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Posts tagged “Hubert von Sonnenburg

Why is the Metropolitan Museum of Art afraid of public disclosures on its picture restorers’ cleaning materials?

March 9th 2011

Many museums have mastered the art of presenting their picture restorations as miraculous recoveries that preclude any need for examination or criticism. A few days after our post on secrecy and unaccountability at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a Public Relations officer at the museum, in the presence of Artwatch International’s executive director, James Keul, asked television crew members who had just interviewed Michael Gallagher, the Met’s head of picture conservation, not to broadcast his comments on cleaning solvents, any mention of which would “open the doors for critics”.

There are strong – but not good – reasons why a museum might wish to avoid discussions on the materials that restorers use. In hope of prising the Met’s doors, we re-visit the museum’s secret 1971 cleaning of Velazquez’s great portrait Juan de Pareja at Wildenstein and Company. We do so in the light of four documents: an untitled, undated Met booklet; a special conservation issue of the Met’s Bulletin (winter 1993/94); and two accounts given by the Met’s then director, Thomas Hoving, in his books of 1993 (Making the Mummies Dance) and 1996 (False Impressions). None of these identifies the solvents and varnishes used on what had been one of the world’s best preserved Velazquezes.

Restorations take place within general cultures and within local/institutional cultures. Healthy cultures require debate and transparency. Unfortunately the richly-funded, impregnably protected Met sometimes seems to take itself as the summation of Culture. When, in 1971, the museum snatched Juan de Pareja from the impoverished and enfeebled British (who had owned it for centuries), institutional pride was fit to burst. The Met booklet carried entries from the President of the Board, Douglas Dillon; the Director, Thomas Hoving; the Vice-Director and Curator in Chief, Theodore Rousseau; the Curator in Charge, European Paintings, Everett Fahy; and the “Conservator”, Hubert von Sonnenburg. Before the sale, Hoving, Rousseau, Sonnenburg and Fahy had flown to London, Madrid, and Rome – a sort of “boy-gang” playing at spreading rumours like “the disinformation section of the KGB”, as Hoving, (who later claimed to have discussed with Wildenstein’s how to “manipulate the art press and crank up the rumor mill” in a general strategy of “dissimulation and misleading rumors”), put it.

When bought, the picture was not paraded to the Met but “sneaked” into Wildenstein and Company “for secrecy”, partly because funds had been committed without the Board’s knowledge but also because, as Hoving put it, the Board had to remain longer in the dark as “total secrecy” would still be needed to “prepare our public relations stance” and “have the time to clean it.” The deceiving of the public was absolute: for a short period before the restoration, the picture was exhibited to New Yorkers as Wildenstein’s own property. Ignoring back-room machinations, the crucial question is: Why should a miraculously well-preserved, three and a quarter century old unlined canvas, have immediately been subjected to the traumas of a rushed restoration before the Board and the city might learn of the acquisition?

Hoving deferred to Sonnenburg on matters of connoisseurship and artistic technique, and had abnegated all responsibility for deciding whether or not to buy the picture: “back in New York with Chairman Dillon, Rousseau and I were on pins and needles awaiting Sonnenburg’s word. Would it be yes, or forget it? ” When Hoving, Sonnenburg, Rousseau and Fahy assembled before the painting in London, the Met’s conservation oracle suavely predicted a new and different picture that would be liberated dramatically from within a yellowed varnish tomb. Hoving sold those predictions of an even greater artistic glory to the Met’s big-wigs, some of whom had personally pledged hundreds of thousands of dollars. Velazquez’s mixed-race assistant with “dark-brown flesh” would emerge with “rosy” flesh tones and a nice clean “grey” doublet. Thus were the museum’s key players guaranteed a dramatic restoration result that would “present” as a further triumph of their collective perspicacity – and also, by eliminating any trace of Radnor family restorations (restorations that had been posited but nowhere established by Sonnenburg), expunge all historical and aesthetic continuities and make the picture entirely their own.

