Author Archives:

The Conservation of Poedua – Part 12

28 November 2011 – 1.56pm

Hello. Matthew O’Reilly, Framer of Paintings, returning to the subject of Poedua, and particularly, her lovely frame.

This is my second post about the conservation of the frame. The first one was in June, and it dealt with understanding the frame and its history well enough, and identifying the questions to be answered, before and so that, appropriate decisions could be made about the course of treatment of the dirty and damaged, but beautiful and historic frame. I have been kept from beginning the treatment until about a month ago, and have been working on it intermittently since.

In my first post I noted a previous restoration on the outer sides of the frame, a regilding over a new layer of gesso and red bole. (Gesso: white chalk and rabbit skin glue; and bole: clay and rabbit skin glue — materials traditionally part of gilding systems on wooden furniture, frames, etc.)  I had noted from the beginning, the use of  “bronze” (which is actually brass!) paint here and there to cover damages to the gilding and gesso underneath, and noted further similar damages to the surface made since the use of the paint. I had noticed holes in the surface and in the wood on the back showing European woodworm attack (rather like borer-holes only a little larger in size). 

Since turning my attention back to the frame I have discovered that the front of the frame has largely all been regilded whether at the same time as the outer side regilding or on a separate occasion. One difference is that there is no additional gesso and bole layer on the carved details on the front, but signs of some partial regessoing on the flats. The best thing about not being regessoed is the retention of the detail in the carving, and most of the subtlety of form in the profile.

As has been shown quite frequently in examining older frames, the historical restoration involving regilding appears to have been a mixture of expediency (time spent = money spent) and the attention to respectful appearance (appropriate materials and technique). The front of the frame seems to have been regilded using the same methods as the original, as opposed to the far less subtle treatment of the forms on the outer facing surfaces. Later use of bronze paint to cover small damages is an example of still greater expediency with a poorer outcome: the paint also covers adjacent surfaces that were in otherwise reasonable condition, and the paint has gradually changed in colour to the very dull green that you can see here and there in the images below.

In the interim, the decision was made to return the frame as best we could to a level of brightness (the virtue of its covering of gold leaf) commensurate with the return of the painting from its darkened state, by cleaning the surface appropriately, so that the painting and frame would present in a unified manner once back on exhibition.

Given that the painting itself is becoming lighter as Katherine and Melanie find their way down to the original colour and tonality of the paint, as they remove the historical layers of dirt to reveal the painting closer to the intended appearance of John Webber, then it follows that the frame should also rediscover more of its earlier colour and tone. A frame importantly serves the aesthetic requirements of the painting it encloses as well as connecting it to the aesthetic requirements of the milieu in which it once resided. Indeed it is probably now the only evidence of that milieu.

As you see from the earliest images of the frame the dirt was unevenly distributed across the frame. Bearing in mind that the frame is fairly big at about 1650 mm high, there was a graduated appearance from least dirty on the upper and high on the right members (i.e. brightest), to most on the lower member (i.e. least visible gilding), and showing some difference in the amount of dirt also from right to left. I decided not to attempt a wholesale removal of the later regilding, since reasonably large areas of it, especially in the upper parts were in good condition, but rather to retain what was still good in it, and then to restore where necessary to a point of reintegration.

It was first necessary to define the different methods of gilding utilised on the frame, in order to decide which cleaning material to use. The unadorned surfaces are all gilded using water gilding while the carved work is mostly gilded with oil size; the later regilding is consistent with the original in the techniques employed. I decided to clean the carved, oil-gilt parts first and it is this I am working on at present.

So I have begun cleaning the grimy and often hardened sooty materials from the carved parts, discovering that the worst areas, mostly towards the lower section, have some damages that reach right through the various layers, with multiple interactions between the layers and the different materials of the original and later restoration additions and dirty surface depositions as far as the chalk or gesso, making an uncomplicated removal of the dirt impossible in many places.

Lower member centre-right during swab cleaning. Photograph by Matthew O'Reilly. © Te Papa.

I am using on the oil-gilt carved parts an acqueous cleaning agent applied with a cottonwool swab. This has shown to be effective in most parts but there have remained some more intractable areas of hardened deposits including flyspots, and places where the interaction through the surface layers mentioned above has left those layers physically and visually compromised. These parts have required some mechanical picking with a metal tool to smooth the degraded materials and remove the acretions sufficiently, so that when the reintegration is complete, the frame will once again present the painting acceptably.

