Conserving a Japanese hanging scroll painting | A courtesan by Kitagawa Utamaro

isn't she beautiful this is a hanging scroll painting by the artist Kitagawa Oh tomorrow and it shows a beautiful courtesan of Yoshiwara pleasure quarter standing in her apartment intently trying to read a letter it's probably a letter from one of her suitors maybe a love letter the painting was done right at the end of a tomorrows career he died in 1806 and we think this painting was done probably in the last year of his life so 18 5 1806 this is a painting which means or tomorrow did it himself it's an autographed work on paper and he signed it here with his name tomorrow he'd sue the brush of will tomorrow and then impressed a red seal underneath the signature when I tell you that there are only about 50 painted works by tomorrow that has survived in the world you'll realize just how precious this work is when the painting was acquired by the British Museum in 2014 it had been cut down from the original hanging scroll format in which it would have been enjoyed originally the museum conservation team met with Yasuhiro ochre director of the association for the conservation of national treasures to discuss the best course of action for conserving the artwork the painting was in quite poor condition showing creases and delamination of the painted layers what it did still have was this beautiful embroidered fabric around the outside of the painting it was probably added to the scroll at the end of the 19th century but it's using fabric from an older kimono so we have a beautiful woman wearing a beautiful robe which in turn is surrounded by another beautiful woman's robe paper conservator case case Sugiyama assistant consolidated the paintings surface to ensure that fragile areas were supported throughout the various conservation processes once this initial assessment and consolidation had taken place textile conservators began the initial cleaning of the silk borders using soft brushes and low powered vacuum cleaners the painting was next disassembled entirely from the silk borders the front of the painting was treated with capillary washing to remove acidity and dirt from the artwork the painting was faced with temporary layers of thin rayon paper to support the paint while the backing of the painting was removed each layer of backing was dampened to assist in their removal [Music] as the backing layers were removed previous restoration efforts as well as old insect damage could be seen and assessed conservator makoto kajitani laminated thin chinese chuan and japanese causal papers to create a strong support the temporary facing layer supporting the front of the painting could then be removed Anna and I've been working on the embroidered silk textile borders and what normally happens when Scrolls re mounted in Japan the tradition is that you would keep the painting but the textile borders are renewed so they would put new textile around it but we decided that in this case the borders were quite unusual they've quite decoratively embroidered with gold thread on it and they are in a 19th century textiles and would be worth saving the actual fabric itself is made up of lots of little pieces and they've been joined together with a paper lining underneath which makes it slightly different for anna and i and we use a very fine silk thread it's a silk come on a filament thread it's a 44 down here it says reasonably strong but our aim is to have something that's strong enough to hold the thread something a thread that will be strong enough to withstand the entire subsequent mounting but we're also looking for a thread that's not too strong so that it cuts through the degraded original material we don't want to be keep flipping the old textile backwards and forwards that you might do if you were sewing something at home so that we want to keep it all very static and still so we've got a hole cut out under the area or sewing in which allows us to just stitch passing the needle from the top to the underneath for us it's it's really great that that we've got that crossover between western constellations where we kind of preserve everything and the tradition of renewing and remounting paintings where they would put new textile and I'm really pleased that we've working to preserve the original textile the newly conserved and lined silk borders were reattached to the painting a digital mock-up was created to assist in selecting the new silk to complete the scroll mount the silk chosen was woven by say taro Maud Aurora who himself is a Japanese living national treasure this silk was lightly dyed so it matched the patina of the original kimonos silk border [Music] a paper lining was then added this lining was secured by pounding the entire surface with a thick gucci bucky brush to ensure good bonding between all the layers a final paper lining was then added and roller rods and hanging braids fitted the bottom roller rod had an inscription detailing how the painting had been conserved and recording the names of all of those who worked on it now this beautifully conserved or tomorrow painting hangs in the newly reopened Mitsubishi Corporation Japanese galleries at the British Museum among many other masterpieces of Japanese art [Music]

Channel: The British Museum

Views: 180,841

Rating: 4.9636078 out of 5

Keywords: British Museum, Art, Japan, art, shunga

Id: EwiHDuhRQR4

Length: 7min 13sec (433 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 24 2018