In the Studio with Rembrandt and Hals

please join me in welcoming roundup Macbeth good afternoon everyone I always knew that Boston loved Dutch painting and the turnout for this series certainly proves that once again what I'm hoping to do this in the next hour or so is take you behind the scenes into the calm into the studio first into the conservation studio and also into the artist studio something we try I've been trying to do here very consciously particularly in the last 10 years is open up what we do behind the scenes in conservation to more of our public and we will Center of course on the work of Rembrandt and house in honor of the wonderful exhibition that is ongoing and gund first I really want to mention the generous generosity of rosemary and I cannot allow sometimes I can rosemary sometimes it's rosemary and ike their title seems to go back and forth you which I actually think is perfect in relation to the couple themselves some of you who know them they're very much a pair engaged in a wonderful journey with 17th century Dutch art and I have assembled an extraordinary collection much of what you've seen here in our galleries and very recently they also were generous once again to in Pena's conservation and actually our studio is now named in their honor because of their continued generosity which seems perfect to us because one thing a thing about their collection is it's key to them to have to buy and collect paintings of quality and of great condition so we're very happy about that now I can't take you behind the conservation into conservation behind the scenes without bringing someone else along someone I suspect a lot of you know my partner in crime and also the the mind and the eye behind the fabulous exhibition that we're currently are hosting class distinctions nothing that we do in conservation happens without the consultation of our curators and we have a wonderful group of curators in the museum every decision that's made is made in collaboration I was just chatting with Ronnie and she was talking about how having a conversation and teaching a class with a conversation is more challenging than a lecture I'm in the opposite camp lecturing as I'm doing now is much more challenging to me than the normal conversations we have behind the scenes it really is a pleasure to work in this institution and they're there I always tell people there are two reasons to work at the MFA the great collection and the great colleagues and that is certainly true and I should also give you Ronnie's official title she is the William and Alfred senior curator of paintings in the art of Europe and I also want to put a plug in for the galleries we have this great exhibition it's bringing many many people in I hope it also inspires you to then go back to the newly renovated Dutch galleries and look again at what treasures you will find there I'm focusing on mostly on a couple of paintings that have been treated for the class distinctions exhibition but I also I'm going to touch on paintings that have been looked at and examined for the permanent collection I can't promise every painting that you see right now in fact this one we know is in class distinctions Ronnie's habit of moving things around but many things will be there and it really is a superb experience to go into the gallery these days and one other thing I want to mention about Ronnie and collaboration a lot of the information that I'm going to show you this afternoon is actually was actually collected during a survey of all arts and consensually Dutch and Flemish paintings about a year and a half we hired a conservator called Kate Smith who is a conservator now at Harvard to look at every single painting in the collection over 150 that's didn't doing the math that's two paintings a week and collect all the basic technical information but we that we find useful on every painting and this the funds for this were raised by Ronnie so I think that under underlies her commitment to the study of Dutch paintings at the MFA in Boston and as you this painting is on view I want to take you through to start with an examination of a painting as I'm sure you all know well our diminutive but in enforce massive artisanal studio by a young Rembrandt I'd like to look at it in a cup for in a couple of ways what Rembrandt chooses to show you in this painting and how he presents the act of painting and then also we're going to take a tour of what technical examination can tell us what does and doesn't lie below the surface but first of all it conservatives love pictures of artists at the studio it's there's so much material there to work with but this is this is actually a rather unusual rendition of the artist working in a studio for the period a picture like this is more what you would expect to see which again I also love for different reasons because there's so much going on but if you go back to the almost the sense of silence in this painting and the fact that although the attributes of the painter are certainly on display they're sort of tidied away and in the background and the looming large panel that we actually can't even see takes up a large part of the composition but to go and look at what might expect or how you might expect an artist to present themselves first there's a great deal going of activity going on in this picture painted just a couple of years after Rembrandt's artist in the studio one of the things I'd like you to notice is the artist is seated which is the common way that painters would work at this point showing yourself standing is actually a little unusual and in fact if we go back one second you can actually see that whoever usually works at this easel is usually seated because he's like oops sorry they've actually worn little footholds into the easel so normally there would be a chair here and so and there you see that their artist actually in his red slippers with his foot on the bottom of the easel I just want to point out a few of the things we see going on in the studio to start with very commonly there would be an apprentice create making the actual paints and putting together the palettes for the artist to work on at this point I'm actually this has been true for some time painters would um sorry painters would buy their pigments but they would still be making their own paints so what you actually see there is a young boy apprentice to the master painter grinding the pigments into the oil and then what he would do would be set up a Dave palette you see one discarded there two for the artist to then work with you see that the painter has his mole stick in his hand so if this moment we've just interrupted him he's been painting and we've interrupted him but he's welcoming us in he's doffing his hat and and basically in some ways this painting is an advertisement for his skill he's showing us the painting is working on I'd also like to find out this is a pic that they this painting is actually on panel but the painting in the painting is on canvas and you can actually see the stretching it's on a temporary strainer which is just rectangular wooden support with six corners and that the canvas would actually be stretched by lacing it and stretching it Val acing it onto the strainer while the painter works after the painting was finished it would actually be removed normally there are a few existent canvases that are still actually stretched like this but not very many normally it would then be researched on to another kind of strainer for final fitting into its frame and you see it here and the term strainer and stretcher sometimes confused people are used interchangeably but this is called a strainer because you strain the canvas over it to make a painting surface and it cannot be expanded in fact these have little wooden buttons to stop it from being extended in the mid 19th century there was an invention called the stretcher where you actually have the sorts of wooden supports that you probably are more familiar with where you you have little keys and you can expand out the canvas to tighten it canvas is tend to get slack over time and so it was a very useful invention and pretty much adapted by all by all artists but when it became online but at this point very much you would expect to see a strainer and then a variety of rushes I kind of love the way they're just sort of I think he's finished painting you they seem to be just dumped into presumably a bowl can't containing some sort of solvent or oil to keep them soft and he's laid aside his pallet with just a few colours laid out because what tended to happen is the day's painting paint was a very precious commodity and you would just lay out the palette for the painting you were about to do and also you would see they use many brushes there's only two here you're going to see other artists who would be holding on to considerably more many more brushes as they worked this is also a kind of comfortable studio because even has this little foot warmer sitting sitting there it's messy but very comfortable and very active and again if you compare it to how