Left member centre, showing a typical area of surface damage. Photograph by Matthew O'Reilly. © Te Papa.

Still to come: included in the visual reintegration of the frame surface will be the consolidation of various areas above the wooden carcase, particularly the gesso substrate where in some places the glue binder has broken down and is no longer holding well. This problem has apparently been suffered by the frame for a long period of time judging from the numerous small losses of surface material, which long ago gave rise to the use of the bronze paint, now green. And one of the corners will need to be disassembled and realigned, requiring in the process at least one other corner to come apart, before being put together again. But more of this aspect of the treatment in a later post.

Posted in Art, Conservation, Pacific | Tagged , | Comments (0)

The Conservation of Poedua – Part 8

23 June 2011 – 2.19pm

If you have been following Mel and Katherine’s Poedua treatment blogs you may be surprised to read another’s voice on this one – a voice from the edge as it were. I’m Matthew O’Reilly, Framer of Paintings here at Te Papa. My previous blogs were quite some time ago now. Katherine and Mel have needed to take a short break from Poedua, so in order to keep the rhythm going I shall begin my contribution to the Poedua story (always intended) now. My first post on this subject presents a provisional view on the origins of the beautiful frame.

As will be plain from the accompanying photos a lot of remedial effort will be required for the frame to present the painting as befits its role; the conservation will be the subject of later posts. This post summarises the preliminary process.

From the time I first sighted Poedua in her frame the ensemble that they made excited me instinctively and aesthetically. The frame, like the painting, gives one a strong whiff of the Neo-classical period, with its strict rhythms of transverse elements of motif bounded with clarity by bright stepped bands, and gives its matching to the painting a special sense of period authenticity and authority; the aesthetics of its form and scale a sense of rightness as a means of carrying the painting and its subject forward through time. It helps to place her in history as well as any but the most clearly documented original framing: together they admirably represent the junction of the Enlightenment impulse that took Cook to the Pacific, the contemporary currency of Neo-classical style, and the incipient Romanticism symbolised by Webber’s subject.

Image of Poedua in its frame immediately after it arrived at Te Papa. Photograph taken by Michael Hall. © Te Papa.

Image of Poedua in its frame immediately after it arrived at Te Papa. Photograph taken by Michael Hall. © Te Papa.

The frame and its relationship to the painting. A hunt for clues.

In assessing treatment options for picture frames it is important that all possible evidence is gathered about their provenance as distinct from that about the paintings they contain, so that the best quality treatment decisions can be made — especially concerning appearance. Whether they mean to or not, picture frames play a critical role in representing context, which consequently makes them very important in the isolating milieu of the museum. It is very important that they serve their paintings well in this respect.

I am due to start on this frame’s treatment soon. As that proceeds more facts that go to a greater clarity about the frame’s relationship to the painting may or may not emerge, and curatorial research into the historical life of the painting may yet throw some light on just when it arrived on the painting.

To sum up the evidence so far gleaned from observation of the frame, research of available literature, and some opinions from colleagues across the globe, it is possible for me to say for sure only that the frame fits within the general period of the painting and has an aesthetic correspondence that resonates sympathetically with it, connecting it well to the period when the painting was made.

Yet Poedua is not the first painting this frame has protected and presented. It may have been put on Poedua when the painting was made, and could be ten or fifteen years older than the painting; or it may have arrived on it after its arrival in France. So far, I have been unable to determine clearly whether the frame is English or French, but it is likely to be one of these. And despite the sense of rightness, clear evidence about the conjunction of the frame and painting is not yet there.

The painting is known to have spent much of its life in France. Perhaps too much can be made of the frame’s French stylistic inheritance as evidence, even as it obliquely interprets the painting’s historical journey so well. I can’t claim to be able to pinpoint from the evidence of the frame itself where and when it was made but think there is enough evidence to support its continued pairing with the painting.

This is not to say that this is necessarily this painting’s first and only framing, but is to say that it could be, and we at Te Papa will treat it as if it were so. There follows a summary of the clues that the examination of frame has yielded so far to support the frame’s authenticity to the general period from which the painting comes, even if it was not the painting’s first frame. I do hope that time and further research will tell a more detailed story.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

A reminder here: the painting was made in London in 1785 or very close to it.

