Turner and Mulready : the effect of certain faults of vision on painting, with especial reference to their works. The real and ideal in portraiture. The deterioration of oil paintings : three lectures / by R. Liebreich.

  • Liebreich, Richard, 1830-1917.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Turner and Mulready : the effect of certain faults of vision on painting, with especial reference to their works. The real and ideal in portraiture. The deterioration of oil paintings : three lectures / by R. Liebreich. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    personal knowledge, skill, and care knows how to avoid it. The public pays too little attention to the subject, and therefore it occurred to me that it might be useful to give a short account of what we know about this question, of the changes to which oil paintings are exposed, as well as of the means either to avoid or to cure them. We have to consider, first, the material on which the artist has painted, that is, as far as oil painting is concerned, principally wood and canvas. Secondly, the priming, that is, the substance with which the surface was prepared in order to be made fit for painting. Thirdly, the painting itself, that is, the pigments and vehicles used for it, and the liquids that were added during the painting, the mediums, meguilp, siccative, varnish,- essential oils, &c. Fourthly, the coat or coats of varnish spread over the picture. The wood on which a picture has been painted may either warp, or get chinks in it, or become worm-eaten, or even altogether rotten. Against warping, the remedy usually applied is moisture. If the panel is very thick, it is first made somewhat thinner; then the back is moistened, and the picture is left to lie on its back for twelve to twenty-four hours, after which time it will be found to have bent straight. Of course this must not be continued longer than necessary, otherwise the convex surface, instead of becoming plane, would become concave. When straight, the picture is kept so by beads which have to be adapted in a particular way, a certain degree of shifting being allowed for the expansion and contraction of the wood. Cracks in the wood are drawn together by inserting pieces of wood of a special shape. Sublimate solutions are employed to destroy worms. Trifling losses of substance are replaced by cement. Small por- tions of rotten wood, not extending too near the painting, are cut out and replaced by wedge-shaped pieces. If, however, the greater part, or the whole substance of the panel, is rotten, the picture must be separated from it and transferred to new wood, or rather to canvas. This was first tried by Hacquin in Paris, and was performed successfully upon many pictures, and, among others, upon one of Raphael's Madonnas, in the Gallery du Louvre, and upon Sebastian del Piombo's ' Resurrection of Lazarus,' now in the National Gallery. The process no longer appears so very marvellous: it is generally executed in the following way :— First of all, the surface of the picture is pasted over with gauze and paper. After that the wood is made straight by moistening, or, if necessary, by making incisions with the saw, into which cuneifonn pieces of wood are driven. By means of a tenon-saw the panel is to- be sawn into little squares, which must be removed by a chisel, an in this way the thickness of the wood is reduced to half an i»ca! !t !3 then planed until it becomes no thicker than paper, and the rest is removed by means of a knife and with the fingers. The painting