News
"Yes Martha, it can happen to you!"
insert Robert Henri
insert St. Elizabeth
insert the Merchant
(under construction)
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Robert Watson is a fine artist and researcher of artist's pigments. Robert brought his color matching skills as a guest inpainter to the reconstruction of missing elements in a 19th century Persian painting from the Qajjar Dynasty. Retouches were made with reversible restoration colors, photographically documented, and detectable from the
original under UV light. This would more correctly fall under the category of "restoration" rather than conservation and is a tremendously controversial subject within the profession.
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The detail image shows paint loss, staining from water damage and residual effects of mold growth. The owners elected to reconstruct some missing pictorial elements to integrate the painting and return it to a more satisfying visual state.
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Fortunately, we obtained a 24MB digital image from before
the damage to assist us in the reconstruction of lost
elements after many spirited debates about
conservation versus restoration.
Staff at MÖBIUS competed the conservation of two paintings and frames for inclusion in a traveling exhibit of Monterey artists of the late 19th and early 20th century. The two paintings below are owned by the Monterey Museum of Art and were included in the exhibit entitled
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"Artists at Continent's End"
The Monterey Peninsula Art Colony, 1875 - 1907
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA.
Curated by Scott A. Shields, Ph.D.
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" A Pool Among the Rocks"
Raymond Dabb Yelland, 1876
Monterey, California
Remember to support your local museum.
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Conservation treatment of a previously restored oil on canvas by Elizabeth Strong of Monterey, California, entitled "Street Scene," executed in the late 19th century and now in the collection of the Monterey Museum of Art. Discolored over paint was removed along with surface dirt and a yellow varnish. The broken and over painted corners of the 22k gold frame were repaired, paint removed and "ingilded" with 22k gold leaf and then toned.
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This color photo appeared on the cover of the February 2, 2006 Palo Alto Daily News.
The art enthusiast depicted above appears remarkably similar to a local art conservator.
The text reads: Chris Kenney looks at the painting "Interior With Portraits" by Thomas Le Clear,
at the press preview for the "American ABC Childhood in 19th Century America" exhibit
at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. The exhibit has since
moved on to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC
Daily News photo by Victor Maccharoli.
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Staff at MÖBIUS concluded treatments for the Monterey Museum of Art in the conservation of 16 paintings and frames gifted to the museum by Alva and Helen Christensen.
These included 19th and early 20th century paintings by such notable artists as Armin Hansen, Grace Carpenter Hudson, William Keith, Bertha Stringer Lee, Charles Rollo Peters, William Ritschel, Norton Bush, Carl Dahlgren, Edwin Deakin, Joseph Raphael,
and Paul Dougherty.
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Staff at MÖBIUS conserved a large painting by Frank L. Heath, depicting the Monterey Bay from the rolling hills of Santa Cruz, for the Santa Cruz City and County Public Library. The elaborate, antique frame was also treated. It measures six by eight feet and weighs in excess of 350 pounds.
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Work was completed with former student intern, Ami Davis, Education Coordinator at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, on the conservation of a John Ross Key (son of Francis Scott Key). It shows the city of Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay in 1876 from what is now the UCSC campus. The painting was in an exhibit pertaining to the philosophy, science, and methods of art conservation.
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The early years