1. Style. The profile consists of two main components rising from the picture surface, the inner and larger in scale being a scotia or cove (C-curve) carved in relief with transverse motifs; and the outer and upper one, smaller in scale and ogee (S-curve) in form embellished with transverse carving in relief. This doubling effect of two layers of transverse motif separated by plain bands of gilding is the most striking element of this design of frame which would tend to limit the probability of its production to perhaps 1770 at earliest and 1810 at latest. The origin of the style lies in France, but its uptake into England was very quick and some more teasing out of the motifs themselves and how the carver has treated them is required to come to a strong opinion as to which country it comes from.

2. Materials and techniques. The frame is hand-carved and gilded onto red clay and gesso. Hand-carving means the relief ornamentation is cut out of the wood of the carcase of the frame members, and is not an enrichment made from plaster work and applied to the carcase. In statistical terms this fact increases the likelihood of an earlier rather than later dating, and is more likely to put it in the eighteenth century than the nineteenth. The thinness of the gesso layer of the original surfaces and lack of surface texturing may suggest an English origin. Against this however the use of some hard wood in the carcase seems to dispute this conclusion, and lean it towards France.

Upper left corner detail at the back showing cut-down mitre with remnant of original key plus later key across mitre. Photograph taken by Matthew O'Reilly. © Te Papa.

Upper left corner detail at the back showing cut-down mitre with remnant of original key plus later key across mitre; compare with upper right corner image. Photograph taken by Matthew O'Reilly. © Te Papa.

3. Historical alterations. There have been two clear interventions on this frame since it was first made. One of them in particular has some direct relevance to our search for understanding. That is, the frame has been cut down from its original dimensions. Occurrences such as this are remarkably common and come as no surprise. The painting itself does not appear to have been reduced in size, and is not one of a number of standard sizes that were common in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The frame was cut down to fit a non-standard size painting, and so we can surmise that it was cut down for our painting. By examining the evidence of the carved corner motif on the front and the cross keys on the back used to strengthen the mitre joints, we know how much was cut from the two mitres and that the original frame aperture corresponded neither to the standard canvas sizes common in England or those (different ones) common in France. The other intervention to the appearance of the frame, involving a regilding of the outer sides, I shall return to in a later post as it does not bear on this discussion of authenticity and origin.

In our part of the world the sense of rightness of matching of painting and frame is all too rare and I delight in this occurrence of it.

Posted in Art, Conservation, Pacific | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

PICTURE FRAMES: figuring the edge of art.

11 November 2009 – 8.35am

 

Staging the show

 I rest my eye for a moment on the frame, taking a break from the work of looking hard at the painting I have come to see. Then, returning to the work at hand, I become conscious, if only just, of an adjustment to my perception; that my perception has undergone a subtle shift. This sudden consciousness of the frame at its border colours my view of the artwork as surely as reading a label though its effect is at first purely visual.

 In my experience, the picture frame is not very often conscious to people, and this I suppose is as it should be. After all, the frame isn’t the artwork itself but ancillary to it.

 Marginal it may be, but never entirely neutral. As a physical entity it can’t do other than express some kind of cultural value that will inevitably help or hinder the viewer’s experience of the artwork. As a consequence it will be fitting or unfitting, or a bit of both, in varying degrees. There are paintings that rebel against the very presence of what we normally consider as frames and those that crave them.

 What do picture frames do, actually? And why? These are disarmingly simple questions. My job is to think very carefully through this relationship of artist, artwork and viewer as expressed through the frame.

 Please take a moment to consider these two framings of the same artwork, and perhaps come back to them after you have finished reading this blog post.

Installation shots from Toi Te Papa exhibition: Henry Lamb’s painting Death of a peasant, 1911. At left, framing by Te Papa about 1970; at right, frame put on by the artist in 1911, and now returned to the painting. © Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Installation shots from Toi Te Papa exhibition: Henry Lamb’s painting Death of a peasant, 1911. At left, framing by Te Papa about 1970; at right, frame put on by the artist in 1911, and now returned to the painting. © Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

 Since the frame impinges on how art is seen – and can impart negative or positive aspects to the experience of meditating on an artwork, I thought it worthwhile to look at some of its basics. In later posts I intend to look at style and technique: how frames’ shapes and materials evolved over time; the “what” and “why” set out here will be the reference points for the histories – the “who”, “when”, and “how”.

 Treasure chests

 Yes, its frame holds the picture safe, holds it safely on the wall, keeps it safe when being moved or stored. With the right fittings at the back, perhaps glazing at front, and sound structure a frame is the means by which the precious cargo is handled and supported. So frames have a protective function. They help to stop stuff colliding with what is inside.

