Art Chowder March | April, Issue 20 | Page 39

I n 1848 the Louvre in Paris also began a picture cleaning program. The “brown soup,” the “museum gravy,” had to go. This, too, met an uproar. Eugene Delacroix thought that Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana had been “killed” (which may strike us now as curious, since Venetian painters had long been known for their color). Another called Claude Lorrain’s Village Fête “ruined.” Protests against the cleaning of old paintings at the Pinakothek in Munich erupted in the 1860s. A technique devised by Dr. Max von Pettenkofer to refresh old varnish by exposing it to ethyl alcohol vapors without removing it seemed to offer a successful compromise, indeed a panacea. The varnish was regenerated, regained transparency, cracks were fused back together, and pictures retained their golden brown tone, putting an end to major cleaning controversies. The results, however, proved temporary, both for the varnish and the controversies. A new wave surged at the National Gallery in 1936 over the cleaning of the portrait by Velazquez, Philip IV in Brown and Silver. But two larger waves succeeded that one after World War II. The first came with the exhibition of several pictures that had been cleaned after their removal to safety during the war. “Immediate dissatisfaction was expressed over the brilliant, mostly cool colors, resulting, it was alleged, from overcleaning and the removal of glazes or paint.” A case in point is Rubens’s exquisite Chapeau de Paille, cleaned by Helmut Ruhemann in 1946. Peter Paul Rubens Le Chapeau de Paille (The Straw Hat) 1622-1625 oil on oak National Gallery, London The German restorer responsible for the cleaning project would remain at the center of controversy during the second big wave in the 1960s. Letters to The Times denounced the interventions: “drastic cleaning;” “utterly and irretrievably ruined;” “and irremediable disaster.” In light of the heated controversy, the museum staged an “Exhibition of Cleaned Paintings” in 1947. This time there were 75 pictures cleaned from 1936-1947 along with documentation, photographs, scientific evidence, and partly cleaned paintings for comparative purposes to support the integrity of the process. The National Gallery Trustees also created a Committee of Enquiry to make a full report. Their finding determined that the cleanings had not harmed the paintings but stressed the importance of a scientific approach to conservation. March | April 2019 39