or young students. An artist whose judgment is matured by long observation, considers rather what the picture once was, than what it is at present. He has by habit acquired a power of seeing the brilliancy of tints through the cloud by which it is obscured”. All good paintings conservators today can do the same. Speaking in 1786 of the Duke of Rutland’s recently purchased Seven Sacraments,by Poussin, Reynolds informed Lord Ossory that they are “in perfect condition, having never been touched I believe, not even washed, ever since they were painted; they are consequently very dirty, but it is dirt that is easily washed off”. Despite the criticism of artists like Reynolds and Hogarth—whose 1761 etching and mezzotint of Time Smoking a Picture scoffs at the taste for old, yellowed pictures—most connoisseurs and collectors sided with the aesthetic of the literary man, Addison. The dealers and restorers were only too happy to be of artful accommodation to their customers’ demands. In his Analysis oj_Beauty, 17’53,Hogarth jibes that many students who go to Rome to study painting “take the infectious turn of the connoisseur, instead of the painter: and in proportion as they turn by those means bad proficients in their own arts, they become the more considerable in that of a connoisseur”. In his Apology for Painters, 1760–61, he attacks dealers who treble their investments on bad pictures bought at auction. Dealers also come in for criticism in The Analysis of Beazty as people “who still carry on a comfortable trade in such originals as have been so defaced and maimed by time, that it would be impossible, without a pair of doublegrowzd connoisseur-spectacles, to see whether they have ever been good or bad: they deal also in cook’d up copies, which they are very apt to put off for originals”. The anonymous author of A Call To The Connoisseurs, 1761, also lashes out at dealers: Yet howevermortifying to Professors, or pernicious to Science it may be, to see an unskilful Gentry, or ignorant Tradesmanto set up for Judges in Painting; there is another Class of Mortals still more so, and those are the Picture Dealers; the former at worst are weak, these are wicked; one is contemptible, the other detestable; the former likes or dislikes from no Motive but Caprice, the latter calumniates one Set of Gentlemen in order to cheat another; the Picture Dealer is generally some Painter or Engraver, whose utmost Abilities amount to the daubing of Window Blinds, or graving of Tankards; and not being able to live on his own wretched Productions, his Dependence and Support are the Labours of others; and ‘tis remarkable, that those Wretches bear the same Antipathy to a real Artist that a Eunuch does to a Man. Connoisseurs fair no better in this book and the writer stresses the point that only good artists have the right to judge pictures since the connoisseur “is eternally blundering in attempting to appear skill’d in the mechanic”. In other words, the connoisseur does not understand technique which is intimately
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related to an artist’s “hand”, one of the basic elements of connoisseurship, Many conservators could probably relate stories about their colleagues among the scholarly sort of curators who know much about books and less about paintings, Scholarship and a good eye, of course, can go together, but it is by no means certain that someone possesses both qualities just because he/she enjoys the title “curator”. Elsewhere in A Cull to The Connoisseurs self-styled experts come in for further attack. A man’s judgment is esteemed in proportion to his buying power and the example is given of a collector examining a picture by Ambrogio Borgognone (active from 1481-d, ca. 1523), “or rather the Back and the Lining, to which he was much more attentive”, The collector decides against the picture due to a “vile Tree” which he believes not good enough for Borgognone, and the writer comments that “the Picture was condemned for one of the finest strokes of Judgment in it”, In order to protect themselves from unscrupulous dealers, the author suggests that the nobility and collectors should employ good artists to advise them on purchases, Samuel Foote’s (1720–77) farce Taste opened at Drury Lane in 1752. In it Foote satarizes the cunning of dealers and restorers, and the stupidity of their clients. Carmine is a painter-forger in the service of Puff, a dealer. Brush is one of Puff’s associates, In Act II Puff pretends to be Monsieur Baron de Groningen come to London to buy pictures for the Elector of Bavaria. Carmine assumes the role of Canto, an expert, and Brush is the dealer, The victim is Lord Dupe, a wealthy collector. When Lord Dupe arrives the following occurs: Lord . . . Could you introduce me to Mynheer?—Does he speak English? Brush.Not fluently, but so as to be understood. Mynheer, Lord Dupe—the Patron of the Arts, the Petroniwsfor Taste, and for well-timed Generosity, the Leo—and the Maecenas—of the present Age, desires to know you. Ptifj Sir, you honour me very mightily.I was hear of Lord Dupes in Hollandt. I was tell he was one Delatant, one Curieuse, one Precieuse of his Country. To set the stage for the sting, Brush had already told Lord Dupe that it would be a pity were anyreallygoodpictures to leave the country as a result of the Baron de Gronmgen’s mission. The chord of patriotism—Dr Johnson’s last refuge for scoundrels—had been resolutely plucked and Lord Dupe rose to the bait, While walking around, looking at, and buying paintings, Lord Dupe stops and enquires: “What Pictures are those, Mr. Canto?”: Canto. They are not in the Sale; but I fancy I could procure them for your Lordship. Lord.This, I presume,might havebeen a Landskip; but the Water,andthe Men, and the Trees, and the Dogs, and the Ducks, and the Pigs, they are obliterated, all gone, Brush.An indisputable Mark of its Antiquity; its very Merit; besides a little Varnish will fetch the Figures again. Lord. Set it down for me—The next. One wonders if life has really changed that much in the environs of Bond Street? If connoisseurs and dealers come in for strong criticism, especially in the 18th century, so do restorers, not only for their faking activities—and we should not forget that Sir Joshua indulged in them from time to time—but also for the
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damage they inflicted upon paintings. Richard Haydocke in the introduction to his 1598 translation of Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo’s Truttuto dellu pittura, 1584, remarks that he has, “scene divers goodlie olde workes finely marred, with fresh and beawtifull colours, and vernishes: a singular argument (to say nothing of the Owners) of the bolde and confident ignorance or the workemen”. What Haydocke obviously disliked were over-paintings and fresh varnishes, and he blamed both the owners and the restorers, who, in this instance, were itinerant portraitists who also repaired paintings, It was common practice up to the 19th century for peripatetic artists to double as picture cleaners and a 1742 advertisement in The Gentleman’s Magazine warned: “Trust not your Pictures to be clean’d by common Traveling Painters”. A 1764 letter to The Gentleman’s Magazine contains one of the most damning condemnations of restorers. After having reckoned with collectors and dealers, the author turns his attention to restorers who destroy original paintings by rubbing, defacing and re-painting them, He indulges in a veritable litany of accusations: All artists know to what a wretched condition most of our collections are reduc’d, by their undergoingthe variousoperations of a set of miscreantscalled picture cleaners; men, who for the generality,know no more of painting than a Hotentot, and, consequently,know