Enfilade

From The Institute of Conservation (ICON). . .

Alexandra Gent | Reynolds, Replication and Restoration:
Some Results from the Wallace Collection Reynolds Research Project
Grand Robing Room, Freemason’s Hall, 60 Great Queen Street, London 27 February 2014

Joshua Reynolds, The Strawberry Girl, 1772–73
(London: Wallace Collection)

The four-year Wallace Collection Reynolds Research Project is funded by The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Wallace Collection’s Benefactors and donors. The Project will investigate Reynolds’ techniques and materials by examining twelve of his paintings in the Collection. The project is a collaboration between the Wallace Collection and the Conservation and Scientific Departments at the National Gallery.

The Project’s recent investigations have helped develop a better understanding of two elements of Reynolds’s practice: replication of images and the restoration of paintings. This talk will draw on historical sources coupled with technical analysis of paintings to explore these activities in Reynolds’s busy studio.

Replication
It is a well-known that Reynolds’s studio practice incorporated the production of copies. Often made by students or copyists, there is, however, anecdotal evidence Reynolds himself sometimes worked simultaneously on more than one version of the same subject; The Strawberry Girl may be one such painting. Technical analysis of the Wallace Collection’s Strawberry Girl will be discussed in relation to Reynolds’s own technical notes and contemporary accounts of his practice, together with technical analysis of Tate’s Age of Innocence, which overlies another version of the Strawberry Girl.

Restoration
The Wallace Collection’s portrait of Baltasar Carlos in Black and Silver, was owned by Reynolds and is thought to have been restored by him. The portrait’s technical analysis will be presented showing how its technique relates to that of Velazquez, what can be revealed about Reynolds’s restoration of the painting and how this compares to the analysis of Reynolds’s materials.

Alexandra Gent joined the Wallace Collection in December 2010 as Paintings Conservator for the Reynolds Research Project. She trained as a paintings conservator at The University of Canberra, Australia, graduating with a Bachelor of Applied Science in the Conservation of Cultural Materials in 1999. Since coming to the UK in 2000 she has been employed by English Heritage, Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland, as well as private studios in London and Oxfordshire. She is an accredited member of Icon and has a Masters in Culture, Policy and Management from City University London (2008).

Venue: In the Grand Robing Room at Freemason’s Hall, 60 Great Queen Street London WC2B 5AZ. Close to both Covent Garden and Holborn Tube Stations. Doors open at 6pm. Talk 6.30–8pm. Tickets: Icon members: £10, non-members: £15. Free wine and cheese including in price of ticket. Please register by sending your name and stating if you are an Icon member. Your name must be on the security list no later than Tuesday, 25th February 2014. RSVP Clare Finn +44 20 7937 1895 or finnclare@aol.com.

Later this month at The Wallace in connection with its History of Collecting Seminars:

Mia Jackson | Boulle the Connoisseur: ‘An Incurable Mania’
André-Charles Boulle as a Collector of Old Master Drawings
The Wallace Collection, London, 27 January 2014

André-Charles Boulle (1642–1732) was the most renowned ébéniste of his time, giving his name to the marquetry of turtleshell and brass that he brought to such perfection. He was also a voracious collector of works on paper and despite the success of his furniture, he died in debt. This is unsurprising given that the great collector, Pierre-Jean Mariette, his near-contemporary, said of him: ‘there was never a sale of prints and drawings at which he was not present and buying, often without having the means to pay’.

This seminar will focus on Boulle’s drawings—the types of  drawings Boulle collected, the rôle drawings may have played in the production of his furniture and the importance of his collection in relation to those of his contemporaries and clientèle. This will reveal a collection much more complex than the ‘source délicieuse’ beloved of furniture scholars, that included not only the works of his fellow ‘illustres’ in the Louvre, but also works by artists such as Raphael, van Dyck, the Carraccis and a much-regretted lost theoretical notebook by Rubens.

Admission is free and booking is not required.

Mia Jackson (Queen Mary, University of London)
Monday, 5:30, 27 January  2014
Lecture Theatre, The Wallace Collection