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Printer-Friendly PDF Version of This Article HOME ABOUT US THE JOURNAL MEMBERSHIP ARCHIVE LINKS 2 August 2012 Reviews: Taking Renoir, Sterling and Francine Clark to the Cleaners The heart-breaking task of compiling evidence of the consequences of multiple restorations on Renoir’s “Baigneuse” shown here on July 11 raised the spectre of such having occurred throughout the artist’s oeuvre. Does Renoir remain today the artist that he was originally? Are scholars indifferent to restoration changes and therefore presenting adulterations as if still original and pristine states? To help answer these questions, we consider the record of The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, an institute with high scholarly aspirations that was generously founded on a passionate and well informed love of art. A large group of the Clark Institute’s Renoirs is on show at the Royal Academy’s “From Paris a Taste for Impressionism” exhibition. In the catalogue the institute’s director, Michael Conforti, boasts that “the Clark is where ideas happen.” In 2003 he declared: “To us at the Clark the quality of the ideas that emanate from the study of a work of art is as important as the quality of the object itself.” An idea yet to happen is that scholars, recognising the need to protect the inherent qualities that creative works of art bring to the party, should attend to the irreversible changes that restorers make. Certainly, some such corrective is overdue Above, Fig. 1: A plate from Anthea Callen’s 1978 “Renoir”, to commonly held uncritical assumptions that in showing a detail of the Courtauld Institute’s “La Loge”. whatever condition a picture might be found today, it will be good and perfectly sufficient for any scholarly purpose. Between 1916 and 1951 Sterling Clark, an intriguing and attractive figure in the grip of a declared passion for Renoir, collected thirty-eight of the artist’s pictures. Since Clark’s death in 1956, five of these have been sold off and many have been restored. The Royal Academy is one of countless stops for the Clark’s currently peripatetic pictures as this intellectually self- regarding institution expands and “renovates”. Although the Academy show’s catalogue offers no evaluation of the present condition of the collection, it contains two fine essays – “Sterling Clark as a Collector”, by James Ganz, and “Refined Domesticity: Sterling Clark’s Aesthetic legacy” by http://artwatchuk.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/2-august-2012/ Page 1 / 11 Richard R. Brettell – which might profitably inform such a discussion. Unfortunately, the catalogue taken as a whole and together with two preceding and related exhibition catalogues, “A Passion for Renoir”, 1996/7 at the Clark Institute (Fig. 11), and “Renoir at the Theatre”, 2008 at the Courtauld Gallery (Fig. 12), implicitly presents today’s states of Renoir’s pictures as if they have remained original and authentic. Brettell shows Clark to have been one of a sizable group of American collector/enthusiasts who pushed Renoir’s prices to record highs in the early twentieth century when the supply of pukka old masters was dwindling (and the modern wheeze of upgrading school works was not yet in full flood). Ganz shows that Clark’s collection comprised a cross-section of a decisively selective part of Renoir’s oeuvre. Considering Renoir to be one of the greatest painters ever, Clark nonetheless abhorred his numerous late nudes (with arms and legs which he likened to “inflated bladders”). Clark felt that the artist’s best painting had been done early, and thirty-one of his thirty-eight Renoirs Above, top, Fig. 2: A (greyscale) detail from the cover of were painted before 1885, with six from 1881, the Courtauld Gallery’s 2008 catalogue to the exhibition “Renoir at the Theatre”, shown at Fig. 12 and here which year he judged the artist’s finest hour. This showing the emergence of cracks in the face and breasts. discerning and focussed selection gives the Clark Above, Fig. 3: A detail from the cover of the Courtauld collection invaluable force of testimony and the Gallery’s 2008 “Renoir at the Theatre” catalogue, showing Royal Academy is now showing twenty-one of the the scale of cracks in the paintwork of the face. For other solvent induced cracking, see Figs. 5 and 6. institute’s remaining thirty-three Renoirs, but there are further reasons for attending to the present state of Clark’s Renoirs. Although Ganz, formerly of the Clark institute, makes no mention of the pictures’ conditions today he variously discloses that Clark held that picture restorations do more harm than good; that he viewed art historians with disdain; that he learnt early not to depend on “experts” for guidance; and, that on being bitten by bad professional advice, he had resolved to become his own