not when they are doing good or hurt to a picture. Who could ever imagine that colour men, cabinet-makers, frame-makers, brokers, and house-painters, could have the assuranceto undertake so nice an affair as to put to rights a damagedpicture, a thing that requiresthe utmost skill of the best painter we have. But when we consider that the judgment of the owners is generally upon a par with that of the cleaners, it is no longer to be wonderedat that they shouldsufferthemselvesto be persuadedto intrust things of this consequence in the hands of such ignorant pretenders. The glaring appearancea picture makeswhen it first comes out of the handsof thesemen, by the help of their varnishes,gainsvery much upon the eye of one who is ignorant of the true excellence of a painting, and who is apt to think a miracle has been wrought upon it, neversuspectingthe picture to be irrecoverablyruin’d; but this [,] time soon discovers, and the owner then sees with regret what pains and expencehe has been at to render a fine picture good for nothing. If we should be foolish enough to think such things can no longer happen in our modern, professional, scientific-supported conservation world—not to mention curator-land—let us not forget the recent kefuffle over the restoration of Barnett Newman’s Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue. The matter is still before the New York courts. Was the damage done in the 17th and 18th centuries as bad as the critics of restoration stated it was? Yes— 1 am afraid so—is the answer. Many writers, among them artists, virtuosi, and keepers of collections, made notations in diaries, note-books, letters and catalogues about the conditions of works of art they inspected. Abraham van der Doort (ea. 1575/80-1640), who came to England in 1609 and became both Master Embosser and Surveyor of Pictures to Charles I, drew up a catalogue of the King’s collections. Throughout his catalogue, Van der Doort often makes reference to condition or to damages done by poor restorations. Many of the pictures bought from the Gonzagas in Mantua were damaged by quicksilver during their shipment from Italy to England. While
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quicksilver is repeatedly recorded, so are woodworm, defacing, cracked panels, rotten canvas, wrinkled varnish, wrinkled grounds, washing and cleaning. The somewhat neurotic Van der Doort committed suicide in 1640 because he was hampered in carrying out his duties as Surveyor by various uncongenial courtiers. His unhappy situation seems quite similar to many curatorial departments in modern museums. Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), Secretary of the Navy and famous diarist, noted during a visit to the “Matted Gallery” at Whitehall in August 1668, that it was a “pity to see Holbein’s work in the ceiling blotted on, and only whited over!” George Vertue (1683–1756), antiquary and father of British art history, often jotted down remarks on condition and restoration in his Note-books. Before their restoration in 1701–2 Vertue mentions that Mantegna’s Triumphof Caesar was “most decayed”. As an amateur draughtsman Vertue often copied “after drawings and paintings” and while at Kensington Palace in 1743 examining Holbein drawings he observed that “a great many are much defaced or rubb’d— and by some less skillfull hand has been out-lin’d the features hard with the pen—”. In the same year he also mentioned the recent repair of Rubens’s ceiling in the Banqueting House, Whitehall, which was “new lind & clean’d by William Kent. The man who turned Vertue’s Note-Books into the first book on British art— Anecdotes of Painting in England, 1762-80—was Horace Walpole (1717-97). Antiquary, connoisseur, collector, epistolist and author, Walpole kept copious notes of his visits to country houses in which he frequently mentions the condition of works of art seen by him. At Blenheim he noticed the Rubenses “spoiled by sun”; at Chatsworth faded tapestries; at Hatfield a portrait of Elizabeth I “in the highest perfection”; at Sherburn a damaged painting by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (1561–1635); at Houghton “decayed” family portraits; at Drayton pictures damaged during the Glorious Revolution; at Cambridge a re-painted face on a portrait of Henry VIII by Lucas de Heere (1534-84); at Kedleston “many and large pictures . . . sadly repaired”; at Wentworth Castle a portrait by De Heere “highly preserved”, and Van Dyck’s Strafford and His Secretary which had “suffered by damp” since his first visit to the house in 1768; at Castle Howard two decorative paintings by Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini (1674 ?-1741) “now much faded”; at Cowdray Holbein’s Embassy to France, three pictures which had been so varnished by a restorer— and Walpole had seen these pictures years before in his studio—that “they are turned as black as Sut & spoiled”; at Lee Holbein’s miniature of Anne of Cleves “in the most perfect preservation”; at Knole Reynolds’s 1769 portrait of the 3rd Duke of Dorset, but in 1780 “the colouring much gone already”; and at Buckingham House faded miniatures “having been & being, exposed to the light & Sun”. These few examples will have to serve to demonstrate that people in the 17th and 18th centuries were concerned with condition, even original condition, that chimerical state devoutly worshiped by many contemporary conservators. Very impressed by Drayton, the seat of Lady Elizabeth Germain, which he visited in July 1763, Walpole praised “The Old furniture and customs She has kept up most religiously, & maintained the house in the most perfect order & preservation. There is scarce a House in England so entire in the old fashioned manner”. Despite this excellent example—and there are others—which demonstrates an
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awareness and appreciation of, and perhaps even a real concern for preserving “original condition”, the 18th-century mind had an intrinsically different understanding of this concept from ours for the simple reason that people in the 18th century still lived with the past in a manner which is impossible for us to duplicate today due to causes varying from changed mentality, to economics, to pollution, to conservation ethics. Who were the miscreants and Hotentots who usually did so much damage to condition, original or otherwise, of paintings? Conservation training programmedas we know them today area very recent development, the oldest being barely forty years old. The oldest continuous tradition of paintings conservation training from master to pupil is to be found in the Paintings Conservation Department of the Hermitage Museum which dates from Catherine the Great’s reign. The earliest initiative I have yet seen, to establish a proper school, dates from 1816 and in a proposal submitted to the Venetian Academy in that year. In England during the 17th and 18th centuries there was no formal training of any sort in the art of restoration. As we have already seen, the most discerning connoisseurs, who were artists, believed that artists alone were the proper judges of painting. The anonymous writer in The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1764,believed competent restoration could only be carried out by “the best painter we have”. Picture cleaning and repairing, therefore, was the turf of the artist, and by “artist” we must understand everyone from the very best masters to the most uninspired hacks who earned their livings as itinerant workmen. The most famous artist working in 17th century England who put his hand to some “restoration” was Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641). When Titian’s Roman Emperors from the Gonzaga Collection arrived in London it