This painting by G.A. Kadir (1900 – N/A) came in with a very dry and delicate canvas, and a heavy contamination across the surface. Careful cleaning removed the surface contaminates and then the tent method, using steam, will re-introduce moisture. Further application of consolidates will be administered to the linen directly. These measures will make the canvas more supple and allow it to hold the paint in a forgiving manner. A few small areas have paint loss, and they will be in-painted.

This painting was a gift in WWII to a soldier who had rescued the family’s son. It has tremendous value for our client, and we are very thankful that we can, in our own small way, lend our service to it.

This painting suffers from dirt particulates that have accumulated on the surface and in the layers of the older varnish. The paint film is dry, which is not surprising for a painting this old (1778). Dryness has led to craquelures and cupping. The canvas appears to be brittle, thin and dry.  There are numerous instances of old restoration and a coating of  asphaltum on the reverse.

This painting is the work of Francois Beaucourt (1740-1794; also known as Francois Malepart De Beaucort) who is known as the first Canadian artist to receive European training. His father was also a painter, and was likely the first teacher of Francois, though records at the time are hard to come by. What is known is that the father, Mallepart De Grand Maison, was a soldier who was believed to have gone to New France with the colonial regular troops. At this time, New France extended from Northwest Canada down to New Orleans, spanning into the present day Midwest, and skipping the Atlantic seaboard, which was controlled by England. Mallepart married in 1737, the wedding certificate described him as a “sergeant in the troops of the company of M. de Beaujeu [Louis Liénard].” It’s believed that by 1740 he had given up the military career to become a painter: the Montreal baptismal papers for his four children describe him as a painter. The first born was Francois, and subsequently the only living child of the marriage. Mallepart died 17 years after Francois was born, and his wife remarried to Corporal Lasselin, who may or may not have relocated the family to France. However, it was in Bordeaux, in 1773, where Francois married Benoîte, the daughter of Joseph-Gaëtan Camagne, a theatre artist and decorator.

Eleven years later, Francois departed for America; unfortunately, all the artwork he created in Bordeaux has been deemed lost. The next known trace of the artist was in 1792 when he surfaced in Philadelphia and published an advertisement in the General Advertiser. The same advertisement would appear in the Montreal Gazette, but in this case he changed the description of himself from a French painter to a Canadian one. Francois would go on to create a substantial amount of religious paintings and portraits, and it’s the latter where his talent seems to have found its strongest definition: his warm colors imbuing the subjects with a life-like quality.

He died in Montreal in 1794.

The signature and date is difficult to see.

A higher angle helps to add some definition to the writing.

The reverse held up to a light.

The front held up to a light.

Self-portrait of Francois Beaucourt.

The oil painting by Auguste Musin (1852-1920), Golden Rays on Coast at Days End, came in with a very poor shape and a dry linen. These two issues combined to create craquelures and cupping. The varnish had yellowed, and there were serval contaminates on the surface, most noticeably those from smoke. On the reverse, there were two small strips of tape that covered three holes: the largest about an inch in size, the smaller two about a quarter of an inch. There was also some poor in-painting that had been executed at some point to try and hide the craquelures. On some of the sails, there was actual paint loss.

Once the painting was de-fit, careful micro-vacuuming was carried out on the front and the reverse. New Belgian linen was archivally adhered to the reverse, which strengthened the foundation. A heat press was used to lay down the paint film, addressing some of the cupping and craquelures, with further hydration administered with spot treatments to return pliancy to the paint film and help consolidate.

The old in-painting turned out to be more extensive than originally thought. All of it was removed. New linen threads were fixed to the reverse to fix the three holes. With the cupping and craquelures consolidated, areas of loss appeared, which is typical. We in-filled and then in-painted to conceal these areas. With the old varnish removed, new conservation varnish was applied.

The original frame had been glazed to hide imperfections. This glaze was removed, and the frame cleaned and conditioned. Broken ornamentation of the frame was repaired, and a back-up given for strength and depth. The stretcher bar was given a lift to help the canvas sit in the frame without undo stress.

Auguste Henri Musin was born on April 4, 1852 in Oostende, Belgium. He was a marine artist, and is known today as one of the top European marine artist of the 19th and early 20th century. His father, Francois Etienne Musin, also a highly noted marine artist, was a teacher for Auguste, but there are more modern approaches that can be seen in the work of the younger Musin.

In 1872, Musin started to participate quite successfully in important European and American venues. In 1889, at The Paris Salon, he was awarded an honorable mention, and a gold medal in Rouen, France as well as medals in London, Lille, Lorient, Periquex, Limoges, Marseille, Dunkerque, Reims and many more. He settled in Brussels and, like his father, became considered one of Belgium’s top marine artists. When he married, in 1872, he settled in England, near London. During the 1880s he worked for the magazines: The Graphic, The London Times, and the L’Univers Illustre.

His marines were painted in Oostende, Belgium and in Holland, Scheveningen, Noordwijk, Terneuzen, Rottendam and Dordrecht. He also painted in Brittany, France and Alicante, Spain. A large number of paintings were sold to the American market through dealers that exported his paintings.

Musin died in St. Joost-ten-Noode on December 10, 1920.

Today, his paintings can be found in private and public collections, worldwide, including in Belgium museums in Bruges, Brussels, Oostende, and Liege. They can also be found in museums in Madrid, Spain, and Reims, France.

Here are the two strips of tape.

Before and after of in-painting.

Wonderful detail.

Signature.

