Reversing Disaster Part 2

This video is brought to you by Squarespace. From websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics, Squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business. Last time, I stabilized the panel, removed the cradle, repaired all of the checks and splits, and began removing the surface coating. And now I'm back to remove the rest of it. Because this was a synthetic coating that was unresponsive to any of the solvents or other detergents that I have, the only way to remove it is manually by scraping. And it's incredibly slow, tedious, and delicate work that's... well, did I mention slow? Using a sharp brand new scalpel blade, I can slide in between the old surface coating, the original varnish that was never fully removed, and you can see that yellow tint to the surface coating. That's the old varnish. And the paint layer. And because the old varnish was never fully removed, the new surface coating bonds to that as opposed to the paint layer. And I mentioned last time that sometimes bad work is your best friend. Well, this is a case in point. The sloppiness and by not fully cleaning off all of that old varnish has resulted in me being able to do this and pry this old surface coating off. So I suppose I should be grateful for sloppy work and poor materials. Because at least in this case, while they're not great and have been damaging, they're the only reason that I can solve this problem. Occasionally, I'm able to peel off a section of this surface coating and while it's incredibly satisfying, it is unfortunately not the norm. The majority of this surface coating will have to be scraped off with the scalpel. And as I proceed removing all of this coating, I'm noticing that it's pretty consistent. At least there's that positive. Sometimes when a surface coating is applied to a painting, it can bond stronger in some areas and weaker in others. But here, it's pretty even. And so you can see that once I get under, I can glide across and kind of skin it off of the painting. You can also see that the painting is not fully cleaned when I remove this surface coating. You can see some on that. That's the old varnish that is still stuck to the original paint layer. And that's both a good thing and a bad thing. Good because it means that I can remove all of this additional coating. Bad because it was never removed in the first place and I will have to remove it later on. But ultimately, it is what it is and I'm not terribly frustrated by it. It's also possible to see on this surface coating some of the multiple layers as I peel it back. I'm counting some places two, some places three, and in one place there were more than four layers. I'm not really sure why anybody would think that that's a good idea to unevenly apply multiple layers of a synthetic coating. But as we've learned throughout working on this painting, the decisions made by the people who worked on this painting last were not in accord with any conservation practices. Sometimes we look at old work and we say, well, this isn't good because it's old and the materials are outdated. Sometimes the techniques are outdated. But they were in accord with conservation practices when they were executed. Work from the 30s or 40s may have expired, but it may have been great work for the 30s or 40s. This work, however, was not good. There is nothing positive to say about this other than I can get rid of it. And while removing this surface coating is not a night and day transformation like some other projects I have worked on, it does reveal a different set of colors. Right now they're very washed out because they haven't been cleaned and there's no new varnish on them. But they're less cloudy, they're a little bit more crisp, and they're a little bit less yellow. And all of those subtle changes will make a big difference in the final outcome. So more and more scraping for me. When I started scraping, I thought, well, I'll just do one inch at a time and maybe go to another inch the next day. But ultimately, I ended up spending probably nine hours in a row scraping this painting. I started and I got into a rhythm and got on a roll and I figured I may as well just continue. So I did. And while it was long and tedious and kind of exhausting, I think it was the right choice. Sometimes when you're in the rhythm, in the zone, it makes sense to continue on because stopping and starting afresh another day may not yield the same results. And sometimes the massive project you were fearing turns out to be as easy as one, two, three. At least with Squarespace it is. One. Find your domain name. If you don't have one already, you can look one up and purchase it right through Squarespace's website. If you already have a domain, you can transfer it over to Squarespace where they offer competitive pricing and seamless integration with their web platform. Two. Choose your template. You can select from one of Squarespace's thousands of professionally designed templates that work anywhere from desktops to tablets, even mobile devices, so your visitors get a unified, complete experience no matter where they are. No coding required. Three. And this is the fun one. Filling it up with whatever you like. Now, you are probably going to run into some questions along the way. This is a big project after all. And this is where Squarespace shines. They have webinars, online articles, how-to guides, and videos walking you through how to do just about everything on their sites. And if you still need a little bit more help, well, there's a robust forum of people just like you using Squarespace that are happy to jump in and give you a hand. So head over to squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash Baumgartner to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. With all of that surface coating removed, I can now remove the remnants of that varnish layer that was never fully removed in the first place. And to do this, I'm using some rolled swabs and some solvent. It's not a terribly difficult process. I've made tests, so this solvent mixture is appropriate and safe for this painting. And I'll start in this corner here. And one thing that I'll see right off the bat is some of the old retouching coming off. Now, I looked at this painting under UV light, and I didn't see any of this retouching, which is strange. Normally, it fluoresces quite strongly. And that leads me to believe that whatever was put on this painting, whatever synthetic coating was put on, was designed to mask this old retouching. Whoever did this work didn't want anybody to see that they had done retouching on the painting. Now, retouching isn't fundamentally problematic. If a painting