was discovered that there were only eleven, the twelfth one, supposedly “much ruin’d & damaged”, having been left behind. Actually, Titian only painted eleven since the Gabinetto dei Cesari in the Ducal Palace, Mantua, only had spaces for eleven portraits. The Vitellius which did arrive was so damaged that Charles I commissioned Van Dyck to paint a copy. Van Dyck also carried out some repairs on the Galba. Another Flemish artist of merit, John de Critz (1555–1641), became Serjeant Painter first to James I and later to Charles I. He also carried out restorations as a 1632 account of payments shows: “John Decreetz Serjeant Painter. for repairing pictures of Palma. & the pictures of the Roman Emperors painted by Titian—”. No amount is mentioned. However, most of the ‘restorers’ were not, as artists, in the same league with Van Dyck and De Critz. Parry Walton (d. ca. 1700), a below average disciple of Robert Walker (d. 1658?) the portrait painter, was Surveyor of Paintings. Along with Henry Cooke the Younger (1642–1700), a history painter, he “repaird or joynd together in K. Williams reign” Raphael’s Cartoons at Hampton Court. Walton was paid the final installment of a total of S200 in 1693 for this work. He was also paid !260 for lining and repairs done to three parts of Mantegna’s Triumphof Caesa~.On the 27th of August 1677 Walton was paid !21 by Charles Beale “for clensing and mending ye Italian piece of ffowle of Dr Patricks & for getting out ye cracks puckering, and newbinding it on ye back side with Canvis, varnishing, & his owne paines in straining & doving it”. It would seem from this that Walton also did routine restorations. When you remember that Mary Beale (1632/3-99), the enthusiastic but uninspired imitator of Lely, charged S5 for bust portraits and !210 for half-lengths, the !21 charged by Walton for all his work is
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put into proper perspective. A good frame for a half-length could be had for between 91 and S3. Even though Walton had been involved in the restoration of Mantegna’s Triumphof Caesar, William III entrusted the rest of the work in 1701 to Louis Laguerre (1663–1721), godson to Louis XIV, decorative painter and Painter to the Works, Vertue tells us that “tho these paintings were in a most decayed condition, ., , yet he happily mimicked the Master as to complet them to the great satisfaction of the King, & all the Curious”. I remember John Brealey telling he how difficult it was to deal with Laguerre’s ‘restorations’ when he worked on the Mantegnas. Amongst the 18th-century masters in England who carried out restorations from time to time were William Kent (1684–1748), who supervised the restoration of the central sections of Rubens’s ceiling in the Banqueting House, Whitehall, and Giovanni Cipriani (1726–85) and John Rigaud, R,A. (1742-1810) who also worked on the ceiling, Cipriani received 21000 for his re-touchings. Reynolds, of course, was the most famous English 18th century artist who worked as a restorer. As was previously mentioned, he held his talents in this area in high esteem. Among pictures either restored by him or under his supervision were many of his own which deteriorated rapidly due to his unsound technique. Mary Hamilton, niece of Sir William Hamilton, asked Reynolds in 1785 to repair his 1758 portrait of her uncle. According to her, Reynolds offered to “renovate it with lustingColors”. Early in 1786 she saw the picture which “he has retouch’d & made . . . very exquisite , . . indeed”. As marcband amateur, Reynolds had an especial interest in good restoration. In 1786 he hired a Neapolitan restorer by the name of Biondi to clean and line the Duke of Rutland’s recently purchased Seven Sacraments,by Poussin, which were in Reynolds’s studio. Biondi had a secret cleaning mixture which he demonstrated with success for Reynolds. After this, Reynolds confidently believed that “I might securely trust him with the Sacraments, taking care to be allways present when he was at work”. From time to time Sir Joshua took a somewhat cavalier attitude towards restoration. Writing to Lord Ossory in 1786 about “a copy by Titian himself [of Venusand Adonis] from that in the Colonna palace”, he informs Ossory that the copy is in poor condition and that, “the Picture cleaner will only make it ten times worse”. Sir Joshua suggests that he and Ossory make an exchange whereby the Titian copy would become his. He goes on to say that were the painting his own he would try cleaning it “or ruin the picture in the attempt”. James Northcote (1746–1831), Reynolds’s best-known pupil, recorded that his master worked on A Moor Blowing on a Pipe or Flute, by Velasquez. ‘cWhen he got it into his painting-room, he painted an entire new back ground to the picture, a sky instead of what was before all dark without any effect; but with this and some few other small alterations, it became one of the finest pictures I ever saw”. A fairly legitimate case can be made to call Reynolds the forerunner of our muchbeloved scientific investigations into historical techniques. Northcote mentions that “In his investigations . . . into the secrets used by the old painters, he was indefatigable. I remember once, in particular, a fine picture by Parmegiano, that I bought by his order at a sale, which he rubbed and scoured down to the very pannel on which it had been painted, so that at last nothing remained of the picture”. Among the artists whose works suffered because of Sir Joshua’s curiosity are Titian, Rubens and Watteau. Our miniscule paint and varnish
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samples today do far less damage to old paintings, but no matter how roughly or carefully such dissections are carried out, they inevitably have something of the coroner’s inquest to them. If someone of Reynolds’s stature could be so nonchalant with old paintings, there can be no doubt that the ordinary restorers of the 18th century were as bad as their 17th century counterparts. Among the run-of-the-mill artist and/or dealer restorers were people like Stephen Slaughter (d. 1765) who succeeded Peter Walton, Parry’s son, as Supervisor Repairer of the King’s Pictures; a Mr. Anderson praised by Lord Chesterfield as a safe man to clean pictures; William Tomkins, a landscape painter, who cleaned pictures; Benjamin van der Gucht, a dealer-restorer, who drowned in an accident crossing the Thames after he had been working on pictures at Burlington House, Chiswick; a Mr. Tassart, another dealer-restorer; and Richard Brompton who, “When at Salisbury, . . . was engaged to clean and repair the famous picture of Vandyck, at Wilton-house; which he did with so little discretion, that the picture has irreparably suffered by his hand”, A manuscript treatment report at Wilton House gives an excellent idea what was understood by restoration in 1773/4, The old varnish was removed; the picture was lined with “Russia ticking”; it was painted twice over on the back to keep out damp; once the picture was cleaned it was rubbed over “with fine white poppy oil so long as it appeared to receive it”; old fills were removed and replaced with new ones “of the finest white wax”; “where it was necessary in the background and some other places of no material consequence, repainted”; glazings in the drapery and trees were refreshened. Once this was completed two coats of “Wall’s finest Copal varnish” were applied. The restorer who wrote this report— and it may have been Brompton—was confident that “In future it is supposed (accident excepted) that the picture will not require anything more to be done to it”, He adds, in closing, that it might be necessary in ten years time to re-varnish the painting and warns that only Wall’s copal varnish should be used. Copal, which