Marie Antoinette Conservation: Revealing the Controversial Queen's Portrait

My name is Philip Kevin, I'm a conservator. I work mainly on furniture but also frames and we're here today to unframe this painting. The first thing we do is I will discuss with the paintings conservator the condition of the painting. Sometimes the paintings have been heavily conserved and that means that they're easier to handle, there are no issues with frayed edges or problems with the painting. This particular painting has been conserved. Our paintings conservator feels it's in a very good and stable condition. So we just go ahead with the unframing. This is an oval frame rather than a square frame so it can be a little bit more tricky. So the first thing we do is place the painting face down and then we remove the backboard. This frame is not an original frame but it does look like it's been modified. You can see there's quite a thick what we call a build up of wood on the back and this has been done in order to increase the rebate size to allow for glazing. So it's typically found within a kind of museum environment you would find frames modified like this. It has very few fixing holes so it probably wasn't placed on here very long ago. It's also got a historic label on the backboard which says refitted in 1933 and they're glazed for their protection from the UV light as well. So we're going to unframe in a reverse order. So firstly what we see is this brown gum tape and this gum tape is applied to the back in order to give a good dust seal to stop any dust from getting into the painting. The first step is to try and start removing this. Depending on how old this gum tape is it can be easy or difficult to get off. I'm using a slotted screwdriver. I may have to introduce some moisture to try and get this off as it looks like it's pretty well adhered. We also have a thin section knife which I use sometimes to just get a bit more purchase under there. And by removing this gummed tape it also gives us access to the screws underneath which is holding the backboard in position. Try not to use moisture because it can swell the wood on the backboard. Modern backboards are made from hardboard so it's a kind of a modern composite material but this hardboard is an old plywood hardboard so that it will absorb the moisture. So try and refrain from using the moisture and also you don't want any moisture getting down close to the painting. So we're working around this area. I've got to be careful with the historic label keeping in mind that it's there and trying to work away from it. As this gum tape gets older it usually gets easier to remove but this is pretty well pretty well attached. The better to get the gum tape off enough to allow the backboard to be removed and then remove the excess after when the painting has been removed rather than introducing moisture too early on. Because this build up is such a late addition you wouldn't expect to find anything unusual at this point. We probably have because we tend to paintings tend to be opened a little bit more for analysis or for study. We tend to see some slight differences like these slotted screws that I'm just undoing now are normally replaced with a phillips type screw and the reason for that is they lend themselves more to re-opening and putting in and taking out whereas the slotted ones tend to chew up quite easily and they're brass as well so they're slightly softer metal. So I will be replacing these with a more modern type screw to make it easier for the next unframing. There's going to be one over here somewhere. I'll just gently prise the backboard up. On the back of the backboard you can see this plastic film. This is a melanex film. The idea is to stop the wood from off-gassing which does affect the painting. Off-gassing happens with wood where naturally occurring acids within the wood release in the environment they're in and in this case in a sealed frame could be potentially damaging to the painting. So we place a melanex film on the backboard as a barrier protecting the painting. So once open we can see the painting on its stretcher and nicely it's made in different sections. Being an ecliptical shape they've got to make it in different sections and these keys then push the stretcher out to give tension on the painting. That's the V&A stamp. I don't think they do that anymore but at one time they would stamp all the paintings with their collection stamp. They've used a technique where they've got these tiny little brass plates which have been bent into shape and then they act like a spring and they're pushing the painting firmly into the rebate in four positions the top bottom and on both sides. So these are the next item that needs to be removed and they're held over two little screws on either side. It looks like somebody's had a lot of fun trying to chop out this rebate for the backboard. It's been done by hand. That's interesting that screw that was quite stubborn. It's not a screw at all. It doesn't have any cut thread on it. It's just like a pin. That's why it wasn't releasing. As this is not a perfect eclipse, this rebate, they've placed some of this foam and the idea of that is just to hold it snugly in position and stop it from moving. We'll just remove these foam fillets around the edge and that should allow us to lift the painting out. So with the metal fixings removed and the plaster soap wedges out, that should release the painting. We can lift it straight out of the rebate. The edge of the painting is unframed. The frame appears to be a carved frame and it's been gilded. Probably not contemporary with the painting but it is an old frame, 18th century frame. It's been heavily modified in order to take the glass.