Rembrandt's chosen to present not it's not a self-portrait but it's a portrait of an artist at work this seems to be very much about the activity of painting this to me seems to be much more about the the mental thought process of painting the challenge of painting a few if you like and as I say you can see the grinding surface here where the paints would be produced but it's in very much in the background the palettes are cleaned and laid away and the oils and solvents are also laid in the background so we really focus on the looming large panel on the easel again you see one of the questions is about this painting which we don't know that that is being worked on is is how the painting started or is it is he still contemplating starting and we have a couple of thoughts about that but again you can see the the way the the different attributes are presented but certainly not front and center on just one more example of another artist Judith leister who was painting again just a few years after the Rembrandt artists in this studio and if you see it you can get a sense what I mean by the number of brushes I think someone kinds of their eighteen brushes in her hand as she's worked at working on her painting on the easel here this is the detail of a painting in Washington but again I wanted to point out just because it's such a different presentation the artist at work but she's very well dressed this does not seem a very practical painting in if you ask me if you've disturbed her at her work but one one wonders how realistic this is and then you again I really wanted to show you the pilot because one of the things about the about Rembrandt rendition is we don't even see what he's got on his palette we can't even make some clues about what he might be doing there he really has kept it as a complete mystery what we seem to be seeing it on doeth leister's palette is the paint's that you might lay out if you were going to do flash painting there's some occurs and some rads probably some lead white and possibly can't quite tell us that's black or brown but it that would be a normal pilot if you were going to paint flash on a day and it turns out that there's actually been an examination of this painting under under this Mary fiddler there's actually a self-portrait so there she was painting herself and then changed it to present herself to the public in a slightly different different mode but very interesting also I should point out we call these brushes at this time these were really called pencils the the word that we associate with lead and in a wooden shaft King came later and although these look like they're they're a silver for rules for those of you who paint they probably aren't there probably quills the smaller brushes would be quills the larger brushes would be a waxed thread that would hold the hairs on the on the brush there we're a few metal pearls at this point but very very rare so so unlikely but again I still I'm impressed by how many brushes one can hold in one hand and again we see one brush it's still leaving difficult to tell if there's any paint on it have you started painting yet the only indication we have is is this little at the edge of the panel you can see the preparation is that painter is that just the ground Blair I can't make it out but it's very tantalizing I know forget you also get a sense of the when you look at this is it granted Lee it's a small picture but kind of rough the roughness of a touch which we find I think wonderful but I think is also a very conscious choice in making this picture and then the face tiny detail of the face but I think one can project a lot of things onto this onto the face clearly no no details it's not a self-portrait and a normal sense of the word but psychologically I think is incredibly interesting rendered and very very little just a few strokes of paint you can get a sense of the demanding work of creation and perhaps it's sometimes a little overwhelming really marvelous when and when you think that this is just the faces what half an inch shy if that I didn't want to go too much further without mentioning Carolyn Lander incredibly influential painter he was actually the teacher of house but really influential because of his role as an art historian and a philosopher and and the publication of his skill to book his bit literally his his book on on picturing book about how to paint and what you should paint first published in 1604 what went on this went on to influence a whole generation of artists and there's a great deal you could say about a van Lander but I want to focus really on on one piece of advice or strategy that he gave to young painters he really came up with two types of painting a rough style and a precise style and he would advise young artists to pursue one or the other the precise style he should be viewed from close far away and close up the rough style or coarse style can only really be effectively viewed from far away and van Lander held that up to be the truly the most challenging an extraordinary type of painting that was that was the apex that was the grand style to aim for and one artist above all others really personified that for fun Lander and that was Titian here you see a detail of the death of Acton late Titian was the apex of the rough style of painting that I'm sure many of you remember the exhibition we had a few years ago Titian Tintoretto and Veronese II where you when you get to the late painting say the brushwork when you get your nose on it it's almost like it falls apart it's just marks and dogs and strokes and then you stand back and it's extraordinary it shimmers and creates the most remarkable effects if I'm under held Titian up to be the greatest artist and that he was the artist to emulate but he also caution caution John the artist this was the hardest thing to do and perhaps it was better to start working in a more precise style because it would be very easy to fail at doing this I think the artist and I'm cautious now because I have I don't know if all of you know but I have Madame Dao sitting in the front row Ronny bear is the world expert on Dao so I'm showing you detail of probably one of the most beloved paintings in the Music Museum though I think me right now it may be out of museum it belongs to the venerable collection and it's the dog dog resting and the reason I show it to you right now is that does you know was the you know the greatest of the Lydon fine painters and would be I you think someone who would be held up to be one of the leading proponents of that fine style of painting though I would also argue when you really get to look at doubt and if you ever get the opportunity to look through a microscope or with a magnifying glass one of the reasons that was so extraordinary is that his style is also incredibly loose on a much more minor level and it's actually one of the things that I've really enjoyed in the last few years because of Ronnie's expertise we have doubt come through the studio many times and he becomes very much a signature artist when you get him under the microscope because his brushwork is so extraordinary loose even though when you stand back it seems like you're looking at something incredibly precise he does both and he does a stir remarkable degree and this this this painting is really it's I think it's the one that every staff member wants to steal we want and I and sometimes it's called the dogs we think it's not if the dog is definitely just resting his eyes are open and he's quite aware of you to go back to the to the rough style for one more minute moment before we go back to Rembrandt this is a self-portrait as EXIF by art de Gelder a late Rembrandt pupil is another it's a detail again and he probably is one of the major proponents of that rough style of painting he was in Rembrandt studio in the 1660s in fact Rembrandt also painted this subject and the Gelder again just pointing out shows you he's seated not standing he's actually got a it's very hard to see in this slide but he or she has a palette knife they're talking about rendering a rough style of painting he has a maul stick most of the artists I think everything everyone who's carrying one of those Maul sticks with just a stick to lean on a painting stick so that you could keep your hand steady and then again roll a whole array of what they would call pencils or brushes large and small the very messy as paint said on the table it'll piece of chalk as he works but again it's very interesting you seated and you can see what he's working on he's really showing you what he can do unlike unlike the artists in the studio by Rembrandt again just to point out another type of painting strainer again the laced canvas and back here there's actually canvas that Ben Ben Ben be stretched on to a permanent strainer and there are tax along the edges on there but standard studio practice so I think you get a sense of of what Rembrandt's actually doing differently one of the things that's interesting in the de Gelder is he is wearing a cupboard the loose rather old-fashioned rolled that you