expert: “In 1913 Clark bought Portrait of a Lady by Domenico Ghirlandaio and Walking Horse, a bronze by Giambologna. Both purchases were facilitated by the American sculptor George Gray Barnard, who had been a friend of Clark’s father. After being assured that the Ghirlandaio had not been retouched, and a copy of the Walking Horse was a unique cast, Clark subsequently found that both of these claims were false. On a trip to Italy Above, Fig. 4: A detail from a plate in the 2008 Courtauld in the summer of 1913 he discovered a postcard Gallery’s “Renoir at the Theater” catalogue, showing the face of the woman in the Clark Institute’s “A Box at the of the Ghirlandaio in an altered state, and a copy Theatre (At the Concert)”. of the Walking Horse in the Bargello in Florence…” Clark’s admiration for Renoir is shown to have beeen singular. He had considered Renoir without equal among old masters as a colourist and unsurpassed as a painter, that is, as an applier of paint to canvas. He had granted artists like Leonardo, Ingres, Degas, and Bouguereau to have http://artwatchuk.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/2-august-2012/ Page 2 / 11 been Renoir’s superiors in terms only of their “suave line”. He complained of English portraits “overcleaned by Duveen” at the Frick Collection. Above all, Clark’s will of 1946 is cited to show that he had expressly prohibited any restoration of his own to-be bequeathed pictures: Above, left, Fig. 5: A detail from the National Gallery’s “It having been my object in making said Renoir “The Umbrellas” before 1954. Above, right, Fig. 6: A detail from the National Gallery’s collection to acquire only works of the best quality Renoir “The Umbrellas” after cleaning in 1954. If the of the artists represented, which were not heavily cracked appearance of Renoir’s “La Loge” might damaged or distorted by the works of restorers, it be thought a poor advertisement for the Courtauld Institute’s conservation training programme, what is my wish and desire and I request that the said confidence should the emergence of massive cracking in trustees…permanently maintain in said gallery all the cleaned face of a principal figure in a major Renoir works of art bequeathed hereunder in the give in the National Gallery’s cleaning policies? For details of the cleaning agents used in the latter, and of injuries condition in which they shall be at my death to the Phillips Collection Renoir “The Luncheon of the without any so-called restoration, cleaning or Boating Party”, see our post of 8 January 2011. In 1939 other work thereon, except in the case of damage Kenneth Clark, the director of the National Gallery who launched its modern cleaning programmes, complained from unforeseen causes, and that none of them be of cleaning injuries to the Courtauld’s “La Loge” made by sold, exchanged or otherwise disposed of…” the restorer Kennedy North who had cleaned the three Sutherland Titians in 1932 and embedded them in wax. So, we now know that Clark’s Renoirs had been Two of those Titians (which were again restored in 1999) carefully selected on both artistic criteria and are now on show at the National Gallery’s “Metamorphosis: Titian 2012″ exhibition. excellence of physical condition. That the trustees subsequently disposed of five of these Renoirs is acknowledged but not explained – had they legally overturned the bequest’s conditions or simply ignored them? Fortunately, their writ does not run to undoing historical visual evidence, and Ganz is to be applauded for reproducing the two-page Life magazine photo-spread from 1956, and thereby giving today’s viewers a glimpse of the state of some thirty untouched-by-Clark (and possibly never previously touched) Renoirs at that historic juncture. Although the catalogue reproduction is small, it is sufficient, when viewed within the exhibition, to show that were Clark’s Renoirs to be so-assembled once more, some at least, would Above, Fig. 7: A greyscale conversion of the reproduction not be the same pictures. (See Figs. 7, 8, 9 and of a Life magazine photo-feature at Fig. 8 showing 10.) (most) of the Renoirs at the Clark Institute. The then vivacity and tonal variety within this group of paintings With photographic records, when due allowances that Clark had not allowed to be restored is comparable to that shown here in the photograph of Renoirs on are made for technical variations and vagaries of exhibition at the Grafton Galleries, London, in 1905. reproduction methods, a given photograph affords testimony on the dispositions of tones or hues within a given work at a particular moment under a particular light. With modern artists, where first photographs frequently pre-date first restorations, it is striking that similar patterns of weakening recur in the historic photographic record.
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