Paintings Conservation in Australia from the Nineteenth Century to the Present: Paintings Conservation in Australia from the Nineteenth Century to the Present: !"##$!%&#' %($ )*+% %" %($ ,-%-.$ Essays, Recollections and Historical Research on Paintings Conservation and Conservators, from the Nineteenth Century to the Present. Contributions to the Eleventh AICCM Paintings Group Symposium, held at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, October 9th & 10th, 2008. !"#%.&0-%".+ Allan Byrne Anne Carter Paula Dredge Catherine Earley Kate Eccles-Smith Alexandra Ellem Sarah Fisher John Hook Deborah Lau !"##$!%&#' Alan Lloyd Holly McGowan-Jackson Jacqueline Macnaughtan Catherine Nunn %($ Gillian Osmond Chris Payne )*+% John Payne %" Robyn Sloggett Michael Varcoe-Cocks %($ ,-%-.$ Contributions to the Eleventh AICCM Paintings Group Symposium National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 2008 $/&%$/ 01 !*.2 3&22&+ *#/ *2$4*#/.* $22$5 Alan Lloyd Paintings Conservation in Australia from the Nineteenth Century to the Present: Connecting the Past to the Future Essays, Recollections and Historical Research on Paintings Conservation and Conservators, from the Nineteenth Century to the Present. Contributions to the Eleventh AICCM Paintings Group Symposium, held at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, October 9th & 10th, 2008. "#$%"# &' ()*+ ,$++$- ).# )+"/).#*) "++"0 1 Contents Director’s Foreword i Preface iii Copyright © Australian Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Material Inc. 2008 Acknowledgments xi ISBN 978-0-9580725-2-6 Part I Stories of Early Years Edited by Carl Villis and Alexandra Ellem Design: Jessica Gommers and Elizabeth Carey Smith 1. Catherine Nunn 1 “Benign Neglect” and Australian Conservation History: Published by AICCM Inc. An Unlined Eighteenth-century British painting in Australia GPO Box 1638 Canberra ACT 2601 2. Alex Ellem 11 Printed in Melbourne by Impact Digital Pty. Ltd. “Danger and Decay”: A Restoration Drama Concerning the Typeset in Stempel Garamond National Gallery of Victoria, 1899 3. Paula Dredge and Alan Lloyd 25 Readers need by aware that these papers are not refereed. The opinions expressed are those of the respective The Sub-Committee and the Restorer: Conservation at the author/s and not necessarily those of the AICCM. Responsibility for the opinions expressed, and the National Art Gallery of NSW 1899-1910 materials and methods used, rests solely with the author/s. Please contact the respective author/s directly if you wish to further explore any issues. 4. Michael Varcoe-Cocks 39 An Overview of the First Century of Restoration in Victoria No part of this publication may be reprinted in any form or by any means without prior permission of the publisher. Part II Years of Transition Cover photo: Photographer unknown, 5. Alan Lloyd 51 Photograph of NGV Paintings Conservator Harley Griffiths cleaning Eugène Boudin’s The Port of Le Havre The Boustead Years 1946 - 1977 in 1953. Photograph courtesy of Mr. John Perry. 6. Alan Lloyd 63 Back cover: Invention of the Vacuum Hot Table by Bill Boustead, Conservator Bernard Hall at the Art Gallery of New South Wales England 1859–1935, lived in Australia 1892–1934 The studio party (detail) c.1926 7. Jacqueline Macnaughtan 69 oil on canvas High hopes, Difficult times 146.2 x 115.6 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 8. Allan Byrne 75 Felton Bequest, 1926 (2044-3) An Accidental Conservator Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria. 9. Jacqueline Macnaughtan 83 18. Holly McGowan-Jackson 173 A Few Tesserae Frames Conservation in Australia and GOCSIG: Reflections on the Past and Thoughts for the Future 10. Chris Payne 91 Out of the Backroom into the Limelight 19. Kate Eccles-Smith 185 I’ve Looked at Life from Both Sides Now: Part III Keynote Lecture Paintings Conservation in Private Practice in Canberra 11. Sarah Fisher 103 Part VI Looking Ahead Painting Conservation at the National Gallery of Art in Washington: A History, in Perspective 20. Anne Carter 191 100% potential: Painting Conservation and Contemporary Art at the Part IV Reflections on Training Queensland Art Gallery 12. Robyn Sloggett 123 21. John Payne 201 Training Who To Do What? Local, National and International What’s it All About: Notes for an Essay on Painting Conservation: Perspectives on the Training and Professional Development of Paintings “We will still talk of La Tour, but we will see Chardin” Conservators in Australia 13. John Hook 133 Reflections on the Early years of Professional Practice: Intuition, Craft and Risk Part V In Focus 14. Deborah Lau 143 Conservation Science in Australia – A Space Between Places 15. Gillian Osmond 149 The Impact of Richard Wolbers 16. Catherine Earley 159 Exhibitions Conservation: the Development of a Specialisation at the National Gallery of Victoria 17. Alan Lloyd 169 Unique Australian Conservation Inventions Associated with Touring Exhibitions Director’s Foreword n 30 September 2005 the National Gallery of Victoria farewelled Tom Dixon, its long-serving and admired Head of Conservation. This was a significant