This painting by Carl Hoerman (1885 – 1955) is a desert landscape of the Palm Springs region. The primary issues it has includes a dry paint film, specks across the front and back, cupping of the paint film, and the frame joinery of the corners has loosened. There is also some paper-like hive-making material used by hornets that was attached on the reverse and is seen in the video at the bottom where we carefully scraped some of it off.

New linen will be archivally adhered to add foundation strength. Careful cleaning and select chemistries will remove dirt particulates and the specks, some of which are mold. Consolidation will flatten the cupping and in-painting will conceal these areas if losses result. The frame joinery will be redone and a back-up incorporated to help the painting sit without stress within the frame.

Carl Hoerman, born in Germany, emigrated to the United States in 1903, at the age of eighteen. He studied and then worked as an architect in Chicago until 1920, when he built a studio and art gallery in Saugatuck, Michigan. Hoerman, with his wife, Christiana, also an artist, frequently traveled to the West and Southwest where Carl would paint desert, Grand Canyon, and mountain scenes. Later, Hoerman would become known as a “dunes painter,” because of his western Michigan landscapes. Hoerman built multiple homes in the Southwest, including the Casa del Desierto, in 1946, at Rancho Mirage, a small community between Palm Springs and Indio, a close proximity to where this landscape painting is believed to depict. By 1952, deteriorating health, forced Hoerman to forgo travels to the West. Carl Hoerman passed away on November 8, 1955 in Douglas, Michigan.