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.
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