Hans-Christoph von Imhoff, Axel Ritter
This article was published in Restauro 8/2008. To access the whole article (in German) follow the link below:
VON IMHOFF, H. & RITTER, A. Varlin - Umbrella - An example of modern marouflage and its problems
English language abstract
The canvas painting »Umbrella« of the Swiss artist Willy Guggenheim, alias Varlin (1900–1977), mounted in the 1950ies, in collaboration with the artist, on masonite board, had badly warped. The Old type carpenter’s (bone)glue had been used to join them together and was applied in a way, that none of the paintings edges stuck to the masonite, thus producing an unpleasant bulge all around.
Ways are shown, how both the bulging and the warping were remediated, the first solely by reactivating the glue under the bulge, using humidity, gentle heat and cautious pressure. The concave distortion with all edges coming forward, without taking the high risk of separating the painting from the masonite, was corrected by placing the entire painting in a wooden box frame, double and triple crossed, and gluing small wooden squares, intersected on the glue side, onto the back of the rigid masonite board, so as to reduce the size of the actual glue surface and to enable fast access of the glue’s solvent thereto in case later-on a complete removal of this mount would be required or desired. By means of a metal angles fixed with screws to the little squares, the painting is held flat to the box frame, which has an edge all around to also serve as the aesthetic frame.
The painting as mounted when the marouflage was undertaken, had changed its original format, as its canvas edges had been flattened and been glues also to the bigger sheet of masonite. To correct this, the painting had been reformatted with a circular saw. After the cuts, which left 1 cm of the paintings edges on each side visible, thus changed the format; it left a quite ugly board with ripped canvas and scattered off pieces of paint.
Varlin had worked on this painting several times over the years, the first version dating from 1939, all other versions happened before July first 1962, the date when he presented it a present to his future wife; some subjects parts of the motive are overpainted completely, others only partially; he also had retouched earlier losses in his paint layers. A radiograph shows the pentimenti and most losses. So the occasion to have black and white pigment analysis done by Axel Ritter from the EMPA St. Gallen was very welcome and brought one rather surprising result, some of the black consisted of a pigment called lead sulphide and also lead monoxide, well known in the lead industry, of which we haven’t as yet found any mention in the literature which would show its use as pigment for oil colour in paintings.
Keywords: Foderatura, pigment analysis, oil-based paint, pentimenti, vault, bulge, shifting, inelastic support, Willy Guggenheim
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This article was published in Restauro 8/2008. Permission to publish this article on the INCCA website has kindly been given by the author and magazine editor. This article may only be downloaded for personal use. It may not be redistributed. Permission for redistribution must be requested from Restauro.