 Treasure chests – frequently dowry chests – were containers for valuable goods in Renaissance Italy. The chests themselves became important symbols of the wealth, piety, etc of their owners. The means of the owners were signalled through the richness of decoration in their forms and on their surfaces. Such chests were called cassoni or “big boxes/chests”. To imitate this in form and idea, the most common type of frame at this important moment for art was called the cassetta or “little box”. This happened at the crucial moment in western art history when paintings and their frames first separated physically from each other and from the wall (as in murals), or other artworks (altarpieces). The idea of a “treasure contained” persisted into the world of art, and so did its symbolic value. What is inside is, in one sense or several, valued. (See further explanation of social context for cassoni and image examples here.) 

 So frames support and protect a value in material form. Let us attempt to get still closer to the matter.

 A very long and varied history

 Paintings and frames seem to have begun at more or less the same time in western art. In ancient Greek and Roman times the very idea of marking off the subject being depicted was apparently very important; the evidence from Roman and Greek artefacts, buildings, etc, is overwhelming: subjects get visually framed, even when the frame is simply depicted on the surface as in a mural or a Greek vase. The subject and its context seem to be inextricably linked through the framing device. (See here for images and here for a brief history of Greek vases.)

amphora

Greek amphora, about 500 BCE, Photograph by Robert Clendon. © Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

 This close association of painting and framing device, whether as physical frame or as a depicted edge, carried through time until the 20th century. In the last century the wall itself, particularly the white wall, was frequently used by artists to frame the painting with no other embellishment. But even this practice too was a conscious framing strategy for pace-setting and influential artists, (like Malevich, who referred to it in 1915 in relation to a “naked, unframed icon of our time”:

… it is necessary to do away with all dying systems of the past, with all their accretions, ….)

(See Kasimir Malevich, Russian painter here.)

 So frames may be with us even when they don’t appear to be.

Walters Karakia

Gordon Walters’ painting Karakia, 1977. Collection of Te Papa

Look out and look in

 To look from the paintings’ point of view out over the adjacent context, frames provide a degree of visual separation from the daily wall. Importantly they are markers for what is not a part of the work. The philosophers Kant in 1790*, and recently Derrida* use the concept ‘parergon’ from the Greek, a ‘by-work’, which is whatever is not within the work – defined by the work itself – and yet not the general milieu. Looking back into the work, the frame is tied more to the painting than to the general surroundings. The idea of ‘frame’ is bound to the idea of ‘painting’. (*see footnotes for book references.)
 By making it possible to perceive content separately frames promote that content, marking it as special in some way. They implicitly privilege what is encased however mutely. Indeed they are a sign for privilege – perhaps appreciation is a better word – because of what they do.
Daubigny Landscape with sheep

Charles-François Daubigny, Landscape with sheep, about 1855. © Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Clean unclean

 Frames stabilise the dynamic, potentially unstable – but should we say “delicately poised” – composition of the painting. The dynamism of the pictorial content of the painting is not allowed to infect its ordered architectural context through the system of right-angled and parallel lines at its boundary.

 Similarly, different kinds of visual disorder outside of the frame, such as wallpapers, wood panelling, textiles, etc, may be prevented from contaminating the very particular world of the artistic composition.

 It should be noted that the absence of an actual frame is frequently compensated for by the presence of compositional elements within the artwork that do at least some of the work normally enforced by the physical frame – such as ordering and stabilising.

Colin McCahon A letter to Hebrews

Colin McCahon’s A letter to Hebrews, 1979, in Toi Te Papa exhibition. © Courtesy of the Colin McCahon Research and Publication Trust

 Illusion collusion

 Frames have always been a necessary support for the illusions inherent in perspectival art. Such systems require containment in order to help the viewer to believe the illusion of 3-D space, and for the illusion to have its proper effect. Certain forms (profiles) support the illusion more than others. However, note also that other means to depict relative depth (such as are used in abstract art) are not dependant on the support of the form of the frame. (See here for definition of the term ‘perspective’ and some examples.)

Margaret Carpenter Portrait of Mrs W Collins

Margaret Carpenter’s Portrait of Mrs W Collins, 1826. Frame original. © Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Summary

 So picture frames affect our reception of the paintings they contain. Through their protective function they have traditionally privileged value and difference, and been a sign for the presence of an important ‘other world’. They have marked boundaries and controlled the dynamics of depicted ideas and emotions. Even when not literally present they have been implicit in the conception of art.

 These thoughts are like the opening of Pandora’s box. In the box are so many subjects for discussion and elaboration that emanate from the study of the styles of frames and their relation to the decorative arts and painting. I intend to work through as many of them as I can in following posts.