is damaged and it needs it, it needs it. But we like to have that visible under UV. It's a way that it keeps the conservators honest. And we can see what the old work is compared to the original painting, so that we know what's original and what's been recreated. So you can see up here where the fill-in is along the top edge, that kind of cream color, that was all retouched. Now, another thing that we can see is that there were losses. Quite a bit of them, in fact. Unfortunately, the stabilization efforts that I did to prevent these losses were not successful. The bond between the surface coating and the flaking paint was stronger than the bond between my adhesive and the panel and the flaking paint. And this is unfortunate. We always try to prevent this from happening, and I worked incredibly hard and incredibly slowly around these areas to try to prevent this. But unfortunately, this is just what was in the cards. The decisions made by the person who worked on this in the past resulted in the paint layer flaking, becoming detached from the original support, and becoming fragile. I tried, and in some cases, I did have good results stabilizing the paint and prevented the losses, and in other cases, I didn't. And it's unfortunate, but that's sometimes what happens when poor decisions are made on paintings. We just have to clean up the mess. Now, one of the big questions about this piece was around the toilet, because the toilet doesn't look like those of the other paintings by this artist of the same scene. There's no hole in the toilet, and there's no excrement on the step. Now, under UV light, nothing fluoresced. There was no retouching, but I could see that there was retouching. And so, by removing it with a solvent and a solvent gel, we can see that, yes, there is a hole in the toilet, and yes, there is excrement on the stairs. Covering this up because it was offensive is just completely bonkers and totally inappropriate. It fundamentally changes the artwork, and it's an offense to the original artist. So, uncovering it reveals what the artist originally wanted, and I have never been so happy to find a pile of excrement on the floor. Now, in addition, there is a lot of overpaint that doesn't come off with solvent or solvent gel, and in those cases, I have to turn to scalpel and more scraping. And you can see just how much there was. See all of that white that I'm removing? That's fill-in material that's on top of the original paint. It's okay to fill in losses. It's not okay to cover up the original paint, and that's what they did here. And again, none of this fluoresced. I couldn't see any of this under UV light. Nefarious, to say the least. With all of the old work now removed, the surface coating, the old varnish, all of the old overpaint, I can begin filling in the losses. And this includes the gaps where the panel was bounded back together, because there's always a little bit. In addition, when the panel splits, sometimes there's a light paint loss along those edges, and the areas of loss that happened during the removal of the surface coating. Once I've applied the fill-in, I'll start to remove it with my hands. It's soft and pliable, and it's really easy to get a feel for what's level. And it's just easier to do it now than it is to wait until it's completely dry. Now, this doesn't always work. On big gaps, we have to let it dry, but on these really small cracks, I can do it right now with my hands. I'll go ahead and I'll fill in all of these losses. I'm not terribly concerned about the excess fill-in material all over the painting, because that will get removed in the next step after it dries. So unlike the person who worked on this last, I'm not satisfied just to cover up original paint with fill-in, and then retouch over that. That's ridiculous and completely inappropriate. So using a swab with a little bit of water, I can soften up and lift off all of that excess. And I just want the fill-in where there are losses, not over any of the original paint at all. This is probably more tedious than the last person had patience for, and which is why they let the fill-in medium cover up the original, but that's part of the job. And if that's too much work for one, well, maybe it shouldn't be one's profession. Once I've removed all of the fill-in material, I'm going to apply a synthetic coating of resin on top of this panel, and it's going to do a couple of things. One, it's going to effectively seal up all of that fill-in material so that it doesn't absorb the retouching paints and cause them to be matte or look different. And two, it's going to create a really, really beautiful surface for me to retouch on. Sometimes wood panels are harder to retouch on because the paint is slippery and it doesn't stick as well. And then finally, well, it's just going to radically change the painting. You can see how much brighter and richer it is. And I want to retouch to this, not the washed out and dried painting. Because if I match my colors to the washed out and dried painting, when I apply the final varnish, everything will change. So by applying this isolation layer, I can ensure that my retouching matches what the painting will look like when the final varnish is applied. This type of retouching is both really exciting and really stressful. It's exciting because I get to rebuild an image and there's a lot of detail, a lot of really fine brushwork, so I get to challenge myself to match it and to meet what the artist did. And I also get to see the image come together. But it's really challenging because it's really detailed and it's really hard to paint like another artist, particularly with these retouching colors, which don't really blend and they don't act like oil paints. So it's not as easy as doing this in oil paint. But of course, I'm using these retouching paints because they're fully reversible. And that means that not only will they fluoresce so we can see what I've added, but if ever they need to be removed, it can be done without running risk to the original painting, unlike the work that was done previously. So I'll continue working to put the image back together, referencing the original and the photos I had taken before any work started, and I'll daydream about what these fellas are thinking about, what this experience must have been like, and hopefully I can put it and it's time to apply the final varnish. Even though the painting looks pretty good right now, it can look better. So applying a synthetic resin ultraviolet stable plasticized varnish will enable me to do many things. First, it will unify the sheen, take away any areas of blotchiness or shininess that cause distraction, and it will protect