BEHIND THE SCENES – CONSERVATION Our Paintings Conservator Jocelyn revealed that she found it hard coming back to work after a three-week break over Christmas and while taking advantage of those rare spare moments, she started cleaning this Streeton beauty! It has certainly helped her get over the return-to-work shock; and she couldn’t wait to get back into the studio each day to carry on. This is ‘Sydney Harbour: A souvenir’ by Arthur Streeton, c. 1897. [bit.ly/nga46598] In this first image, she is cleaning off a discoloured varnish layer, allowing the intensity of the colours and subtle contrasts in light and shade to show through. Varnishes often fluoresce in ultraviolet light. In the second ultraviolet image the cleaned strip at the right looks darker where it isn’t covered by the layer of fluorescing varnish, and there is more contrast between the paint strokes here.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 23:30:00 +0000
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