see Rembrandt wearing that are just adapted as as something you would wear in the studio that didn't matter if it got a little bit messy unlike unlike the portrait with Judith leister who's very dressed up for a day out and then again you see the pilot laid out mostly with arif white earth colors and reds again it suggests this is the day to paint flesh these are the colors for Flash painting which makes perfect sense since he's creating this portrait of an older woman just to mention the we all know that Rembrandt scratch particularly later on scratched into his paint painted with palette knife this is something that the geld are also adapted and another plug to visit the galleries this is not in the exhibition this is up in the galleries this is our the MFA is rest on the flight into Egypt recently we also recently restored not precisely dated we think it's around 1680 maybe a little bit later so similar to the self-portrait and you see I hope you can see it's a little fuzzy but in the mantle of the Virgin you actually can see the scribe this is and I really do recommend going to the galleries and looking at this because it's quite an extraordinary effect but the scratching into the surface of the white paint creates the texture of the of her headdress in quite a fabulous a fabulous way so next time your and near the Dutch galleries take a look just to sort of go back to the painting one last time so just to recap we see a very stripped down painting studio a very large painting though that's probably partly perspective where we have no idea what's on the painting or what stage it's at we just can see that it looms over the rather diminutive artist with his painting attributes sort of hidden in shadows behind him so this to me seems very much to be Rembrandt consciously depicting the mental process of painting not the physical process but what can technical examination tell us now we've just looked at done some close looking which is what we most like to do actually I'm going to show you some techniques that we use behind the scenes in conservation that can sometimes elucidate the choices the artists make look below the surface a little bit and this is the sort of technical examination that we had Kate do for all our Dutchman Flemish paintings and I think you'll get a sense of how what a useful tool this will be going forward so we're here we're in the in this the examination area of the studio you see a sari you see a light box to show x-rays x-rays is a very common technique that we'll talk about in a minute but and also the omnipresent computer these days computers do everything for us and that's also true in the studio and just to remind everyone this is maybe a little overly simplistic but I wanted to just remind everyone what a painting is before we start to talk about the way that technical examination can unpack it and tell us a little more about the artists choices if you imagine a painting lying face up on a table then the bottom layer is the wooden panel or a piece of canvas it could be either and the structure is pretty much the same whether it's canvas or panel or sometimes it could be coffer though there are some variations that we'll talk about a little bit first I mean basically the panel of the canvas is not a good painting surface by itself it's very rough full of holes and it would waste a lot of paint if you tried to paint on it and everything would sink in so first the panel or the canvas would be filled with some glue some animal glue and then a ground layer applied onto that that that might be it's usually calcium containing might also have some lead white in it if it's panel it's usually glue if it's canvas is often oil and actually the glue layer is there also to protect but particularly the canvas from the oil if that in fact is the next layer that's going on and that would be applied with a brush in a liquid form and then scrape smooth to make a painting surface so quite a quite a production after that they would often be when when we're talking about 17th century painting a priming layer to distinguish it from the ground layer the ground layer really is to make the painting surface the priming layer not always there but often there really was to modulate the color it may be it may may be red it may be toned in some way but to basically prepare the next level of the surface for painting and usually that's an oil though not completely on top of that you would expect to see drawing or under painting in older pictures you tend to see an under drawing and we'll we'll explain a little bit more what under drawing is in a moment but a proprietary sketch basically which might be a linear drawing or or more likely with an artist like Rembrandt it would be conferred what we would call bed coloring or a laying in of the composition and that might be in it would be in a very thin liquid paint might be black might be brown whether it's black or brown doesn't really matter except that it actually makes it easier or harder for us to see it when we are examining it later then you have a number of layers of paint and then finally always a varnish layer varnish is a clear resin it would be applied only after the paint was completely dry and was there for two reasons partly athletic it actually changes the appearance of the painting it saturates and adjusts the surface and it also would protect the painting line below and very much part of the of the artist technique and intent so this is the back of the panel not so much to say it's got a very big label on a very small panel what I really want to point out is it's a no it's a piece of oak Baltic oak is by far the most common support that you'll find in the northern Netherlands at this point imported specifically for painting purposes very high quality panels in the Netherlands are often very thin if you ever get a chance to look at an Italian painting from similar early period it will look like a chunk of tree it's so thick it's because in Italy they were painting on a softer wood whereas in Holland their opinion on this hard Baltic oak which made a very good surface you can see that it's beveled at all edges this is so it will fit in the frame more easily later and there's actually these are additions that were added at some unknown point but modern and probably 20th century as are the pieces of the cork that's just the way it's been fitted into its frame but the beveling is always we're always happy to see that when we're examining a panel of this period because it means it hasn't been cut down we still you have all of the of the surface intact it's very it's not uncommon for paintings to be made smaller and sometimes even to be made larger a little bit of science this is about all the science we're going to do really so but I well I do want to explain a little bit since we're going to be looking with a variety of examination techniques about what I want to explain what they are and what and more importantly really what they can show us because I find often people are confused about what particular x-ray and infrared shows the electromagnetic spectrum is up here I have a teenager at home I keep trying to get her to get excited about this and she I'm making no headway at all but I'll see if I do better with you this tiny little really this light is only to show you this tiny little area here is what we see that visible light and you'll see some of the slides later they'll be late they'll actually be labeled visible light and that's all this means it's what we can see what I want you to pay attention to is the fact that there is all this other energy around us that allows us to see in all sorts of different ways visible to our eyes but with imaging techniques we can make them come clear and what we're going to use basically are two high energy techniques x-rays and ultraviolet rays and then infrared rays which is your low-energy wave wavelengths into heat and what that applied to paintings means with ultraviolet light you're really looking at the surface the varnish layers again this is another one of those cross sections this is Kansas this time in case you were wondering this is the varnish layer and ultraviolet light really gives you information about what's going on with the varnish and I'm a little bit about what's below the varnish about restoration and it's also commonly called the blacklight the next technique that goes a little deeper is infrared and that will actually take us through the varnish layers through and through some relief some of the paint layer so you usually can't penetrate everything and down to the underdrawing or under under painting and then finally radiography very like the radiography you get at the dentist or the doctor that will take us through the whole structure and can be can also be more difficult to interpret because you're seeing aspects of every part of the painting all pushed in together into one graphic image and we'll talk a little bit more about it when we're actually looking at some x-rays so those are the techniques that we're going to explore a little further here's the UV