And here’s Golden Rays on Coast at Days End.

This oil painting came in with a heavy amount of surface contaminates, a mold invasion, and craquelures. Craquelures are the fissure-looking lines that appear due to the layers of the painting, including the canvas, drying at different times, and then rubbing against each other.

After the painting was de-fit, we noticed how brittle the canvas was, and how the stretcher bar had claimed a section of its perimeter. New Belgian linen was archivally adhered to the reverse using a heat press. This greatly increased the foundational strength, which is one of the major causes for the craquelures; the heat press had the added benefit of helping to lay the craquelures flat.

Cleaning progressed until the whole paint surface had been completed. This turned out to be one of those cases that, when you think you’re done cleaning, you find out that there are even more layers. We switched to a secondary cleaning method that, chemically, has certain advantages, and the results were rather impressive in that it seemed like we removed as much dirt on the second cleaning as the first. There even emerged another person, as the derrick operator was rather hard to see before any of the cleaning.

In-filling was used on the areas of loss, which are common when consolidating craquelures. In-painting matched colors to the original. It was decided by the client to not salvage the signature, which had been largely compromised as it was on the extreme bottom-right corner, where it had tucked around the stretcher bar and sat and rubbed against the frame. This painting has lovely qualities, though, and now that it’s clean the intricacies of the brushstrokes and the dynamic play of the colors have brought the painting back to a state that it would now be about ready for the painter to sign it. A frame is forthcoming, but it’s important not to commit to a frame style and color until the painting has been cleaned and the true colors revealed. Stay tuned for more…

Close up of the craquelures.

De-fit.

Clear sign that the canvas is thin, brittle, and not in the greatest condition.

Plugging along.

It’s very satisfactory when you look at a painting at this stage.

Blue skies ahead.

We found some writing on the back. It looked to have been done in pencil.

That healthy looking linen with the arrow on it is new Belgian linen.

There’s a signature in there, partly ravaged by the paint surface being the same size as the canvas, and, therefore, when the stretcher bar is put into place, the perimeter of the canvas folds around the stretcher bar, and that folded area sits against the frame, unviewable.

In-fills.

Just when you think you’re done cleaning… phase two.

Phase two is quite effective.

Finally clean. You get a piece of how dynamic the red is on the derrick.

Cleanliness brings clarity to the brushstrokes.

Before and After.

This landscape by Manfred Henninger (1894 – 1986) had previously been re-lined with wax, which is a technique that is seldom needed these days, and this instance of it had failed. On the front there were some cracks in the paint film, which were due to excessive drying.

It was a slow, and noisy, process to remove the old wax reline; but, careful scalpel work eventually got rid of it. New Belgian linen was added with a restorer’s adhesive. This fortified the foundation, which is going to greatly help the underlying issue as to why the cracks in the paint film appeared in the first place. Consolidation brought the cracked areas back to plane. Small, hairline losses were then in-filled and in-painted. There were a number of losses around the perimeter, which were the result of tacks that had been placed, we believe, to help hold the canvas for the wax re-line. This effectively shrunk the size of the painting, but with our new linen, providing a wider hold for the stretcher bar, we were able to undo this.

Born in Backnang, Germany, Henninger studied at the Stuttgart Academy of Fine Arts where Christian Landenberger, a notable landscape artist, was then a professor. With the outbreak of WWI, Henninger volunteered, but he never would never have the taste for war, and thereafter he considered himself a pacifist. In 1929 he co-founded the Stuttgart New Session, which abolished the jury system that had traditionally decided which works would be shown at exhibitions. For political reasons, Henninger emigrated to Switzerland, and then to Ibiza, an island in the Mediterranean which is said to have inspired a flurry of work, some 300 paintings. But war broke out in nearby Spain, and Henninger moved to Ticino, an italian-speaking region of southern Switzerland. Henninger went on to write essays for “Leaves for Art” in which he critiqued French Impressionism. In 1949 he was appointed to the State Academy of of Fine Arts in Stuttgart, where he led the classes for landscapes and portraits, teaching until 1961. His notable students included: Peter Kalkhof, Günther C. Kirchberger, Roland Ladwig and Friedrich Sieber. By the end of his life, Henninger had received many honors: in 1962, he became an honorary member of the Stuttgarter Kunstakademie; in 1975, he received the merit medal of the state of Baden-Württemberg; in 1979, he was given the Bürgermedaille of the city of Stuttgart and the Great Federal Service Cross; and in 1985, he was awarded the Hans Thoma Prize. He died, in Stuttgart, in 1986.

First you heat the wax.

Once it’s soft, the scalpel, with elbow grease, does the rest.

No more wax.

In-painting all done.

Finally got to do some work outside…

The paper face method was used to lay down the cracking of the dry paint film while allowing the restorer adhesive, applied from the reverse, to seep all the way to the front. This creates a very tight and thorough bond of protection. Our wonderful, and recently fixed, heat press helped with warm temps at a strong atmospheric pressure to further consolidate the paint film.

Willem Alexander Knip was born in Amsterdam 1883. He studied at the artscool in Amsterdam and had painting lessons in Haarlem from J.J.C. Lebeau. He lived in Amsterdam and the surrounding areas, but also regularly worked in France, Italy, and Spain. He was known for his landscapes, harbor- and town-views. He won the St. Lucasperize in 1942 and the Artist-medaille in 1953. His works are the possession of the Rijkscollectie, Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven and the Singer Museum in Laren. He died in Blaricum in 1967.