In such possessive and chauvinistic contexts, admitting the possibility of errors, aesthetic losses, or regrets, becomes unthinkable. This restoration would be – must be – beyond appraisal, reflection, debate or criticism. But given that no artist, writer or musician is above evaluation and criticism, why should a technician, acting on what was by common agreement the finest creative work of one of the world’s greatest artists, have been so indulged? And for that matter, why should every Met restorer be allowed to “touch base” on whatever he takes to be a picture’s bedrock “original” surface? How original can a repeatedly solvent-invaded, swab-abraded surface be?

Sonnenburg, working under intense pressure to complete before any political or journalistic exposure of the secrecy, on a script of his own writing, proved himself right to Hoving’s satisfaction: “the most astounding feature of the work was that there was hardly any color in the picture.” Purging the picture of extraneous “varnishes,” or what Hoving called “gunk” transformed the picture, but at what cost? Looking at the booklet’s now historically precious fold-out spread of three identically sized and printed full colour plates that recorded the restoration in progress (see previous post), it would seem that the original “varnished” state was indeed more, and more variously, colourful.

Sonnenburg’s high reputation as a moderate, risk-avoiding restorer stood on his having spent several years as an apprentice to the most famously cautious, slow-working and aesthetically alert restorer, Johan Hell. In Britain, Hell’s restorations were greatly preferred by artists to those of his fellow German émigré Helmut Ruhemann, who established the National Gallery’s highly controversial in-house restoration department after the Second World War. The President of the Royal Academy, Sir Gerald Kelly, entrusted his own grandest works to Hell’s varnishing technique.

By hiring Sonnenburg in the 1960s, the Met put cultural distance between its earlier troubled restorations and those then raging at the National Gallery, but it did so without anyone fully comprehending Hell’s philosophy or method. For a time, Sonneburg was succeeded at the Met by the British restorer John Brealey who had also studied with Hell. Brealey’s disastrous restoration of Velazquez’s Las Meninas at the Prado (see right) shows him to have been no proper student of Hell’s (– a judgement endorsed to us by Dr Hell’s late widow, Kate). The Met booklet sequence makes clear that, on the great Juan de Pareja, Sonneburg proceeded in outright violation of his declared master’s precepts and practices. By swiftly stripping the picture from one side to the other, instead of first establishing the antiquity of the “varnish” and only then, perhaps, proceeding to clean gradually and equally overall, Sonneburg embraced the practices of Ruhemann and repudiated those of his master (- to whose work we shall return in future posts).

The cover photograph of the Met booklet shows the face in detail. A close-up reveals a system of open and exposed cracking that is more visually disruptive than was ever recorded before or after the restoration (see above right). We do not know how – or with what solvents – the painting had been cleaned before that point. There is no indication of when the photograph was taken. We do not know what steps were taken to minimise the visual disruption of those cracks afterwards. We do know – as Sonnenburg must have – that Hell would never have arrived at that point in a restoration; would never have stripped a picture of all varnish, even into its cracks, for fear of letting his solvents invade the paintwork and attack the exposed paint/ground interface.

There may be irony in the fact that the heavy restoration doors now being slammed at the Met have, for five years past, been generously and most helpfully opened to us at the National Gallery in London.

