Canaletto and the Vedute Room: A Conservation Project

[Music] a voodoo Tea Room is basically a space created by 18th century aristocrats who relive their wonderful visit to Venice they would Commission paintings by canaletto and guava and decorate a room with just those kind of pictures the Wallace Collection has one of the greatest collections of videotape paintings are all assembled here the only thing is that they've never really been studied and they're in urgent need of conservation the canvases are covered with yellowed varnish and with time it means that you can't really see through that yellow varnish so what we're hoping to do is remove that in order to reveal what is beneath and bring them back to their former glory we're going to focus first of all on the two really great Canaletto that we have here of the batino and the remarkable things about those two pictures is that when you stand right in the middle and look from one side to the other it's as if you were on the gondola visiting Venice these were acquired very likely by the first Marquess of Hartford possibly in Venice maybe directly from the painter himself and these are kind of questions were going to be asking and hopefully answering by the end of the project in the next few days these pictures are gonna be taken off the walls and we're gonna be sending them to the Hamilton car institute which belongs to the University of Cambridge and there they will be conserved and analyzed technically we've been really fortunate that the Bank of America Merrill Lynch has has sponsored this project in order to to get these works restored it's very costly and you need expert restores to do it so we're pretty well at the end of the cleaning now Lucy's wonderful and so fresh just amazing yeah and Emma's just got a tiny bit of varnish to take off now it's interesting how the varnish looks even more yellow actually here isn't the natural light when it did in the garden yeah I mean it's 1940s varnish but it is discolored and it was suppressing a lot of information actually you didn't realise but the subtle blues and the sky all the predations and in the water as well you just didn't notice all of that election the reflectors have really come out beautifully yeah I mean this one is an amazingly good condition yeah barely in a crack to be seen in it it's it's uncanny in a way for a painting of this date another thing that the varnish removal has revealed is the incisions which he uses to define architecture so we've got some x-rays I think that we took earlier and that shows so clearly at these very fine lines yeah really narrow and then when you look at the surface you can actually see that they were done into the wet paint and in some areas like over here on the church you can see he's been using a compass and you've got little compass points and these minut fine lines that define the architecture and also act as a sort of highlight you can see it actually in this x-ray rather well you know you've got it's really clear where he's cut through the wet paint so it's gone right through to the ground and hence it appears dark on the x-ray and there's another one then you can see the compass point and then these all these horizontals yeah she's inscribed and then comes back when the paint's dry and puts those little dark lines on and the thing about those is they are so crisp and fine and you wonder how'd you do that yeah they out there control where they seem to be ruled but can you do that freehand or with a brush I mean or do you use a sort of pen I mean they're so fine some of those things and then the rigging of course which is freehand because it's not straight but again it's amazing control operator of paint and then the other thing which I think is rather nice is texture comes out when you've got room and gauzy varnish so you've got things like the way the impasto works on areas around here especially on the faces faces are so simple I mean they're just sizes in a way but they work you've got three little blobs most minimal of highlight two blobs on the face amazing and I love the contrast between this area as you say loosely painted and then this incredible meticulousness and accuracy yeah in the rendering of the buildings yeah and the way that canaletto controls the composition was just extraordinary when you're thinking as well that he often takes liberties with views so you can take in more of the wonderful monuments of us than you could actually see from many of the viewpoints yes I mean it looks so simple it looks photographic you think oh yeah just a view of Venice but it's much more to it than that yeah and then if we look at me compose that if you look at this one we Jay's got further she's taken all the varnish off and we're now onto removing the repaint from the the very old tear which must have been very early for that to have occurred it couldn't have been it must have been after the lining and then we've also got these sort of odd little damages this one is not as in good condition no there's a little bit more wear to the paint and there's these strange damages all along the bottom edge which I don't fully understand what caused those so for some reason this one hasn't been treated quite the same and the other thing is it doesn't have the incisions so the technique just subtly different I just was a little bit of a gap even though they look like a perfect pair whether they were separated a little bit in time or one was painted to match the other one or something like that well it's wonderful isn't it how this conservation project has revealed so much more about the two paintings and their relationship with each other and yes I can't wait to see them restored to their original splendor back at the Wallace Collection our two great collectors have been away for eight months and they've just been hung literally yesterday in this great gallery and this is where Richard Juarez loved to show some of his very best paintings and and he would entertain here and I really felt it would be important to welcome these pictures back with this wonderful space that was only recently redone into four teams that the lighting is perfect the red wall color colors are perfect for the Blues to stand out so this is just the beginning of the conservation project that we've initiated here at the Wallace we have many more canna letters and followers of cannon letters that need to be restored and the ultimate aim is to have them all cleaned and ready to be shown in a newly refurbished room and seeing them on this red I am wondering whether that is the right color we should use when we create what will be I'm pretty sure one of the greatest the duty rooms in Great Britain a perfect place to escape a rainy London [Music] you

Channel: The Wallace Collection

Views: 96,932

Rating: 4.8666668 out of 5

Keywords: Wallace Collection, Manchester Square, London, Hertford House, Sir Richard Wallace, Art, Gallery, Museum, Fine Art, Heritage, History, 17th Century, 18th Century, 16th Century

Id: fjRk3hgWWjc

Length: 7min 9sec (429 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 15 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/DangerousCommercials]

If you're interested in other restoration art videos, here is the Tate museum restoring a Mark Rothko painting that someone tagged. It's a little different to the paintings in this video as the subject matter is completely different, but they go to crazy lengths examining different types of ink, and go so far as to study old sketch/paintings to test different solvents in order to determine the best course of action. great stuff, looking at the canvas under microscopes, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGqAggmwyMU

[u/[deleted]]

Wow he's infuriating. Doesn't let her get a word in and talks louder whenever she makes a sound.

[u/Phyne]

Yea... this was basically two people jerking eachother off over fine art.

[u/meurtrir]

Was really just hoping for some beautifully done restoration set to calm music, not two plummy twats playing the whole "my art history degree is bigger than yours" game :/ I think I've been spoiled by the Baumgartner Restoration videos

[u/Reddit-Incarnate]

God that section where they were showing the vanish being removed was infuriating.

Man:"So you can see how he used the comp..."

Woman: "Yeah"

Man: "And the strai..."

Woman: "MMMM Yeah"

For fucks sake let him finish a sentence!