image of the artist news studio it's a pretty aged natural resin varnish maybe with a little synthetic varnish on it I can tell by the green blue fluorescence what it shows us is this very little restoration a little damage here there's a couple of little damages here but and the dark purple marks are basically the areas of restoration on top of the varnish and one of the things I always like to point out to people particularly collectors if you're ever in a situation where a dealer is showing your painting and showing you things under the blacklight and saying oh look it's in perfect condition there's nothing to be seen there's no restoration if if you see a natural resin varnish that's a little aged it can mask a huge amount of things so we see some information here but by no means everything and that's important to keep track of and in fact this is on an unimportant part of the painting but if your eye if you let your eye look down to this bottom right corner you can see the dark spot splotches but actually there's another mark below that kind of a much much less distinct darkening in that corner which is actually restoration that's below the surface so it can become very discreet infrared reflectography was a technique we had infrared photographs from the early part of the 20th century infrared reflectography was invented actually by Dutch physicist Coburn Aspirin de Boer in the 1960s and it really revolutionized the way we examine paintings this is a picture from the National Gallery London it just happened to be one I found on the line because I realize I don't have one to show you of how we do this basically we have a camera we have a light source and there's a pending such as Vermeer who seemed very appropriate for today we the light source has to be emitting some heat so often we use tungsten lights but very low light levels and and I should say I think I hope it's clear none of these techniques are damaging or destructive in any way but we we sign some light and really some heat energy some infrared energy at the at the painting and then it's reflected back hence the term reflectography through our filter and our lands into a camera and these things that camera is usually a CCD sensor of some description and then on the computer we were able to create an image of what lies below the surface because what happens when the infrared light hits the surface of the painting is in some places that's absorbed by usually carbon containing black pigment whereas if it hits anything light it's reflected back and that's the way we actually create an image I'm showing this because it's a little off track but I if you've never seen an under drawing or an infrared image it's a little heart that the Rembrandt artists in this videos you will see in a minutes a little hard to interpret so I just wanted to show you a detail of our wonderful Roger van der violent look drawing the virgin this is seems appropriate as well and you could argue it's another artist in his studio one of the first artists the patron saint of our artists this is the area of the Virgin and this painting is one of four versions and that the early earlier in the century there was a lot of discussion back and forth about what this which was the first version who had the first version and technical examination really was a big part of basically settling the argument and I think you can see very clearly in the Christ child lots of different lines that have nothing to do with what you're actually seeing on the surface these are the under drawn lines in fact it looks like his his legs are wiggling there's so many of them there was clearly a lot of editing before they got exactly one dividing got what he wanted you can see that his this is actually it's a little neck and he was and that's his little chin and he was actually looking that way over at st. look originally and the positioning of the hands of the Virgin was also changed and you can see up here actually that her hair and her relationship with the Christ child was changed and also the but even the positions of her eyes so this is the sort of information that started to be come more accessible through this technique the artisans do is a little more difficult I'm going to try and unpack it a little bit it's still very interesting but it's not simple under drawing at this point what you're really seeing is the under painting or the dead coloring and at least some of it sorry at least some of it was done in a carbon containing material and I should say that that's really what's important with this technique we need to see carbon black to really be able to image it well sorry so we we have I think you can see around the figure of the artist visit that you can so see adjustments and changes there but no major shifts you can see there's a little damage here this is also interesting there's a damage in the little damage in the painting here that looks white we'll come back to that later infrared can also show you restoration sometimes but mostly what you're seeing is just the brushwork delaying in of the painting but under under lying layer we're really you're setting up the tonal balance of the composition and that's what the infrared image really helps you see there's also some things that don't make any sense at all to as yet there's some of these lines we don't we really don't know what they they refer to it could also be something that lies below this composition perhaps that this painting panel was used before but as you see no major changes from one to the other unlike with the unlike with the Vanderheiden so we will go to radiography the third technique putting we're putting this Pete this jigsaw puzzle together piece by piece and we never end up with all the pieces but again just will give you a sense of how the technique works because I think it then helps you understand what you're looking at we have an x-ray source painting and then receptor it used to be filmed now it's a type of plate a phosphor a plate that we can actually put through a machine and goes to direct digital computers our King some of you may actually recognize quick if you went to some of the van Gogh talks this is actually the ravine and this is the surface and this is the painting below the surface so that's just a little aside but the rate the way it works is it penetrates through the painting and you get a dark or light exposure on the receptor on the film depending on how many rays penetrate through so if you have something very exhale pick very dense and halfway through isolate white is very x-ray opaque and very dense and it's a white pigment then that will block more x-rays and so the film will be exposed less and therefore it will look lighter if you have an area of black paint not dance at all carbon that I could not stop many of the arrays at all so many more penetrate through expose the plate and so that you get a dark area and so that's why the an x-ray can actually look like a painting and help us read what's going on below the surface and again you're seeing the paint surface but also the panel you're seeing everything with the artist in the studio it's it's a little it's a little difficult to interpret as well but some of the simple things that we see it's very x-ray opaque it's very what a very white x-ray and I think that's partly to do with this was a reused piece of wood this is a we you use panel and maybe it has a thick ground layer that's painting out what was underneath we can't see it but that's just our conjecture just point out some of the obvious things there's nails around the edges 20th century nails just those little strips of wood and you can see that the x-ray becomes dark because there is no lead-containing material in those little strips of woods so there is penetrating them and but not the main panel not the original piece of wood because it has ground layer parts of double grind and perhaps also a painted a bit layer on it we've never done cross sections of the standing as far as I know so we don't know if that would give us more information we'll talk about that later with another project you can see with a damage it looks exactly to damages one who looks very white because it's filled with an x-ray opaque probably led white containing material and then there's this little damage it looks really dark it looked lighten and infrared but it looks dark and x-ray because basically there's less material there so the rays are penetrating through further but most importantly you can see you you can make out the the large easel and the panel it's very difficult to make out what's going on with the figure I just stopped the where the pilots are hanging and that's the arm of the artist so it's really hard to see him at all what you're remotely seeing are these incredible free brushy strokes of paint that presumably are partly to do with painting out something below they sink up not so much to do with what we're seeing on the surface so in in sort of final words there are also these these are the scores and marks that we're seeing and infra red again don't seem very much