the painting from handling, from dust, dirt, and most importantly from ultraviolet light. This varnish is plasticized, like I mentioned, which means it's flexible. So as the panel moves, this varnish won't crack and become brittle, which is really important because that means the varnish will have a longer life and it won't need to be removed as frequently. But if ever it does need to be removed, it can be done so in about 15 minutes with a solvent that won't hurt the retouching paints or the original. So the varnish is applied, I'll brush it out to get a beautiful sheen, and then, well, I'm all done, and I'm ready and excited for Bob to see his painting. It bothered me because there are a couple of other versions of this painting, and it's a tavern peasant scene, and in the front right corner is this toilet. It's a chair, but it's a toilet, and in the other versions that I've seen, there's a circle in the middle, and there's also excrement on the step, but in my version, that wasn't there. It wasn't there. And so that made me think, well, maybe this is a later copy. However, when you looked at it, you looked really closely and said, I think that's overpainted, and sure enough, it looks right. This is how it should look. One of the big questions you had about this piece was if it was potentially by the artist or by a studio or a later follower or just a much later copy, because that happens in art all the time, and one of the things was the fact that that piece of the painting was missing, which kind of lent credence to it being maybe a copy or a later production. 18th century or something. Exactly, right, right. And, you know, when I saw the painting, I looked at it, one of the things that I was really taken by, and we talked about this, was how finely painted it was, the incredible detail that's in the brushwork, and as I was looking at it and examining it, I saw what looked like overpaint on the toilet. Now, when I blacklit the painting and I looked at it under UV, it didn't fluoresce. Right. In fact, nothing fluoresced because there was a very, very heavy coating of a synthetic, actually there were multiple coatings of synthetic resin on top, and so none of the retouching that I ultimately found was fluorescing. So this was kind of one of those, well, we're going on trust and hope because the blacklight didn't tell us anything, but ultimately when I started to clean it, I started to find more retouching, which, you know, it's what it is, it's an old painting, but we have our toilet now. It looks exactly correct. Yeah, like it looks exactly like all of the known versions. And to me, the colors in this one are better than what I've seen in the others that are out there. From what I've seen compared to the other ones, this one feels more complete, more fully rendered, and has a level of detail that isn't present in some of the others. Things like, you know, the stitching in the head covering and the little snot that... The guy's blowing his nose with a farmer's blow and you can see the snot coming out. Yeah, but you know, everything from, you know, down to the ruffles in the clothing, the wood grain on the posts, all of the subtle little things are present in this one. And in some of the other versions that I researched, they're just not as fine. And to think that the original by Adrian Brouwer is missing, and they don't know where it is. Right, well, wouldn't that be... If it says Adrian Brouwer, well, that would be wonderful. Yeah, yeah. It's such a wonderful painting, and so rich, and so vibrant, and so quintessential of what Brouwer became famous for, right? Like, he invented this scene, right? You were saying? Yeah, he was really known for pioneering these peasant tavern scenes, kind of in the style of Brugal, but Brouwer brought them inside and created this peasant tavern scene that was then copied by students and followers of both Flemish and Dutch masters. Gotcha. He was really the first, though. He has, like, under 60 paintings known to his name. Okay. He never signed his paintings, and he only lived to be 33 years old. That's young. 60 paintings in 33 years? Well, not even 33 years, right? Right, right. He died of plague. Oh, really? Yes, his paintings were found in the collections of Peter Paul Rubens and Rembrandt. Okay, so he was known, he was popular. Yes, he was popular at the time. Yeah, okay. And Rubens even... He was buried in a mass grave when he died, and Rubens raised money from his artist friends to have it exhumed and have him properly buried in a church. That's fantastic. Wow. So, one of the other things that we had to contend with was the massive cradle that was on the back. Now, that was put on foolishly because somebody wanted to flatten the painting. So, when we removed it, the panel now has a bow to it, and of course the frame, the rabbit, is not bowed. So, we had to make a little slip liner which occupies the gap in the edge so we don't have light shining through. You said it was scored on the back. Yeah. Did they do that for purchase for the cradle? Yeah. Is that the idea? Yeah, so what they didn't do was clean the wood, right? And so, if they would have done that, the bond would have been exceptional, but they left the wood dirty, and then they glued directly to the dirty wood, and their answer was to just score the back of the wood. So, you get more purchase with the glue, so it would hold tighter. Right, but that had no effect. Now, had they cleaned it or sanded it, we wouldn't have been able to take the cradle off because the wood bond would have been much, much stronger. So, in many ways, the story of this painting... The poor conservation actually helped, right? Yeah, I mean, I've told you this before with some of the other paintings. Sometimes lousy work is our best friend. The fact that they didn't fully clean the painting and remove a layer of natural resin varnish, the fact that they didn't clean the back before they glued the cradle on, all of those things ended up helping us remove what would have otherwise been really, really difficult, if not borderline impossible to remove. This, the coating on this painting was not receptive to any solvents, so it had to be removed manually. So, what's next for this painting? Well, I think I'm probably going to end up reaching out to the two auction houses that have had painting, this painting, and their... Copies of this painting, or versions of this painting. Yes, versions of this painting. There are three known versions. We'll see what they say. Very interesting. Thank you. I appreciate it. It's fantastic. Well, thank you, Bob. Now I have to find a good wall to put it on. Well, don't fall in love with it if you're going to sell it.