The New Zealand Herald

THE ART KEEPERS

Behind the scenes at Auckland’s Art Gallery, a team of conservato­rs preserve damaged or decaying artworks — and expose the odd forgery, discovers Ginny Fisher

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Auckland Art Gallery’s restoratio­n team

Beyond the hushed, perfectly curated galleries, we pass through locked doors into the brightly lit hallways that are the interior arteries of the Auckland Art Gallery. This “behind the scenes tour” takes our group — a diverse bunch of art enthusiast­s, patrons and gallery members — into the heart of the gallery where conservato­rs work with palettes of paint and chemical potions to restore and preserve thousands of works belonging to the gallery and to private collectors.

Principal conservato­r Sarah Hillary is perched on her stool, magnifying device on her head, surrounded by artworks, books, frames and paints. She looks familiar, and later I discover why — she is the daughter of mountainee­r Sir Edmund Hillary, and the resemblanc­e is clear.

Sarah is also an artist in her own right, represente­d by Anna Miles Gallery, but here at the Auckland Art Gallery, she focuses on caring for and researchin­g the paintings in a collection of 17,255 works. With her modest, considered and articulate character, it’s easy to see why Sarah likes to be here with her brushes in the quiet back rooms, retouching valuable old paintings like the

Portrait of John Sparrowe Esq by Thomas Gainsborou­gh. It’s dated between 1755 and 1758 and it’s marvellous to think this portrait on thin canvas is still intact. Sparrowe’s creamy hands are today being given a touch up by Sarah, who has previously removed the browning varnish to restore the work’s lustre with conservato­r paints, which are reversible, yet stable. In other words if she happens to make a slip, she can rectify it.

Sarah tells me this particular work recently paid a visit to Auckland Radiology for an x-ray. “They throw paintings around like patients,” quips Sarah, who adds that the scan revealed a painting of a dog behind the portrait. This investigat­ive work adds to the knowledge bank Sarah has collated on Gainsborou­gh’s painting techniques and aids conservato­rs in their considerat­ion of the authentici­ty of a work. In this case, Gainsborou­gh often painted dogs, so it’s fair to say that this is not an unusual discovery.

Chemistry is another tool in the arsenal of a conservato­r. Sarah has had paint layers analysed at the University of Auckland to establish what pigments and resins the artist was using at the time.

As far as retouching goes, Sarah says the face is out of limits and cracks are almost impossible to remove. “Cracks develop on all paintings and I think viewers expect that. It’s an old painting after all.”

Gottfried Lindauer, is another artist Sarah has spent many hours researchin­g. He and C. F. Goldie were the most wellknown painters of Māori portraits in the late 19th century “Few people realise Lindauer took photos of all his portrait subjects — he took a glass plate positive and then projected it on to canvas.” This process was quite common at the time,

and while some may consider it cheating, the artist still has to be a proficient painter to create a good likeness.

Sarah often studies the ears when looking for forgeries. “Ears are particular­ly tricky to get right.” Sarah has found a few forgeries in her time. “There have been some Frances Hodgkins forgeries, some Lindauers and some unlikely McCahons”, she says. When looking for fakes, she pays attention to the way the artist has applied the paint. “In an original, there is flow in the brushstrok­e, with a forgery it’s never like that.”

One of Sarah’s more unusual tasks was restoring Colin McCahon’s Urewera Mural

— stolen by Māori activists from the visitor centre at Lake Waikaremoa­na in 1997. “It was badly damaged by crease marks, as it had been folded for a long time, so we laid it on a suction table and repaired the crease marks as best we could.”

There are more repairs going on further down the hallway, where our group is guided into the paper restoratio­n room. Here Camilla Baskcomb looks after the gallery’s works on paper, including watercolor­s, prints, drawings, pastels and photograph­s. These paper works make up 80 per cent of the gallery’s collection.

Camilla worked as a senior conservato­r for the Tate Gallery before moving to New Zealand and, with her bright demeanour, clearly enjoys her work here. One of her latest projects involved taking fragments of a delicate pastoral wallpaper left in a 1900s house owned by the City Mission that was about to be destroyed, but was rescued and brought to Camilla by architect Jane Matthews.

The final stop on our tour takes us to another painting restoratio­n room, where conservato­r Genevieve Silvester is working on a huge landscape of the West Coast’s Otira Gorge by Dutch artist Petrus van der Velden. This moody work is typical of the artist’s later landscapes in New Zealand. The gorge, in foul weather, was one of his favourite subjects, says senior curator Ron Brownson who recently bought the work on behalf of the gallery. There are tears to the back of the painting, and with a very brittle canvas and browning varnish, it will take months to restore. “It’s always a bit nerve-racking,” says Genevieve of the repair process. “This canvas was paper thin and took four people to remove.”

Genevieve is accustomed to restoring important works, having worked on a large-scale Rubens in London, along with Gainsborou­ghs and many other renowned artists. She trained in conservati­on in London at the Courtauld Institute of Art and as well as the Tate she has worked in Amsterdam, where she built up experience in restoring very old paintings before returning to New Zealand. Because of the predictabi­lity of the materials they used, “the old masters’ works are often easier to restore than modern works”, says Genevieve. Modern art can be difficult to repair simply because the substances used aren’t stable. “Some art isn’t made to last.” She recalls one work purchased by Auckland Art Gallery that melted in the cool storage room.

Time may well be the devourer of all things, but one thing all the conservato­rs here agree on is that the New Zealand sun is one thing you don’t want your artwork exposed to. Fade tests show that if exposed to sunlight, artwork can lose half of its colour integrity in six months.

• Gallery tours are available throughout the year to gallery members, contempora­ry benefactor­s and foundation members. Becoming a member costs as little as $50 a year — a great gift for your arty friends.

 ?? Photos / Babiche Martens ?? Principal conservato­r Sarah Hillary.
Photos / Babiche Martens Principal conservato­r Sarah Hillary.
 ??  ?? Genevieve Silvester in one of Auckland Art Gallery’s painting restoratio­n rooms.
Genevieve Silvester in one of Auckland Art Gallery’s painting restoratio­n rooms.

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