to do with the surface of the painting some of them may be on the back covered up but mostly that we think they may be actually below the surface a little more opaque paint some places less others but but don't really tell us very much about the artists in the studio so in a way their technical examination although I think we can say it seems pretty likely that Rembrandt worked out his composition to a great degree before he painted this little picture there certainly we certainly know that Rembrandt was an inveterate experimenter and drawer I don't know of a I know of drawings that show easels and artists but not one that specifically relates to this but it seems like he had a very clear idea was doing there is nothing that we can see that suggests a lot of changes under the surface very directly painted and and still very mysterious our techniques don't don't unpack everything and I think this picture is intended to be that way we still don't know what's on on that easel and we don't really know exactly what stage of painting he's at but an extraordinary an extraordinary rendition of an artist at work for the next phase of the talk I want to take you behind the scenes back to the conservation studio to look at a couple of treatments that were done one both both paintings we are going to look at are currently in class distinctions the first Oh actually before I move on I also this is this is a not a great slide but this painting here is actually an early painting by Han tourists it's not in the galleries yet but another plug to keep visiting the galleries you should see it they're quite quite soon it's a recent purchase by the Vinod ELO's and it's of absolutely fabulous piece of art I want to talk to you about the fabulous Ellison couple belonging to the MFA bought in the 1950s these are full life paintings as you I'm sure I'll know Rembrandt didn't do very easy a few but not so many of these and this is when he's moved from Leiden where he painted the artists new studio to Amsterdam Johannes Ellison and his wife were actually were actually members of the Dutch Reformed Church and lived in England but we know that they visited there very wealthy successful merchant son in Amsterdam in 1633 34 so that fits perfectly with the paintings which are also signed and dated at the at the bottom corners and they they're fascinating to me because they're they're somber but they're also full of bravura and they're make because they're full lamps they make quite a statement clearly painted to make impact on on someone's wall as well as presumably a son's wish to have images of his parents Ronnie and I have been looking at these for quite some time they always hang but we knew that the varnish was was aged and dull and and the paintings had a slightly slightly solid appearance and we wondered if conservation treatment would make a difference but not easy to take out of the gallery so this conversation went on for some time and I think that's something that all of you should be aware these conversations are going on all the time at the Museum and one of the questions I get asked frequently is how do you decide what you're going to work on and I would say with both the art of America and the art of Europe we are constantly thinking about what would have the greatest impact and which paintings would deserve attention and that sometimes things from storage but it's sometimes things that are in the galleries that are never off you and haven't been off you for a very long time I want to take you through the technical study quickly and looking at the time so I'm going to keep going we're going to go a little bit faster but I think now you know what we're looking at that that should be some that should help us along a little bit this is decisive technical study the GAM misses Kate Smith's work we we looked at everything with UV infrared and x-ray and under the microscope and we have those records were are phenomenal and it's you have just such a running start when you're starting to think about treating any of the works in the collection or gathering quest like what the artists miss to do we still there's still more things that we might want to do to try and figure a little more about that painting but this was as I said a quick study and these are the sorts of documents that we produced and all these documents have also been given to the Rembrandt research study and the database that's online and it's in the handout as well it's an amazing resource if people want to look and find more out about about Rembrandt and then these are the sorts of this is sort of information you see looking through a microscope again go back to that rough style of painting but really really fabulous this down at the bottom these are just the strokes of paint of Johannes Alison's beard just on the surface and I think you can see here as well and these are the strokes that I love this detail of paint of from his shoulder of his the drapery pulled up to his to the edge of his beard but left very very rough and unfinished and it actually creates a wonderful soft effect but when you get really close it's just these are literally just the strokes of the brush less visible or the buildup of the paint and his face and around his eye it really in many ways it couldn't be anyone else UV very opaque again more opaque than the artist miss video didn't give us a lot of information other than that didn't seem to be a lot of restoration on the surface and maybe that had been cleaned a bit unevenly addition to be more varnish left on the figure little damage here little damage there but just really sick old varnish x-ray and infrared showed up something that we were rather intrigued by and really I think there could be more study of this even though there seems to be no end to studies of Rembrandt infrared and then x-ray the x-ray showed is something we knew but it shows it very clearly there's a seam running right through the center of the painting it runs through both pictures so these are actually relatively thin pieces of canvas that were sewn together to create the large canvases that Rembrandt painted on interesting choice because you could certainly get whiter pieces of canvas so I don't know if there wasn't available if it was cost-saving or maybe these had to be done quickly and that this was the canvas it was available but less is less of a problem for Johannes because it's very carefully he's very carefully positioned actually to the left of the scene Maria his wife unfortunately runs through her face and that caused some problems and condition a little bit later but the what you really notice if you think of the theme are these incredibly swirling lines and what are they and in fact they're quite visible in the infrared as well and if one goes back you can actually see them on the surface of the painting these are the that's the application of the ground and you see it on a number of paintings by Rembrandt but not consistently so I don't know what was happening in the studio or who was priming his canvases at this point but again this is just a detail of this sorry this area and you can they're quite quite visible now if you go to the exhibition you'll you'll see them maybe they've become more apparent over time and that's quite possible these paintings are very thinly painted and our paint becomes more transparent it's possible that they just have become more visible but I'm still surprised that we see them as much as we do and wonder if they were always somewhat visible and if that's so why this is probably the cause so it's fuzzy image of a palette knife the application of the ground would be done with a large palette knife just in big sweeping motions across the surface and then then smooth down though maybe not smooth down as much as as in some other paintings and here is the portrait of Thomas else's wife Maria beau canal and again you can see there's the seam that the sweeping ground layers applied and also very visible behind her here I know you also can see that the seams of runs right through her proper right eye which is a little unfortunate and again with infrared he perhaps even because there's not Maria has less attributes in the background is less paint covering the ground layer and again you see them really really clearly and I'm actually surprised the shops for this much and infrared it may be about the application of the paint on top or it may be about the constituents of the actual ground glare because infrared is usually based on carbon so we're seeing a little more carbon in some areas and others and it makes me wonder if it's the the ground there wasn't completely white to sort of cleaning I think we decided that that the time would come these paintings were requested for an exhibition of Rembrandt in America a few years ago and we decided to take the steps take them off you a year before they went out on exhibition and actually removes the varnish which is what cleaning means I should say that we can clean paintings of this period because the natural resins on the surface are soluble on in different