Michael Daley

Comments may be left at: artwatch.uk@gmail.com

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Above: a detail of the Metropolitan Museum’s undated and untitled booklet on the acquisition of Velazquez’s Juan de Pareja and Hubert von Sonneburg’s secret restoration of it at Wildenstein and Company in 1971. Below: the front cover of the booklet, and a further detail below.
Above: a detail of the Infanta Margarita’s costume in Velazquez’s Las Meninas before the restoration of 1984; below, the same detail after restoration.
Above: a detail of the Infanta Margarita before restoration by John Brealey. Below, the same detail after Brealey’s restoration.
An editorial in the January 1985 issue of The Burlington Magazine, then edited by Neil MacGregor, observed that “Cleaning controversies are probably the livliest, and they are certainly the hardiest, of the art world’s topics of discussion.” The editorial acknowledged that the cleaning of Las Meninas had “provoked months of violent debate in the Spanish press”. One press commentator had complained “‘Las Meninas’ son sagradas” and there was not even an anniversary or an exhibition to to authorise tampering with the taboo. The editorial seemed to see no connection between the fact that the painting “had not had serious conservation this century” and that it was found to be in “excellent condition”, which state allowed Brealey’s campaign to “proceed so fast and, relatively speaking, so easily”. The American painter, Peter Arguimbau, had access to the restoration through the good offices of a friend who was a curator at the Prado at the time. He retains vivid and painful memories of the shock on seeing the great work in “restoration”: “He did it in two weeks with fist-full swabs of cotton, acetone and rubber gloves that so destroyed the illusion of the painting that articles were written in Spain on how the country had been brought to tears in mourning the devastation”. Neil MacGregor, when director of the National Gallery was a steadfast defender of restorers and restorations throughout his reign (1987-2002). His resolve seemed to suffer a momentary lapse in 1990. In his foreword to the re-publication of Kenneth Clark’s book One Hundred Details from Pictures in the National Gallery, London Mr MacGregor acknowledged that Kenneth Clark (who had provoked violent controversy with his own cleaning in 1936 of Velazquez’s Philip IV of Spain in Brown and Silver), had been “fearful of what might be found if the golden veils of dirt and varnish were ever to be removed”. Moreover, he added, “The reader who can compare the earlier edition with this one will decide how much is gain, how much loss.”

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Discovered Predictions: Secrecy and Unaccountability at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

25th February 2011

Impeccable condition in a painting is more of a goad than a deterrent to restorers. When the youthful Thomas Hoving was appointed director of the Metropolitan Museum in 1967, he formed a respectful – even deferential – alliance with the (then) head of picture conservation, Hubert von Sonnenburg. Two decades earlier in London, the National Gallery’s director, Philip Hendy, forged a similarly dependent relationship with the German émigré restorer Helmut Ruhemann. Ironically, von Sonnenburg had presented as the heir-apparent to Johannes Hell, another German émigré to Britain who’s mild and gradual cleanings were widely preferred to Ruhemann’s controversially swift “total cleanings”.

Hoving and von Sonnenburg together stalked one of Velazquez’s finest portraits, his Juan de Pareja, which the Met acquired in 1970 for a world record $4.5m. Although, on their own testimony, that picture was in superb condition and had never even been lined, on acquisition it was whisked to Wildenstein and Company, “for secrecy”, as Hoving later admitted. There, Von Sonnenburg secretly “proceeded to discover”, as Hoving put it, “everything he had predicted he’d find”.

It was not unprecedented for a museum director to have a major acquisition secretly restored. Sir Charles Eastlake, scorched by National Gallery cleaning controversies in 19th century Britain, had his acquisitions cleaned in Italy before bringing them to the gallery. Secrecy in conservation can seem systemic: in 1960, when the National Gallery constructed “modern” purpose-built conservation studios, part of one was partitioned by a wall, behind which the chief restorer could work on projects of “particular difficulty or confidentiality”, as a then National Gallery restorer, David Bomford, put it in 1978.

Eastlake made no photographic record of the pre-restoration condition of his acquisitions – even though he happily used photographs for attributing paintings, and must, as president of the Royal Photographic Society, have appreciated photography’s unprecedented testimonial capacities. Fortunately, photographic records of the Sonnenburg/Hoving Velazquez restoration were kept and published by the Metropolitan Museum (in an undated booklet – see right). While these photographs may not be of the highest, digital age, standards, they are nevertheless “of a piece” and permit comparisons between recorded states to be drawn.

Much as von Sonnenburg thrilled over an impeccably preserved, never-lined canvas, he could not resist tampering with it. Two of its edges had been folded over on the stretcher. This fact was presented to Hoving as a “discovery”, even though it had been reported by the Velazquez specialist José Lopez-Rey seven years earlier. The folded canvas strips were opened, flattened and reinforced with new canvas to extend the picture’s format and diminish its subject, shifting him leftwards and downwards (see right). The justification for this compositional “recovery” was that original paint had been applied to the folded strips, but the pictorial testimony of that paint, when first revealed, was not photographically disclosed – see account on the right.