 For those with a deeper interest in the picture frame, I recommend the website of the National Portrait Gallery in London, England which keeps a comprehensive global bibliography and many articles. Go here.

*references: Kant, Immanuel, Critique of the Power of Judgement, (ed. and trans. Guyer, and trans. Matthews, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000; Derrida, Jacques, The Truth in Painting, (trans. Bennington and McLeod, 1978), Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Posted in Art | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (7)

Framing McCahon on Steinbach

28 August 2009 – 4.35pm

This is my opening post in a series to discuss approaches to the framing of paintings.

This first one is a response to William McAloon’s post: Freedom to act and takes his blog post as a point of departure. I look at some of the issues involving the sympathetic framing of modernist paintings, and what we did with two such works.

I have been thinking a long time about framing the art of Colin McCahon. That the artist worked steadily throughout his career to rid himself of the frame, offered up some challenges. That black be used to frame his work offered up another; both the artworks referred to here came into our collection dressed in black frames.

Installation in Toi Te Papa after reframing. © courtesy of the Colin McCahon Research and Publication Trust

Installation in Toi Te Papa after reframing. © courtesy of the Colin McCahon Research and Publication Trust

Defining the limits

Frames, any frames, work counter to the spirit and strategy McCahon adopted in his paintings. He was influenced by the wider tendency of modernist painting to
relate the painted surface to the democratic white wall. He also wanted to release the painting from “the accretions of the past” implicit in the formal traditions of framing.

It is often not possible to return the paintings to their original and minimal supports, to simply pin them to the wall in the manner that he first presented them. Like all McCahon’s work on Steinbach paper, these ones are so reductive as to ask for the merest method to hang them. They are made of a few blocks of highly articulate colour, and McCahon exhibited them simply pinned to the gallery walls with thumbtacks.

In his last years McCahon often used this high quality, quite stiff paper together with acrylic paints. With these materials he expressed a vulnerability in appearance reflecting the content and motivations of his art. The clean edge of the paper suited the clarity and simplicity of his painterly choices. The characteristics of the paper provided just enough stiffness to give a stable but not dead flat platform. This coming together of material and subject is both direct and elegant in the extreme.

Dress in black? – not always

Artists’ intentions are, or should be, the light by which we consider how a particular work could be framed.

McCahon himself acknowledged that the market, current understandings, and the individual motives of owners left their marks in the way his works were framed. Such methods often compromised his intentions, probably forever, especially when they involved sticking the work down, irreversibly, to a hard support – as ours were.

Acquired from different sources, they both arrived in black frames and mounts. I think that framing works like these, and framing them in a black surround often works counter to the intentions of the artist and so can come between the artist and the viewer. This is particularly true of McCahon’s paintings where black predominates. The expressive articulation of large areas of black is one of his great artistic accomplishments. When an adjacent frame is also painted black, this can interfere with the quality of the viewer’s experience of his work. Also, the edges of a work of modern art can become blurred by an imitative surround. The experience may become visually destabilising and thus more difficult for the viewer, and doubly so when the wall adjacent to the frame is white.

The solution

Our newly acquired works were already stuck down, one on hardboard and the other on stiff card. Since the extra supports could not be unstuck they had to be accepted into the framing solution. I wanted the frames to be as recessive as they could appear, so that the paintings could still have access to the white wall, and for their edges to be plain and unambiguous.

The solution we chose was to use white materials – mat board and gessoed wood [traditionally, gesso is a mixture of chalk or gypsum and animal glue], and the use of the golden section in scaling the elements
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio
.
Low-reflectance glass was used to protect the works with minimal interference from reflection.

To start the process I had to decide the minimum depth required to fit the paintings and their support materials to the wall. The answer to this question was then subjected to some maths. I multiplied the minimum depth by the golden ratio (1.618) for the width of the frame section, and then multiplied the frame width by the golden ratio to determine the width of visible mat at the edges of the artworks.

Section drawing of frame profile, support materials, dimensions, and artwork. © Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Section drawing of frame profile, support materials, dimensions, and artwork. © Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

The flat unembellished white frame keeps faith with the modernism of the work, and the harmony required for the essential condition of balance or centredness in the works comes through relatively unaffected. The end result we all feel was very satisfying. With the increased sense of access to the paintings, we felt encouraged to stay and think about the artist and his work. I hope you do too!

Posted in Art | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (2)
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 309 other followers