combinations of solvent than the oil paint that lies below if we didn't have that safety difference we wouldn't be able to clean pictures and I should also say this is these are not the first time these paintings have been being cleaned [Music] paintings of this age have been cleaned multiple times one always hopes gently but I think you see pretty clearly as your highness is coming out from behind the UV and the UV image the varnish was masking a great deal of detail and if we go into into some details you see it I think a little bit more clearly extraordinary painting and and that the painting is in beautiful beautiful edition was a little bit of where but not very much and one of the things that was interesting in their terrifying and the cleaning was there was a lot of black over paint on the painting but not a lot of damage below the black over paint and I'm and this was true also on the portrait of Maria and the only reason and you can see again the seam running through her eye causing a little bit of damage there but not so bad a few little losses in her hand why so much over paint came off so I'm not totally sure but I I have one suspicion which is that these bees are like in some ways like huge sketches they seem to have been executed incredibly quickly very few changes in either portrait and very thinly painted which is why we're seeing that pattern and the ground that's so clear this this shows you I totally cleaned but not in paint is a tall version of this painting here's a little damage here a little damage here there's a little bit of abrasion from the stretcher bar but really in wonderful wonderful condition overall so why so much so why so much restoration getting below the surface and in the black drapery and I think it was that that there was a feeling that it should be more solid that these should look more solid an idea for Tran Brandt is thicker paint more solidly painted and in fact I find these delightful in their brushing us in their lightness and extraordinary extraordinary rendering of the hands really beautiful I love this detail where the fingers are just in shadow below the lining of the robe they're just just superb touches and again you can see a little bit of abrasion but but not much at all just to change a change in tonality often when things in paintings look brown with yellowed varnish they're actually more silvery and pink when you actually clean them which is a subtle but wonderful wonderful change and then the faces again these these theses I'm showing you on the right there's no restoration on them this is them before there's been any in painting of any and you can see those wonderful brushstrokes of red in his in Johannes Ellison's beard and this is after treatment I'm in the gallery we chose to do as little restoration as was needed in both portraits hence you can see probably more clearly than before I work on the paintings that you can see that round patterning I'm sure it's more than it was intended when in Rembrandt's time but it is part of the history of the painting and I find it interesting and not particularly distracting we also you can see there are some very small changes in the composition but really very few altogether little tiny adjustments to the positions of the figures so it's to me very interesting particularly as we're going to go and spend the next 10 15 minutes talking about house the artists that everyone talks about its being so spontaneous I find these paintings incredibly spontaneous and and and very much a combination of of Ann Landers rough manner but not so rough at the same time very sophisticated and very refined I'm leaving it with a question the both paintings are signed an undated I'm not telling you which which yet because I'm going to make you look at them one of the signatures the paintings are not questioned but one of the signatures is you know Rembrandt was running a big studio I don't have any doubt that these are both his brushwork but the Rembrandt research group are not so sure about one of the figures is I wonder if you can tell which one it is and one bother you more or less I should add that this is the signature on the male portrait this is the signature on the on the female portrait this is the signature that they think is absolutely right and this is the signature that they questioned I think because it looks a little bit more mechanical it someone's trying a little harder but I'm also intrigued because you could argue that Rembrandt spent more time on this one than on this one I feel like Maria got a little short shrift shouldn't even get floorboards but but she maybe got the better signature and maybe that was conscious just conjecture I only put this light in for pure joy because I think the the Ellison's have never been in better company and if there was ever a reason to go sit in the gallery for many hours it's this picture which is totally extraordinary the boatbuilder from the Royal Collection that I don't know how Rani how many fingernails Rani had to pull out to get it but it is amazing piece of painting and I encourage you to go look at them together painted just a year apart so back to class distinctions I'm going back in time to January maybe of this year I got a call from my senior curator of European paintings Rani bare a little upset because she just heard from the art gallery Gallery of Ontario that they weren't going to be able going to be able to treat this wonderful portrait France House of his good friend Isaac Massa but yes the conversations had happened many many years ago the art gallery had intended to treat it but but things happen and it was just not going to be possible for them to do it so Ronnie called me and said is there anything we can do you know it's not unusual and in the process of putting together an exhibition to to offer to help treat paintings it's rare for us to do the treatment sometimes the exhibition budget will include some money towards treating people treating their own works but every now and again and this happened once before for another show that I did work with Ronnie and once before with Fredrik paintings that really really deserve to look better and the institutions themselves weren't in the situation to do the work I have to make a little late in the game because this is a very big treatment but it's such a fabulous piece of painting it was pretty much impossible to say no to my friend and what an opportunity to study and a great painting by house on air early painting just quickly this is a self-portrait house is rather mysterious we don't know a great deal about his early career he sort of seems to come on on on on come out as a fully fledged artist but he does appear in in the background of this large Civic guard painting painted somewhat later than the massive portrait and one of the reasons I think Ronnie was upset is that you know France house really does have a signature style and I think we all look for it and there are two paintings painted around the same time as master a little earlier fabulous works of art of course of course one one from the Louvre and then of I think we all know the painting on the right the Laughing Cavalier from London the brushwork is stunning and and then also a house of painted masters before this is a marriage portrait and now I think pretty much given to commemorate Isaac masters marriage incredibly informal portrait at the Rijksmuseum another fabulous piece of painting so Isaac just wasn't looking looking his best and we really I think we just felt that we would make the time if possible to treat this picture for Ronnie show Isaac mosses is interesting in himself just to give you a little tiny bit of background he he traveled to Russia he was a very successful merchant made his fortune in Muscovy which is the area around Moscow fact he's not he is responsible or giving credit least five maps from the period of that area and I think a couple of cityscapes Moscow maps of the city as well I think there's even an institute in his honor and grown again which continues to foster the relationship of the Netherlands to to Russia so an interesting character in his own right and a good friend of house house painted him probably three times at least I should point out that the background which clearly points to masses travels in Russia if is not by house and is thought to be now by an IVA landscape artist called Peter de melon it's stylistically just very very different and I think as we go through the treatment flights you'll get a better sense of that it also has a great deal of damage on it but before I start to really unpack this painting and talk about the treatment in in the next five or ten minutes I also should mention this painting with some was given to the agios the art galleries Ontario in the 50s and then just a few years later it was stolen and I don't know a great deal about the theft and all my information is actually from Wikipedia but what what it tells me there was stolen in the sometimes some times it says the 1959 1960 and was returned a few weeks later without any damage I'm so glad it was