Von Sonnenburg, it seemed, could not resist the urge to “liberate” the painting’s supposed “pure flesh tones” and thereby leave the dark-skinned servant’s face lighter and pinker. By stripping off “varnish” von Sonnenburg also caused previously unified components to detach themselves from each other:

the rounded shape of Pareja’s forehead, for example, is defined only by a large spot of impasto-crisp in the center, bordered by dragged spurs – applied directly on the thin underpainting. When seen close up, the highlight seems to be floating over the paint in an almost measurable distance…

This was a classic restoration apologia. Even the emergence of a formerly hidden streak of flesh-coloured paint on the background was presented as an act of liberation and recovery:

Attention should be drawn to the single dragged brushstroke of light skin colour in the center of the background at the right…Unquestionably, this randomly applied paint is original, and shows how Velazquez chose to try out his loaded brush on the background…Such spontaneity, combined with the greatest subtlety of color and technique make the Juan de Pareja one of Velazquez’s most painterly works.

Convinced that Velazquez had happily left his own brush-wipings visible on one of his two finest portraits (the second being his Pope Innocent X), and that he had used glazes less than Titian, von Sonnenburg was not dismayed when his cleaned painting betrayed markedly less colouring and reduced to a “predominantly gray color scheme”. His rationale for losses of colour and of spatial and plastic coherence; for the flattening of a formerly prodigiously well-modelled and sympathetically lit head; and for the spatial inverting of a background that formerly receded, was audaciously lame: in 1938 an English restorer, Horace Buttery, had described the doublet as “dark gray”. Despite recognising that the painting had – miraculously – shown “no signs of ever having been abused by solvent action during the past”, von Sonnenburg nonetheless contended that it must have been cleaned and varnished “at times”. On that basis, he speculated that it could therefore safely be assumed to have been so restored by Buttery, and, therefore, to have enabled him, on that occasion, correctly to have read the doublet’s true colour. This hypothetical daisy-chain was presented as a proof, despite the fact that before and after Mr Buttery, the garment had always been described as a “green doublet” – not least by Velazquez’s biographer, Antonio Palomino who in 1724 precisely reported “a muted green for Juan’s doublet”.

After their stripping and repainting of pictures, restorers invariably apply fresh varnishes… which in turn discolour and thereby serve as a pretext for another “restoration”. With successive varnish removals, solvents deplete, embrittle and optically alter paint films. When penetrated by solvents, paint films heat, swell and soften so that even the friction of cotton wool abrades them – as the restorer Caroline Keck admitted. Soluble plastic components of the paint itself are carried off by evaporating solvents. Restorers sometimes claim that because old paintings have so frequently been abused in the past, there is nothing left to extract today – but with the Juan de Pareja, no such claim could be made. At the same time, they sometimes admit that cleaning pictures with thick paint is easier than cleaning ones with thin paint. (If cleaning methods really were as safe as is claimed, it would not matter whether the paint being treated was thick or thin.) When stripped to a restorer’s conception of “clean”, the remaining paint is left parched, absorbent, matt and in need of “nourishment” by varnishes.

When new varnishes (i.e. resins dissolved in solvents) are applied, they penetrate and amalgamate with the parched paint thereby making the next cleaning the more hazardous, and so on ad infinitum. If we are lucky, von Sonnenburg will have used a natural resin varnish. If not, if he subscribed to the Met’s then hi-tech enthusiasms, he will have used a synthetic resin in the confident but erroneous expectation that it would not discolour and that it would remain easily soluble.

In 1966 a restorer at Moscow’s Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts deplored the use of untested synthetic materials, judging them “all right for space ships” but not for old master paintings. By 1995 a conservation scientist, Tom Learner, reported that synthetic resins which had “appeared to offer” advantages over natural ones “are now known to be inherently unstable”. In 1998 the Met’s (present) Chairman of European Painting, Keith Christiansen, admitted that synthetic varnishes used at the Metropolitan Museum had turned not yellow but grey and had “cross-linked with the pigments below, meaning that removal is, if not impossible, extremely difficult”.