is a very hard resin, was turned into a varnish in the 18th century by melting it into drying oil which could be thinned with turpentine. Good for coaches, it was about the worst final coating one could give to a painting. But it was guaranteed to turn yellow and provide a golden glow. It was also guaranteed to be extremely difficult to remove. Nathaniel Drake, a colourman, ran an advertisement in 1768 recommending a secret varnish much superior to “Martin’s Copal Varnish” because it dried faster, could be polished, and did not discolour. Of course, people still promote their nostrums in much the same way today as witness the marketing hype for the enzyme method of cleaning pictures which operates along the lines of hair remover. Space does not permit giving recipes for cleaning mixtures, etc., and I apologize for any disappointment caused to those conservators who have a penchant for such recipes. However, a list of recommended materials will give some idea what paintings underwent. Those I have found in both English and Dutch sources are: vinegar and water, purified nut oil, boiling oil of turpentine, water, potash, rainwater, blue starch or powdered azurite, urine, lye, bread, warm beer and gum tragacanth, soap, smalt, spirit of wine or ethyl alcohol, essence of lemons, spirit of lavender or rosemary, and “lye of the ashes of vine-branches, mixed with fresh man’s urine [which] will restore the fading”. Many of the recommended cleaning techniques will send shivers up the spine, as will the
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techniques and materials suggested for lining or re-lining paintings. Transferring pictures from old to new canvas, or old panels to new ones, was quite popular and sulphuric acid was generously used to remove the last traces of the original canvas. The methods and materials recommended for restoring paintings add up to a tale which makes Dr Caligari’s Cabinet look like Alice ZnWonderland. The only English source I have found to date which fits under the heading of preventive conservation—the most popular trend in the profession today— comes from John Smith’s 1676 Art of Painting in Oil. He was aware that the “Beauty [of paintings] may be much impaired by Dust, Smoak, Fly-Shits, moist Vapours, and the like”. It was common practice in 17th century Holland to hang curtains to keep pictures free from smoke, to dust them off with fox tails, and to put up green boughs or pompons of cucumbers to draw away the flies. This is not much, but it demonstrates an awareness of preventive measures. In closing, I would like to quote from Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846) who noted the following in 1844 in his diary: They may talk as they pleaseof the sufferingsof humanity,but there is nothing so excites my sympathy as the helpless sufferings of a fine old oil picture of a great genius. Unable to speak or remonstrate, touching all hearts by its dumb beauty, appealingto all sympathies by its silent splendour,laid on its back in spite of its lustrous and pathetic looks, taken out of its frame, stripped of its splendidencasement,fixed to its rack to be scraped, skinne[d], burnt, and then varnishedin mockery of its tortures, its lost purity, its beautiful harmony, and hung up again, castratedand unmanned,for living envy to chuckle over, while the shadeof the mighty deadis allowedto visit and rest about his former glory, as a pangt for sins not yet atoned for. Should we, today, think the future will not talk like this about our scientifically supported, technically advanced, and ethically responsible restorations, then we should perhaps pause for a moment’s humility. The conservation profession has made great advances, but it still suffers from time to time from an Annie Oakley mentality, namely, the idea that, “I can do anything better than you”. All we can ever do is our best, but we must not forget that many of the 17th and 18th century restorers genuinely believed they were doing their best too. Editors’ Note This paper was delivered at the symposium, Studies in the History of Paintings Restoration, held at the National Gallery, London, 23 February 1996.
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MuseumManagementand Curatorship,Vol.16,No. 1, 35-44, 1997 O1997ElsevierScienceLtd.All rightsreserved Printed in GreatBritain 0260-4779/97$17.00+ 0.00
PII: S02604779(96)00063-1
Miscreants and Hotentots: Restorers and Restoration Attitudes and Practices in 17th and 18th Century England M. KIRBY TALLEY JR
Our present always has an element of the d~jhvu in it, and this confirms to some extent the veracity of the saying: “1’histoire se kp~t”. The contemporary conservation profession believes—and justly so—that it has made many crucial advances in the past forty years or so of its still young existence. And yet, the profession—if that is the correct term in an historical context—is much older than a mere forty or fifty years, Many of the conservation issues which we take very seriously, or which we consider as being our discoveries, or unique to our particular situation today, were, of course, known to, pondered over, dealt with, and relevant to our predecessors in the field. In the space allowed I can only hope to give an overview of some of these issues, a sort of pot-pourri composed of diverse exotic scents, which will bring home how much has changed, and how much has remained the same. Vasari in his Lives of the Painters, Sculptors,and Architects, first published in 1550, created the notion of ‘Old Masters’ and while virtuosi in the 16th century collected antique sculpture, objets d’art, and curios, as far as painting was concerned they were primarily patrons of contemporary artists. It was not until the 17th century that collecting as a phenomenon which we still understand and practice got under way, Charles I, the Earl of Arundel, Henry Clay Frick, and William Randolph Hearst would have understood one another—at least as far as for collecting is concerned. The idea that an older work of art is ~ p:ss:on mtruxwcally better and therefore more expensive than a new production became fashionable in the 17th century, and by the 18th century was an ironclad code for connoisseurs and collectors. People appreciated works of art for what Alois Riegl in The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Its Origin, 1903, termed their “Age Value”. If Old Masters were indeed more valuable than contemporary art, it follows that there would have been a genuine concern among collectors for buying and maintaining them in good condition. Writing to his son in 1751, Lord Chesterfield discusses the proposed purchase of two portraits, one of a man by Titian “in good preservation”, and the other of a woman, “an indifferent and damaged picture”. Since he only wanted these portraits as “furniture for a particular room”, Lord Chesterfield was not too concerned about the woman who, “if she is not too much damaged, I can have her tolerably repaired, as many