returned and but I I can't say was without any damage because the painting was cut out of its frame and that's one of the things you're going to see in the slide so I just want to explain what we're looking at and that's part of why the condition was problematic first step in an examination is always to go to UV I mean quite honestly the if you compare it to the other UV images seen this one's a mess but it really does show you what when UV can be useful and I have to say I'm not sure I quite registered this when I told my friend Ronny bear that I would do this treatment as a very minute it wasn't till after the painting was here I realized quite what some of the issues were going to be but still still no regrets Isaac Massa was very wonderful to spend time with but you can see here this is restoration and it's actually documenting where the painting was cut out of its frame so and they really made pig 0 that up here happy it's all this is just the ragged edges of the canvas after it was cut but uh but the good news is other than that the paintings seem to be you know there's some restoration here and here something odd going on here and in the Hat but the face and a great deal of the figure seemed to be in fine state so we would move move on and we took a look with infrared and that became really interesting and again as we're looking at the you think of what's often said about about house being you know spontaneous and direct and a quick painter I actually find him a very methodical painter who really figures out what he's doing and unworked on the painting and makes a lot of changes as he works there are fewer perhaps no drawings known by house and maybe that's partly because so much of the work was happening on the canvas itself if you can see here the hat was changed you can see here that the position of the figure was changed at both sides and adjusted slightly and you can also get a sense of you can't see anything of the landscape and that's partly to do with it being just a completely different hand and then just a couple of details you can see the adjustments to the position of the fingers in the hand holding the Holly and here I hope you can make out they actually adjustment to the pupil of the eye the face the position of the eye and the face was changed a little bit as well and here just a little rendition that shows you that more clearly so quite quite big adjustments to this very in form portrait and I don't think I said this is the first time house painted someone in this informal leaning on the back of the chair composition so maybe it makes sense that you're seeing these adjustments that position of the chair was also adjusted slightly unto the x-ray this is the x-ray of a piece of canvas again you can see the damage the black is where the basically the canvas was gone and you're going all the way through there is a damage in the face and there's a down an old damage nothing to do with the fast this was much older in the landscape and then odd things like these are the these are the tacks and they're very very big nails as well I'm not sure why this was there around the edges of the stretcher and then these dots these little dots at the bottom are little holes in the canvas along the bottom edge that make no sense to me at all we don't figure out what they are or why they're there it's nothing to do with the stretching there's no if the canvas seems to have been trimmed in all edges we're not seeing cusping which should be with kind of a pattern in the canvas that you see to do with the way it's originally stretched if you remember in some of those studio pictures so the the paintings in cropped a little bit but why it has these little hole marks at the bottom edge no idea yet but one of the other things is that they actually also showed something that we were somewhat aware of it seems to be a major change in the cuff something's going on you see the simple cough here then you look here in this painting here and this it just doesn't quite relate so something something something else happened and there's a close-up we're hope you can see a little more carefully this seems to be an extension to the cuffs this is this part of the cuff but here you see that maybe some lace something that was painted and then painted out and and one of my questions was who painted it out and what was painted to start with and this is what we wonder if this is what we're seeing a cuff that looks more like more like this from a portrait of the DTO from a portrait of the period or actually a later portrait also thought to be of massa where he's got much fancier fancier cuff something something's there and then was removed but before we said sort of that all of that we also decided to better get going with the cleaning if I'm going to make it in time so we started to remove the varnish and used to see the painting in in the process starting to reveal at the top but those horrible damages but also even now starting to see just how wonderfully preserved the faces this arm with the incredible patterning on the sleeve all in beautiful beautiful State started to reveal also a couple of odd problems the tear in the face we knew about this is just in under UV and under visible light and this is a raking light when we scatter the surf the light across the surface of the painting just to see the topography and you can see that this is an old restoration that's coming off that's the restoration that hasn't been removed yet it's been removed from this area and clearly at some point someone decided to start to remove the background and reveal the bigger hat and then happily they stopped which is a very good thing there you can see it there and then this is this area of the sleeve again and I think you can start to see the lace below the surface of the of the black sleeve and actually continues up here in the white as well it gets a little confusing so at that point we decided to take a sample because we really we thought it was probably an editorial change by house but we weren't sure the paint was very old but we wanted to understand what we were looking at better and I just wanted this to the cross-section it's the only technique that was is different but it requires taking a sample but I hope you can see the samples that tiny little speck embedded in that piece of resin it really is like a piece of dust and it's something we don't do unless we have a very clear reason for doing it and again it's something we always discuss with our curator before we take take one we took two from masa to try and answer two very specific questions and the reason it's in this block of resin is that we then grind with a with a very fine sandpaper down to the sample so we get an image of the structure from top to bottom like a core sample imagine see thank you Luiz ursini is our assistant conservator who does our cross-sections it's a really a skill and having one person take responsibility for doing it is a wonderful thing and then we're very lucky here to have a research department right here right next door to us who can do the sort of analysis that we need to have done on a regular basis they they make us better our job every day and here's the cross section this is where the canvases so basically if you imagine we're going through the canvas varnishes up here down through the layers of paint down to the ground layers and then the canvas which you actually isn't really there that might be a little piece of it there so this is the sort of information we see visible light and under UV & UV actually just helps us sometimes see the layer structure more clearly and it pretty much clarified one of our questions that's the location was all of this paint here and it was very broken up down in this area had a different seem very very old but was slightly different than the paint on the rest of the painting and we wanted to make sure it was right it seemed to be the paint that was applied to make the adjustment to the Hat and it's and it's not there there which looks totally like correct to us you can see it there with menzards very thin layer on top but this layer of paint is the paint that makes that half himself added to make that adjustment and so whoever did that should never have taken it off but I understand why they thought maybe something had been done it's not always clear that something had been done by a different at a later point so that was incredibly helpful and then the other question was the sample from the cuffs and what was going on there because that was much less clear to me it was it's like could this have been could discuss have been changed by a different painter or a restorer restoration an old restoration but a restoration on their ass and this again is the core sample and what you see there's the ground layer there's the initial painting end of the sleeve there's the white which seems to be possibly two layers of the lace that we're seeing under there and then there is the upper layer of black paint which again seems totally in keeping with what we're seeing on the rest of the painting it looks like