Omilestone in the recent history of our gallery because Tom is the person who had overseen the reinvention of the department he had inherited some twenty-one years earlier. Under his dedicated stewardship the NGV Conservation Department had grown beyond recognition from a bare-bones service facility of about 6 people to the large, multi- faceted division it now is. Tom’s departure was also significant because it gave all of us a moment to reflect on how much change had occurred over that time, not just in our own Conservation Department but across the conservation and art museum professions generally. In 1984 the academic era of conservation in Australia was in its infancy, and art museums around the country were only just beginning to witness the demand for ambitious exhibitions and collections display that are now universally felt. Clearly, much had changed in the intervening years. It is in this reflective and questioning spirit that the theme of the Looking both ways: Connecting the past to the future symposium, and this accompanying book, was formed. Initially this symposium was planned along the lines of previous AICCM Paintings Group symposiums, which are held every two years at different venues across the country. However, as the potential for rich historical and theoretical investigations into the past, present and future of the profession began to be tapped, it became evident that this could be an event to resonate beyond the immediate confines of paintings conservators. In many ways the story of the development of paintings conservation in Australia mirrors the same struggles and successes of individuals working in the art- and art-museum worlds of this country over the past century. The NGV was therefore delighted to lend its support and assistance to this landmark event, wanting to draw attention to opportunities and possibilities in developing the conservation profession in Australia. Our Deputy Director Frances Lindsay has been involved in the planning of the symposium since its inception, providing vital ongoing support and encouraging the organisers to promote the event to the broader public. I hope that the reader will take time to absorb these interesting essays on the development of paintings conservation in Australia. This is the right moment to reflect on how far we have come, and on what the future holds. We need collectively to get it right, and the AICCM has an increasingly important role to play. Gerard Vaughan, National Gallery of Victoria i Preface t the entrance of the great neo-classical National Archives building in Washington, D.C. is an imposing sculpture of a seated female figure Asymbolising the future. Carved onto the stone plinth directly below her are the words, “What is past is prologue”. Deriving from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, this sober message stares down over all people who enter or pass by America’s repository of historical records.1 The declaration serves as a reminder of how our future is inextricably linked with what has gone on before, and at the same time acts as an entreaty for all to respect, understand and preserve our knowledge of the past so that we enter the future with an understanding borne of experience and consideration. This is very much the premise which underlies the theme Connecting the past to the future for the eleventh Paintings Group Symposium of the AICCM, held at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne on October 9th and the 10th, 2008. Two years ago, at the previous paintings conservation symposium held in Brisbane, it was noted that a generational change appeared to be taking place, that the circle of contributors who were prominent in the first two decades of these gatherings was slowly being replaced by a core of more recently-trained paintings conservators. While generational change is a permanent cycle, this particular shift was noteworthy because the earlier group were among the very first conservators to come through the system of academic training for paintings conservators in Australia. In fact, some of these conservators had worked on both sides of that pivotal moment when Australia’s first materials conservation training course was established in 1978. They included members of a generation who had initially trained under an old apprenticeship system and subsequently found themselves as the first students in a fledgling university training programme. For these conservators and the students who followed in the first years of the course, the newly-devised materials conservation training programme must have been a substantially different experience from that of their counterparts some thirty years later. Not only was the academic training of conservators a new and largely unwritten field; conservation departments in the nation’s art museums were wholly unrecognisable in role and appearance from the ones which we see in place today. Therefore, within a single generation, the paintings conservation profession in Australia saw the most profound and dramatic shift in its history: surely this was a story worth telling, and one whose time had come.