Dr Christiansen has yet to reply to the question ArtWatch and ARIPA put to him on February 6th, concerning the Met’s intentions towards its new, miraculously well-preserved Perino del Vaga painting.

Michael Daley

Comments may be left at: artwatch.uk@gmail.com

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Above, Fig. 1: Velazquez’s oil on canvas portrait Juan de Pareja, before treatment at Wldenstein and Company and when still “covered by a yellowish brown varnish and with the top and right edges folded over” (- as described in an undated, untitled Metropolitan Museum booklet that contained essays by the museum’s President, Douglas Dillon; Director, Thomas Hoving; Vice-Director, Curator-in-Chief, Theodore Rousseau; Curator-in-Charge, European Paintings, Everett Fahy; and Conservator, Hubert von Sonnenburg).
Above, Fig. 2: the Juan de Pareja during treatment when the top and right margins had been unfolded; paint losses had been filled with putty; and new red-brown paint covered some of the fillings and was to serve as a priming for the final “touching up“. At this point, the “discolored varnish” had been removed from the right-hand side of the picture. (This photograph and the one above were by courtesy of Wildenstein and Company.)
Above, Fig. 3: the Juan de Parejaafter cleaning and restoration“. (Photograph was by Taylor & Dull, Inc.)
Above, Fig. 1, detail showing warm orange-red layer over the background and tonal modelling on the lace collar.
Above, Fig. 3, detail showing loss of red on background and the new flattened, whiter-than-white collar.
Above, Fig. 1, detail. Note the relatively small area of lights on the face. Note, too, the large proportion of warm reds and in particular their deployment at all the points at which the forms of the face turn away from the viewer at the profile. At this stage, none of the light passages in the face abutted the black of the hair, the warm red mid-tones formed transitions between the brightest lights and the darkest darks.
Above, Fig. 3, detail. Note, in comparison with the untreated image above it, the profound transformations of pictorial values and language system that occurred as a consequence of this so-called “restoration”. In the post-cleaning and post-restoration state (for both activities took place extensively), the new lighter, cooler background asserts its presence more, in an entirely historically innapropriate modernist, “abstract” fashion. The former, highly selective and focussed placement of the the brightest lights on the collar (which articulated the forms) have been lost in the great expansion of whiteness. The general lightening of the background around the head introduces a halo-effect not previously present. The new light passages to the (viewer’s) left of the hair now nearly meet the lighter passages to the right of the head with most unfortunate and unoriginal consequences. Previously, the head emerged towards the viewer out of a warm dark enclosing space. Now, given the great lightening of the background around the head, the black of the hair can be read as a void in in a light coloured wall. One of the commonest signs of restoration injury to a face is present here: the contrasts between the blacks and the whites of the eyes are intensified regardless of the general system shading that had applied to the head. In the unrestored state, the most brilliant lights present were in the reflected lights of the dark irises, not in the whites of the eyes themselves. Another common loss that is seen here occurs in the tonal modelling around the eyes, which is used to establish the forms of what are essentially a pair of balls set in two sockets. The notorious carelessnes of restorers with anatomical features, is matched by an obvious indifference to shapes. The loss of the coherence of the former treatment of the hair is an almost universal restoration short-coming. Note the extent to which violence has been done to the former linked areas of hair in the subject’s side-burn and beard. Now the lighter mid-tones of the flesh at the cheek race through, breaching the hair like water out of a dam. In order to be complicit with such injuries one would have to subscribe to a fairy tale – one would have to believe that all the previously superior articulations of form, physiognomy, space, atmosphere and pyschological insight, were the unintended, undesigned, fortuitous benefits of some physical degeneration of a layer of varnish. In fact, one would have to subscribe to two fairy tales. One would have to believe that if the present varnish were to be left in place for long enough, it too would improve the drawing and modelling of the present state of the painting; that it would impart red-ness here, and green-ness there to stunning pictorial effect as it gradually turned into a yellowish brown covering.
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