Just before the holidays, we reached a major milestone in the conservation of the Jabach portrait: the reattachment of the canvas to its stretcher. The short video above gives a good sense of the process undertaken with George Bisacca, Alan Miller, and Jonathan Graindorge Lamour. In all, it took about a couple of hours.
Once the painting was stretched up, I did some preliminary filling and repair to areas where the paint layer and canvas had been damaged as a result of the painting's being attached to a smaller stretcher at the beginning of the twentieth century (see my September 24, 2014, post for more on the smaller stretcher).
Left: A canvas inset attached to the top-right corner of the work, where a portion of the original canvas was missing. Right: The same corner seen at a more raking angle after filling. Photograph by Michael Gallagher
The front of the canvas, seen partway through filling. Note the new insets of canvas in the tack holes. Photograph by Michael Gallagher
Seeing the picture back on the easel was a great way to start the new year!
In my next post, which will appear on January 28, I'll show the varnishing of the painting prior to retouching.