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a fine woman is by a skilful hand here”. “Repaired” in this context is undoubtedly an euphemism for tarted up or extensively re-painted, an approach which often went under the name of restoration in the 17th and 18th centuries. Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92), who considered himself an experienced picture cleaner, remarked to Lord Ossory in 1786 that Van Dyck’s Pembroke Family at Wilton and Titian’s Vendramin Family at Northumberland House “from being pictures of inestimable value, they are now hardly worth the rank of good copies; however, this is so to painters’ eyes only”. As an artist and marchand amateur, Reynolds probably used “value” to cover both the artistic and the financial worth of the pictures after restoration. Of note is Reynolds’s conviction that only experienced artists were capable of judging pictures accurately as to their aesthetic merits and physical condition. This is an attitude common to artists and most writers on art in the 17th and 18th centuries who both railed at and ridiculed the wiles of dealers and restorers and the gullibility of most connoisseurs and collectors. Not all restoration was detrimental however, and Sig. O’Kelly Edwards, son of Sig. Pietro Edwards (1745-1821) of English descent and a picture restorer to the Venetian Republic, remarks in a lecture given at the Venetian Academy of Fine Arts in 1812 that through good restoration “many valuable works of art, now admired, and formerly considered useless or entirely lost, were recovered”. That this was, regrettably, not usually the case cannot be disputed. For better or worse, restorers as we have come to use that term first made their debut as a budding profession in the early 17th century. From then on they played a major role in how people looked at pictures and how pictures looked to people. Sir George Beaumont (1753–1827), an art patron and talented amateur landscapist, once quipped: “A good picture, like a good fiddle, should be brown”. Beaumont’s aesthetic was to have a profound influence on how the 19th century looked at paintings and how paintings were to look in the 19th and 20th centuries. Early in its career, the National Gallery, London, used a mixture of “mastic in turpentine and boiled linseed oil” created by William Sequier, a restorer. This became known as “The Gallery Varnish” and provided a deep golden glow for Old Masters. When Charles Eastlake, R. A., became Keeper of the National Gallery in 1844 he initiated a cleaning programme which was to result in the first ‘Cleaning Controversy’ of 1846–53. People liked their pictures brown and were to continue to do so for a long time. Many people, among the professionals and public, still do as is witnessed by the on-going cleaning controversies, the Sistine Chapel frescoes imbroglio being the most vociferous of recent date. While Beaumont’s aesthetic was to affect how people—long after his death—were to look at pictures, and how pictures were to look, it was derived from a tradition firmly rooted in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1711 Joseph Addison published a piece in The Spectatorin which he dreamt he went to an imaginary gallery with the works of the living on one side and the works of the dead on the other. On the side of the living many artists were busy, among them Vanity [French] and Avarice [quick workers]. “On the Side of the Dead Painters I could not discover more than one Person at work, who was exceeding slow in his Motions , and wonderfully nice in his Touches”. This person was Time who, adding “Touch after Touch [upon the paintings] without Rest or Intermission, . . . wore off insensibly every little disagreeable gloss that hung upon a Figure: He also added such a beautiful Brown to the Shades, and
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Mellowness to the Colours, that he made every Picture appear more perfect than when it came fresh from the Master’s Pencil”. Many conservators today who are sympathetic to Riegl’s concept of “Age Value” confuse this value with original condition, a concept not unknown to the 17th and 18th century mind. In his Second Discourse, 1769, Reynolds cautioned, “that old pictures deservedly celebrated for their colouring, are often so changed by dirt and varnish, that we ought not to wonder if they do not appear equal to their reputation in the eyes of unexperienced painters, or young students. An artist whose judgment is matured by long observation, considers rather what the picture once was, than what it is at present. He has by habit acquired a power of seeing the brilliancy of tints through the cloud by which it is obscured”. All good paintings conservators today can do the same. Speaking in 1786 of the Duke of Rutland’s recently purchased Seven Sacraments,by Poussin, Reynolds informed Lord Ossory that they are “in perfect condition, having never been touched I believe, not even washed, ever since they were painted; they are consequently very dirty, but it is dirt that is easily washed off”. Despite the criticism of artists like Reynolds and Hogarth—whose 1761 etching and mezzotint of Time Smoking a Picture scoffs at the taste for old, yellowed pictures—most connoisseurs and collectors sided with the aesthetic of the literary man, Addison. The dealers and restorers were only too happy to be of artful accommodation to their customers’ demands. In his Analysis oj_Beauty, 17’53,Hogarth jibes that many students who go to Rome to study painting “take the infectious turn of the connoisseur, instead of the painter: and in proportion as they turn by those means bad proficients in their own arts, they become the more considerable in that of a connoisseur”. In his Apology for Painters, 1760–61, he attacks dealers who treble their investments on bad pictures bought at auction. Dealers also come in for criticism in The Analysis of Beazty as people “who still carry on a comfortable trade in such originals as have been so defaced and maimed by time, that it would be impossible, without a pair of doublegrowzd connoisseur-spectacles, to see whether they have ever been good or bad: they deal also in cook’d up copies, which they are very apt to put off for originals”. The anonymous author of A Call To The Connoisseurs, 1761, also lashes out at dealers: Yet howevermortifying to Professors, or pernicious to Science it may be, to see an unskilful Gentry, or ignorant Tradesmanto set up for Judges in Painting; there is another Class of Mortals still more so, and those are the Picture Dealers; the former at worst are weak, these are wicked; one is contemptible, the other detestable; the former likes or dislikes from no Motive but Caprice, the latter calumniates one Set of Gentlemen in order to cheat another; the Picture Dealer is generally some Painter or Engraver, whose utmost Abilities amount to the daubing of Window Blinds, or graving of Tankards; and not being able to live on his own wretched Productions, his Dependence and Support are the Labours of others; and ‘tis remarkable, that those Wretches bear the same Antipathy to a real Artist that a Eunuch does to a Man. Connoisseurs fair no better in this book and the writer stresses the point that only good artists have the right to judge pictures since the connoisseur “is eternally blundering in attempting to appear skill’d in the mechanic”. In other words, the connoisseur does not understand technique which is intimately
