Tate Britain, Gallery 8, 23 May-2 Dec 2001
Cruikshank's major work about the evils and horrors of alcohol (Tate N00795) has not been seen in public for nearly 100 years. Before its restoration, this huge painting was in a totally unexhibitable condition.
For much of its life the painting was generally neglected, as well as being exposed to a significant degree of smoke pollution. Since the Clean Air Act of 1956, it is easy to forget how much smoke there used to be in London's air, two thirds of which was estimated to come from home and office fires.
Consequently, the visual appearance of this work was extremely poor, mainly due to the accumulation of a very considerable amount of dirt most of which was soot. There was also some darkening of the varnish layer. This obscured much of the detail and the colours, such as they are. In some places, slightly worn areas of thinner paint indicate that a crude attempt had been made to clean the painting at some point in the past.
The canvas support had become fragile with age. There were fourteen accidental tears (the largest 80 mm in length) and some small holes near the edges. The tacking edges had been further weakened by acidity from the supporting wooden stretcher and corrosion from the iron tacks used for the attachment. This resulted in numerous losses and splitting of the edges in many places, with the canvas literally hanging off the top edge of the stretcher by threads and with large undulations in the canvas due to the lack of tension. Pieces of the painting and stretcher had been lost or damaged at the corners due to careless handling in the past. The stretcher joins were distorted and the edges generally damaged.
From the number of holes in the tacking edges, it is clear that the painting had been removed and reattached to the stretcher at least three or four times. This would have been during its regional tour during the later part of the nineteenth century, when the painting was rolled for transport between the different venues.
An external strip lining had been sewn onto the front of the original tacking edges, probably to strengthen the painting after its return to the National Gallery in 1896.
Rolling the painting caused fine linear vertical cracks with slightly elevated edges in the ground and paint layers. There is also a fine network of similar cracks over the whole painting and linear cracks at the points where the inner edges of the stretcher members touched the canvas (see raking light photo above). The cracks are stable and barely visible in normal viewing conditions.
Apart from the deterioration described, the condition of the painted image was otherwise good.
During 1995 and 1996, as part of the preparation for the transfer of all the art works from Tate's old store in west London to the new one in Southwark, some temporary conservation treatment was necessary to make the painting safe for transport. This included reattaching the canvas to the stretcher with a strip-lining where it had split at the edges and securing the tears with tissue and adhesive. The stretcher corners were fixed and also the very top layer of surface dirt was removed.
Major conservation work on the painting was undertaken for an in focus display which opened in May 2001. First the surface dirt was removed from on top of the varnish using a suitable solvent mixture selected after numerous small trial tests were carried out with various mixtures.
Another solvent mixture was selected to remove most of the discoloured varnish layer and the dirt underneath that had combined with the varnish. It was not possible to remove these layers completely as in some places the paint was vulnerable to solvent action. The painting was then positioned horizontally on a specially prepared surface and the stretcher removed. The free canvas was then placed under the weight of flat boards for some time, which almost completely removed the undulations in the canvas without further treatment. The reverse of the canvas was cleaned using a dry method.
So that the painting could be manoeuvred safely and to hold it in a flat plane, it was temporarily attached, by a strip lining and staples, to an adjustable loom. The loom was held in a free standing vertical position by supports fixed to the sides, so that the front and reverse of the painting could be accessed easily for further treatment.
Permanent repair was now carried out on the tears. A de-acidification solution was applied to the reverse of the canvas to slow down its future deterioration by both neutralising existing acidity and depositing a buffer to counter future acidity. New pieces of canvas similar to the original were used to replace missing pieces at the corners. Smaller losses and damages near the edges and those associated with the tears were replaced with infill material. The painting was then removed from the loom and re-mounted on a new stretcher with a pre-attached 'loose lining' canvas stretched on it.
The stretcher was mainly constructed from aluminium rather than traditional wood to produce a lighter and more rigid structure. A loose lining linen canvas was attached to give the painting additional overall support. It was prepared with an acrylic gesso primer to help stiffen it. This contained a high chalk content to act as a further buffer against environmental acidity.
The paint losses and damages were retouched with a paint composed of a reversible, stable and non-yellowing acrylic resin, hand ground with dry pigments. The painting was then re-varnished with the same resin applied in thin layers with a spray gun.
Cruikshank obtained the stretcher and canvas for this painting ready-made from Winsor & Newton, the well-known manufacturer and supplier of artists' materials and equipment. The W&N colourmen's stamp on the reverse of the canvas confirms this. The wooden stretcher comprised three separate sections, joined together with removable wooden battens on the reverse. The stretcher would thus have been easy to dismantle each time the canvas had to be removed and rolled for transportation.
The canvas is a plain linen weave with closely woven fine threads. Microscopic examination and analysis of samples showed that Winsor & Newton had prepared the canvas with a thick glue-size layer and a single priming layer of lead white and chalk bound in oil. A second thin priming layer is present. It is a very pale pink colour, consisting of lead white, chalk and a small amount of vermilion.
Cruikshank, essentially a graphic artist, did not paint many oil paintings. The technique he used for this painting is very straightforward. He would have already worked out the composition in a watercolour, before drawing his image in pencil on the primed canvas. (In many places the graphite drawing remains visible through the thinly applied paint.)
Tiny paint samples taken for analysis showed that, over the drawing, there is a thin under-painting mainly in brown and yellow-brown washes of oil paint. On top of this, the images have been more clearly defined using thicker paint and colours that have brush markings in many places. The pigments that have been identified from analysis are lead white, chrome yellow, vermilion, cobalt blue, Mars brown and reddish Mars brown.
Impastoed highlights of white or tinted white have been generally applied with vigorous squiggles, dabs and blobs. These are a distinctive feature of Cruikshank's technique, adding liveliness to the paint film and composition.
Once the painting was restored, an historically appropriate replica frame was made for it.
See the Frame Conservation project case study.
See George Cruickshank's The Worship of Bacchus 1860-2 in the Collection.
Chris Holden & John Anderson
February 2007