houses paint so I think we felt that it was very likely that he himself made this adjustment and that we would therefore restore the painting with the sleeve and as he intended it to be after cleaning so if I was a little little bit shocking to see pictures that have have cleaned and you see all the damage but I would again ask you to focus on what's house and what is really great and what you can now see not they the damage is around the edges and just incredible brushwork with faces and beautiful beautiful states and I and the Holly is just wonderfully rendered this is the area again where the Raggedy paint was partially removed so it was one of the areas where I did tone it a little bit to make it look less abrupt the damage in the landscape in the background and now this is the painting you see in the in the galleries fully restored and I hope back to and I hope back to that signature style now you can see house but you also know he was a thoughtful artist an artist who worked in stages and who really thought through what he was doing I just wanted to add two last things which is Judith leister also painted in Harlem and clearly this this painting we looked at earlier was influenced by by house's portrait of massa the leaning back on the chair this part partly parted lips and then I'm leaving you just a couple of details that the brushwork in this painting is spectacular and I just strongly recommend that you go to the Gantt when you go to the galleries you take a really close look these are the areas that matter and these are the areas that are totally housed really really he himself said that you know the final touches without the touches of the master and I think you see them there but I think that's true of both these artists I think you can very clearly could this be anyone else for Rembrandt and could this be anyone else but house thank you very much [Applause] so we have time for a few questions please raise your hand we'll bring the microphone to you and we do ask for those of you who are leaving now please do so quietly so we can get on with the fantastic questions that we have I have a question over here I've actually two questions one has to do with the Barna she said that the painter knew that he would be putting on varnish and took that I understood took that into account as he was painting so one question is what do they have to take into account but what do they imagine the varnish will do and the other you mentioned the positioning of the arm on the painting is you restored it could you say something about how much leeway you have and what your guidelines are when you position use the phrase position the arm on the portrait of the husband and wife oh it was just it was a small change in the position of the arms the to go back to your first question the all I meant by varnish layer is that the artist would be wood as in the process of painting would always have intended the final appearance of the painting to have that clear saturating surface on it and it's not that it would necessarily have done anything different in the painting but that Defiant the painting would not be considered finished until that layer was applied and quite honestly the easiest way I can describe what varnish does is if you if you are walking along the beach and you take a pebble and you put it in the water and you know that the color shift particularly that if it's dark is great that's what that's what the varnish does it saturates and actually accentuates the sense of depth and three-dimensionality these are pictures into other spaces and it really helps that illusion become more real I'm not sure about your question but the arm at all I think I was trying to say was that in both cases Rembrandt made very very few changes to two large portraits only things he did were slight adjustments to the positions of the arms as he was painting nothing more than that oh you know what I did is actually more what I didn't do is I left those changes visible in past times restores have often been either they themselves decided or they were directed by any kind of pentimenti changes should become invisible but I think and again all these decisions about restoration are done in conjunction with the curator and that's actually one of the pleasures of doing this work and we do is quite honestly now we do as little as possible and I think Ronnie and I both think that those pentimenti are really interesting and that they should be visible we don't want them to be disturbing we don't want them to overwhelm the final result but if they're there and you can see them that just adds to the story so that's all that's what I mean I actually didn't do anything to them so you'll see them in the galleries when you're done do you then put another layer of varnish on to protect the paint yes I'm not sure sorry I should I think I should have added that I was going a little fast because I knew I was running a little late we tried to be guided by the original intent of the artist you know at different periods that might result in I was doing different things but again because these paintings were always intended to be varnished we remove the old natural discoloured resin varnishes every so often we try to extend their life as long as possible and varnishes last a lot longer now partly because of the environment that we keep things and we don't get a sturdier as artworks don't get as hot they don't age as fast but the but we would always then if a painting if we understood a painting to be intended to be varnished we would always put varnish varnish back on because that would be the only way the painting would look the way the artist intended it to look and that again is our main guiding principle if you had a Oh actually Ronnie just talking to the she also wanted me to point out that we actually varnish a couple of times because we put what we call an isolating varnish layer as you saw me do we can remove varnishes so after the painting is cleaned and has a little bit of filling we actually put what we call an a very thin isolating varnish and then any restoration I do very little in the case of the Rembrandt's a little more in case of a house is then on top of that varnish layer and then we put a final adjusting varnish layer on top just to get the final surface but the idea of that is it's isolated from there painting and when the next conservator comes along they should be able to remove all of my restoration without any hitting any problems a lot of the time we are removing a restoration that's been put right on the face of paintings are often oil paint on oil paint and that can cause us a lot of problems so we're really trying to make it more straightforward for the next it when you put the varnish on the painting but I don't mean to keep on going into it but there are different types of materials that you can use in them and sometimes it affects the painting and there are kinds that do not and you can use them for a longer period of time is there anything particularly different I mean there obviously this is a very special kind but what what do you use in it well what we use in this institution that we have a number of different choices both stabilized synthetic varnishes and also traditional old master varnishes particular damara is probably one of the most common and we still use those varnishes commonly because they we feel give the appearance to the painting that has was originally intended and we we can put additives in and use certain solvents but a lot but stabilize those varnishes more they will age better and longer and more slowly but and therefore discolor more slowly though the natural resins will eventually always discolor a little bit we're a little wary we have we do use new synthetic varnishes as well but quite honestly paintings and actually both the paintings I show you today were treated mid 20th century with synthetic varnishes and some of those have not aged so well at all and RH can be more difficult to remove so we ended with with all master paintings to stick to traditional varnishes that we know we can remove we stabilize them and then we keep the paintings in good environment and finally we use them as thinly as we possibly can often paintings become very opaque in yellow because they've been varnished multiple times and that's done because in the short term it refreshes the surface but in the long term they just get thicker and darker and they ultimately have to be removed somewhere in the back here what what are the ingredients of natural varnish now is it basically damar as a tree resin it's a resin dissolved in a solvent that creates a a clear blocker like surface and I think that's all the time that we have for today thank you all very much for coming and thank you bro nough [Applause]

Channel: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Views: 50,881

Keywords: conservation, dutch art, rembrandt, hals, european art, dutch golden age, lecture, art history, fine art, art

Id: Aw6geoYmjSc

Length: 86min 38sec (5198 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 03 2017