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related to an artist’s “hand”, one of the basic elements of connoisseurship, Many conservators could probably relate stories about their colleagues among the scholarly sort of curators who know much about books and less about paintings, Scholarship and a good eye, of course, can go together, but it is by no means certain that someone possesses both qualities just because he/she enjoys the title “curator”. Elsewhere in A Cull to The Connoisseurs self-styled experts come in for further attack. A man’s judgment is esteemed in proportion to his buying power and the example is given of a collector examining a picture by Ambrogio Borgognone (active from 1481-d, ca. 1523), “or rather the Back and the Lining, to which he was much more attentive”, The collector decides against the picture due to a “vile Tree” which he believes not good enough for Borgognone, and the writer comments that “the Picture was condemned for one of the finest strokes of Judgment in it”, In order to protect themselves from unscrupulous dealers, the author suggests that the nobility and collectors should employ good artists to advise them on purchases, Samuel Foote’s (1720–77) farce Taste opened at Drury Lane in 1752. In it Foote satarizes the cunning of dealers and restorers, and the stupidity of their clients. Carmine is a painter-forger in the service of Puff, a dealer. Brush is one of Puff’s associates, In Act II Puff pretends to be Monsieur Baron de Groningen come to London to buy pictures for the Elector of Bavaria. Carmine assumes the role of Canto, an expert, and Brush is the dealer, The victim is Lord Dupe, a wealthy collector. When Lord Dupe arrives the following occurs: Lord . . . Could you introduce me to Mynheer?—Does he speak English? Brush.Not fluently, but so as to be understood. Mynheer, Lord Dupe—the Patron of the Arts, the Petroniwsfor Taste, and for well-timed Generosity, the Leo—and the Maecenas—of the present Age, desires to know you. Ptifj Sir, you honour me very mightily.I was hear of Lord Dupes in Hollandt. I was tell he was one Delatant, one Curieuse, one Precieuse of his Country. To set the stage for the sting, Brush had already told Lord Dupe that it would be a pity were anyreallygoodpictures to leave the country as a result of the Baron de Gronmgen’s mission. The chord of patriotism—Dr Johnson’s last refuge for scoundrels—had been resolutely plucked and Lord Dupe rose to the bait, While walking around, looking at, and buying paintings, Lord Dupe stops and enquires: “What Pictures are those, Mr. Canto?”: Canto. They are not in the Sale; but I fancy I could procure them for your Lordship. Lord.This, I presume,might havebeen a Landskip; but the Water,andthe Men, and the Trees, and the Dogs, and the Ducks, and the Pigs, they are obliterated, all gone, Brush.An indisputable Mark of its Antiquity; its very Merit; besides a little Varnish will fetch the Figures again. Lord. Set it down for me—The next. One wonders if life has really changed that much in the environs of Bond Street? If connoisseurs and dealers come in for strong criticism, especially in the 18th century, so do restorers, not only for their faking activities—and we should not forget that Sir Joshua indulged in them from time to time—but also for the
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damage they inflicted upon paintings. Richard Haydocke in the introduction to his 1598 translation of Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo’s Truttuto dellu pittura, 1584, remarks that he has, “scene divers goodlie olde workes finely marred, with fresh and beawtifull colours, and vernishes: a singular argument (to say nothing of the Owners) of the bolde and confident ignorance or the workemen”. What Haydocke obviously disliked were over-paintings and fresh varnishes, and he blamed both the owners and the restorers, who, in this instance, were itinerant portraitists who also repaired paintings, It was common practice up to the 19th century for peripatetic artists to double as picture cleaners and a 1742 advertisement in The Gentleman’s Magazine warned: “Trust not your Pictures to be clean’d by common Traveling Painters”. A 1764 letter to The Gentleman’s Magazine contains one of the most damning condemnations of restorers. After having reckoned with collectors and dealers, the author turns his attention to restorers who destroy original paintings by rubbing, defacing and re-painting them, He indulges in a veritable litany of accusations: All artists know to what a wretched condition most of our collections are reduc’d, by their undergoingthe variousoperations of a set of miscreantscalled picture cleaners; men, who for the generality,know no more of painting than a Hotentot, and, consequently,know not when they are doing good or hurt to a picture. Who could ever imagine that colour men, cabinet-makers, frame-makers, brokers, and house-painters, could have the assuranceto undertake so nice an affair as to put to rights a damagedpicture, a thing that requiresthe utmost skill of the best painter we have. But when we consider that the judgment of the owners is generally upon a par with that of the cleaners, it is no longer to be wonderedat that they shouldsufferthemselvesto be persuadedto intrust things of this consequence in the hands of such ignorant pretenders. The glaring appearancea picture makeswhen it first comes out of the handsof thesemen, by the help of their varnishes,gainsvery much upon the eye of one who is ignorant of the true excellence of a painting, and who is apt to think a miracle has been wrought upon it, neversuspectingthe picture to be irrecoverablyruin’d; but this [,] time soon discovers, and the owner then sees with regret what pains and expencehe has been at to render a fine picture good for nothing. If we should be foolish enough to think such things can no longer happen in our modern, professional, scientific-supported conservation world—not to mention curator-land—let us not forget the recent kefuffle over the restoration of Barnett Newman’s Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue. The matter is still before the New York courts. Was the damage done in the 17th and 18th centuries as bad as the critics of restoration stated it was? Yes— 1 am afraid so—is the answer. Many writers, among them artists, virtuosi, and keepers of collections, made notations in diaries, note-books, letters and catalogues about the conditions of works of art they inspected. Abraham van der Doort (ea. 1575/80-1640), who came to England in 1609 and became both Master Embosser and Surveyor of Pictures to Charles I, drew up a catalogue of the King’s collections. Throughout his catalogue, Van der Doort often makes reference to condition or to damages done by poor restorations. Many of the pictures bought from the Gonzagas in Mantua were damaged by quicksilver during their shipment from Italy to England. While
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quicksilver is repeatedly recorded, so are woodworm, defacing, cracked panels, rotten canvas, wrinkled varnish, wrinkled grounds, washing and cleaning. The somewhat neurotic Van der Doort committed suicide in 1640 because he was hampered in carrying out his duties as Surveyor by various uncongenial courtiers. His unhappy situation seems quite similar to many curatorial departments in modern museums. Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), Secretary of the Navy and famous diarist, noted during a visit to the “Matted Gallery” at Whitehall in August 1668, that it was a “pity to see Holbein’s work in the ceiling blotted on, and only whited over!” George Vertue (1683–1756), antiquary and father of British art history, often jotted down remarks on condition and restoration in his Note-books. Before their restoration in 1701–2 Vertue mentions that Mantegna’s Triumphof Caesar was “most decayed”. As an amateur draughtsman Vertue often copied “after drawings and paintings” and while at Kensington Palace in 1743 examining Holbein drawings he observed that “a great many are much defaced or rubb’d— and by some less skillfull hand has been out-lin’d the features hard with the pen—”. In the same year he also mentioned the recent repair of Rubens’s ceiling in the Banqueting House, Whitehall, which was “new lind & clean’d by William Kent. The man who turned Vertue’s Note-Books into the first book on British art— Anecdotes of Painting in England, 1762-80—was Horace Walpole (1717-97). Antiquary, connoisseur, collector, epistolist and author, Walpole kept copious notes of his visits to country houses in which he frequently mentions the condition of works of art seen by him. At Blenheim he noticed the Rubenses “spoiled by sun”; at Chatsworth faded tapestries; at Hatfield a portrait of Elizabeth I “in the highest perfection”; at Sherburn a damaged painting by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (1561–1635); at Houghton “decayed” family portraits; at Drayton pictures damaged during the Glorious Revolution; at Cambridge a re-painted face on a portrait of Henry VIII by Lucas de Heere (1534-84); at Kedleston “many and large pictures . . . sadly repaired”; at Wentworth Castle a portrait by De Heere “highly preserved”, and Van Dyck’s Strafford and His Secretary which had “suffered by damp” since his first visit to the house in 1768; at Castle Howard two decorative paintings by Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini (1674 ?-1741) “now much faded”; at Cowdray Holbein’s Embassy to France, three pictures which had been so varnished by a restorer— and Walpole had seen these pictures years before in his studio—that “they are turned as black as Sut & spoiled”; at Lee Holbein’s miniature of Anne of Cleves “in the most perfect preservation”; at Knole Reynolds’s 1769 portrait of the 3rd Duke of Dorset, but in 1780 “the colouring much gone already”; and at Buckingham House faded miniatures “having been & being, exposed to the light & Sun”. These few examples will have to serve to demonstrate that people in the 17th and 18th centuries were concerned with condition, even original condition, that chimerical state devoutly worshiped by many contemporary conservators. Very impressed by Drayton, the seat of Lady Elizabeth Germain, which he visited in July 1763, Walpole praised “The Old furniture and customs She has kept up most religiously, & maintained the house in the most perfect order & preservation. There is scarce a House in England so entire in the old fashioned manner”. Despite this excellent example—and there are others—which demonstrates an
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awareness and appreciation of, and perhaps even a real concern for preserving “original condition”, the 18th-century mind had an intrinsically different understanding of this concept from ours for the simple reason that people in the 18th century still lived with the past in a manner which is impossible for us to duplicate today due to causes varying from changed mentality, to economics, to pollution, to conservation ethics. Who were the miscreants and Hotentots who usually did so much damage to condition, original or otherwise, of paintings? Conservation training programmedas we know them today area very recent development, the oldest being barely forty years old. The oldest continuous tradition of paintings conservation training from master to pupil is to be found in the Paintings Conservation Department of the Hermitage Museum which dates from Catherine the Great’s reign. The earliest initiative I have yet seen, to establish a proper school, dates from 1816 and in a proposal submitted to the Venetian Academy in that year. In England during the 17th and 18th centuries there was no formal training of any sort in the art of restoration. As we have already seen, the most discerning connoisseurs, who were artists, believed that artists alone were the proper judges of painting. The anonymous writer in The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1764,believed competent restoration could only be carried out by “the best painter we have”. Picture cleaning and repairing, therefore, was the turf of the artist, and by “artist” we must understand everyone from the very best masters to the most uninspired hacks who earned their livings as itinerant workmen. The most famous artist working in 17th century England who put his hand to some “restoration” was Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641). When Titian’s Roman Emperors from the Gonzaga Collection arrived in London it was discovered that there were only eleven, the twelfth one, supposedly “much ruin’d & damaged”, having been left behind. Actually, Titian only painted eleven since the Gabinetto dei Cesari in the Ducal Palace, Mantua, only had spaces for eleven portraits. The Vitellius which did arrive was so damaged that Charles I commissioned Van Dyck to paint a copy. Van Dyck also carried out some repairs on the Galba. Another Flemish artist of merit, John de Critz (1555–1641), became Serjeant Painter first to James I and later to Charles I. He also carried out restorations as a 1632 account of payments shows: “John Decreetz Serjeant Painter. for repairing pictures of Palma. & the pictures of the Roman Emperors painted by Titian—”. No amount is mentioned. However, most of the ‘restorers’ were not, as artists, in the same league with Van Dyck and De Critz. Parry Walton (d. ca. 1700), a below average disciple of Robert Walker (d. 1658?) the portrait painter, was Surveyor of Paintings. Along with Henry Cooke the Younger (1642–1700), a history painter, he “repaird or joynd together in K. Williams reign” Raphael’s Cartoons at Hampton Court. Walton was paid the final installment of a total of S200 in 1693 for this work. He was also paid !260 for lining and repairs done to three parts of Mantegna’s Triumphof Caesa~.On the 27th of August 1677 Walton was paid !21 by Charles Beale “for clensing and mending ye Italian piece of ffowle of Dr Patricks & for getting out ye cracks puckering, and newbinding it on ye back side with Canvis, varnishing, & his owne paines in straining & doving it”. It would seem from this that Walton also did routine restorations. When you remember that Mary Beale (1632/3-99), the enthusiastic but uninspired imitator of Lely, charged S5 for bust portraits and !210 for half-lengths, the !21 charged by Walton for all his work is
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put into proper perspective. A good frame for a half-length could be had for between 91 and S3. Even though Walton had been involved in the restoration of Mantegna’s Triumphof Caesar, William III entrusted the rest of the work in 1701 to Louis Laguerre (1663–1721), godson to Louis XIV, decorative painter and Painter to the Works, Vertue tells us that “tho these paintings were in a most decayed condition, ., , yet he happily mimicked the Master as to complet them to the great satisfaction of the King, & all the Curious”. I remember John Brealey telling he how difficult it was to deal with Laguerre’s ‘restorations’ when he worked on the Mantegnas. Amongst the 18th-century masters in England who carried out restorations from time to time were William Kent (1684–1748), who supervised the restoration of the central sections of Rubens’s ceiling in the Banqueting House, Whitehall, and Giovanni Cipriani (1726–85) and John Rigaud, R,A. (1742-1810) who also worked on the ceiling, Cipriani received 21000 for his re-touchings. Reynolds, of course, was the most famous English 18th century artist who worked as a restorer. As was previously mentioned, he held his talents in this area in high esteem. Among pictures either restored by him or under his supervision were many of his own which deteriorated rapidly due to his unsound technique. Mary Hamilton, niece of Sir William Hamilton, asked Reynolds in 1785 to repair his 1758 portrait of her uncle. According to her, Reynolds offered to “renovate it with lustingColors”. Early in 1786 she saw the picture which “he has retouch’d & made . . . very exquisite , . . indeed”. As marcband amateur, Reynolds had an especial interest in good restoration. In 1786 he hired a Neapolitan restorer by the name of Biondi to clean and line the Duke of Rutland’s recently purchased Seven Sacraments,by Poussin, which were in Reynolds’s studio. Biondi had a secret cleaning mixture which he demonstrated with success for Reynolds. After this, Reynolds confidently believed that “I might securely trust him with the Sacraments, taking care to be allways present when he was at work”. From time to time Sir Joshua took a somewhat cavalier attitude towards restoration. Writing to Lord Ossory in 1786 about “a copy by Titian himself [of Venusand Adonis] from that in the Colonna palace”, he informs Ossory that the copy is in poor condition and that, “the Picture cleaner will only make it ten times worse”. Sir Joshua suggests that he and Ossory make an exchange whereby the Titian copy would become his. He goes on to say that were the painting his own he would try cleaning it “or ruin the picture in the attempt”. James Northcote (1746–1831), Reynolds’s best-known pupil, recorded that his master worked on A Moor Blowing on a Pipe or Flute, by Velasquez. ‘cWhen he got it into his painting-room, he painted an entire new back ground to the picture, a sky instead of what was before all dark without any effect; but with this and some few other small alterations, it became one of the finest pictures I ever saw”. A fairly legitimate case can be made to call Reynolds the forerunner of our muchbeloved scientific investigations into historical techniques. Northcote mentions that “In his investigations . . . into the secrets used by the old painters, he was indefatigable. I remember once, in particular, a fine picture by Parmegiano, that I bought by his order at a sale, which he rubbed and scoured down to the very pannel on which it had been painted, so that at last nothing remained of the picture”. Among the artists whose works suffered because of Sir Joshua’s curiosity are Titian, Rubens and Watteau. Our miniscule paint and varnish
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samples today do far less damage to old paintings, but no matter how roughly or carefully such dissections are carried out, they inevitably have something of the coroner’s inquest to them. If someone of Reynolds’s stature could be so nonchalant with old paintings, there can be no doubt that the ordinary restorers of the 18th century were as bad as their 17th century counterparts. Among the run-of-the-mill artist and/or dealer restorers were people like Stephen Slaughter (d. 1765) who succeeded Peter Walton, Parry’s son, as Supervisor Repairer of the King’s Pictures; a Mr. Anderson praised by Lord Chesterfield as a safe man to clean pictures; William Tomkins, a landscape painter, who cleaned pictures; Benjamin van der Gucht, a dealer-restorer, who drowned in an accident crossing the Thames after he had been working on pictures at Burlington House, Chiswick; a Mr. Tassart, another dealer-restorer; and Richard Brompton who, “When at Salisbury, . . . was engaged to clean and repair the famous picture of Vandyck, at Wilton-house; which he did with so little discretion, that the picture has irreparably suffered by his hand”, A manuscript treatment report at Wilton House gives an excellent idea what was understood by restoration in 1773/4, The old varnish was removed; the picture was lined with “Russia ticking”; it was painted twice over on the back to keep out damp; once the picture was cleaned it was rubbed over “with fine white poppy oil so long as it appeared to receive it”; old fills were removed and replaced with new ones “of the finest white wax”; “where it was necessary in the background and some other places of no material consequence, repainted”; glazings in the drapery and trees were refreshened. Once this was completed two coats of “Wall’s finest Copal varnish” were applied. The restorer who wrote this report— and it may have been Brompton—was confident that “In future it is supposed (accident excepted) that the picture will not require anything more to be done to it”, He adds, in closing, that it might be necessary in ten years time to re-varnish the painting and warns that only Wall’s copal varnish should be used. Copal, which is a very hard resin, was turned into a varnish in the 18th century by melting it into drying oil which could be thinned with turpentine. Good for coaches, it was about the worst final coating one could give to a painting. But it was guaranteed to turn yellow and provide a golden glow. It was also guaranteed to be extremely difficult to remove. Nathaniel Drake, a colourman, ran an advertisement in 1768 recommending a secret varnish much superior to “Martin’s Copal Varnish” because it dried faster, could be polished, and did not discolour. Of course, people still promote their nostrums in much the same way today as witness the marketing hype for the enzyme method of cleaning pictures which operates along the lines of hair remover. Space does not permit giving recipes for cleaning mixtures, etc., and I apologize for any disappointment caused to those conservators who have a penchant for such recipes. However, a list of recommended materials will give some idea what paintings underwent. Those I have found in both English and Dutch sources are: vinegar and water, purified nut oil, boiling oil of turpentine, water, potash, rainwater, blue starch or powdered azurite, urine, lye, bread, warm beer and gum tragacanth, soap, smalt, spirit of wine or ethyl alcohol, essence of lemons, spirit of lavender or rosemary, and “lye of the ashes of vine-branches, mixed with fresh man’s urine [which] will restore the fading”. Many of the recommended cleaning techniques will send shivers up the spine, as will the
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techniques and materials suggested for lining or re-lining paintings. Transferring pictures from old to new canvas, or old panels to new ones, was quite popular and sulphuric acid was generously used to remove the last traces of the original canvas. The methods and materials recommended for restoring paintings add up to a tale which makes Dr Caligari’s Cabinet look like Alice ZnWonderland. The only English source I have found to date which fits under the heading of preventive conservation—the most popular trend in the profession today— comes from John Smith’s 1676 Art of Painting in Oil. He was aware that the “Beauty [of paintings] may be much impaired by Dust, Smoak, Fly-Shits, moist Vapours, and the like”. It was common practice in 17th century Holland to hang curtains to keep pictures free from smoke, to dust them off with fox tails, and to put up green boughs or pompons of cucumbers to draw away the flies. This is not much, but it demonstrates an awareness of preventive measures. In closing, I would like to quote from Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846) who noted the following in 1844 in his diary: They may talk as they pleaseof the sufferingsof humanity,but there is nothing so excites my sympathy as the helpless sufferings of a fine old oil picture of a great genius. Unable to speak or remonstrate, touching all hearts by its dumb beauty, appealingto all sympathies by its silent splendour,laid on its back in spite of its lustrous and pathetic looks, taken out of its frame, stripped of its splendidencasement,fixed to its rack to be scraped, skinne[d], burnt, and then varnishedin mockery of its tortures, its lost purity, its beautiful harmony, and hung up again, castratedand unmanned,for living envy to chuckle over, while the shadeof the mighty deadis allowedto visit and rest about his former glory, as a pangt for sins not yet atoned for. Should we, today, think the future will not talk like this about our scientifically supported, technically advanced, and ethically responsible restorations, then we should perhaps pause for a moment’s humility. The conservation profession has made great advances, but it still suffers from time to time from an Annie Oakley mentality, namely, the idea that, “I can do anything better than you”. All we can ever do is our best, but we must not forget that many of the 17th and 18th century restorers genuinely believed they were doing their best too. Editors’ Note This paper was delivered at the symposium, Studies in the History of Paintings Restoration, held at the National Gallery, London, 23 February 1996.