Conservation of a T.C. Steele Painting

Well, the steel painting Winter Afternoon, at the first look, it didn't appear to be in bad condition. It had some structural problems with bulge and planar distortion, and also it had developed a craquelure pattern over the surface, but it was stable. But the colour of the composition looked really pale and not vivid, that it wasn't a characteristic for this painter in this period. So I made some tests and I just realised the painting was really, really dirty, and the varnish was really yellowed. So this layer of yellowed varnish really flattened out the depth of the composition, and it needed to be treated, really. After all the photographic documentation, I start with the cleaning on the back of the painting, eliminating all the dust and dirt on the canvas and the stretcher, and later I spot-treated the planar distortion with a series of humidity and pressure. After that, I re-established the tension of the canvas, that it was lost. When I made sure that all the craquelure was stable in a good condition, I start with the cleaning. I was lucky because the varnish, it was a soft and natural resin that I didn't have to use a strong solvent. So with a specific solution, I could swell and re-solve the varnish in an easy way, to eliminate over the surface with no damage at all. I used glasses magnification and also I used brushes to get into the interstice and groves of the high impasto, so there was no problem with the surface, with the original surface, that was my concern. And now after the finish, the painting is resting to evaporate all the solvent, and the next step will be re-varnish it again. The appearance of the painting changed remarkably. At the beginning, the painting was kind of in an even way of colors and no depth, and now you can see it in really vivid colors, so the viewers can enjoy the real palette of steel in this painting right now. When you are treating a painting, you always learn a lot about the artist and the way he created the painting, but one thing that I like in painting conservation is that every painting has a story, you just have to found it. In this case, when I started the research of the painting, I realized and noticed that the painting was untouched. What does it mean? It means that I could see the painting in the same way that Steele created in 1925, so no one has added or changed anything on it. This is unusual because most of the paintings have been treated in some ways. For example, we have records that the steel widow, Selma, used to spread a wax coating on the back of the paintings to protect them from the humidity. Over time, these wax in the back of the painting can emigrate over the surface, and some of the color can change differently. This painting doesn't have this layer, and also I noticed on the tacking edges that there were no extra holes, so that means that the painting never was re-stretched or moved from its original structure. The final question could be that it was also the varnish, the original one. So this is a tough question, and I don't even think I have the right answer. But in the painting, the winter afternoon was painted in 1925, one year before Steele died. There are no records that the painting was in any dealer or exhibition from that time. In 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the art dealer used to spread varnish every single painting that they received to refresh the color in order to sell them in a better way. Now we know that most of the paintings, they didn't like to re-varnish their work. Even some of the impressionists, they wrote on the back of the painting, no varnish this painting in any case, because they knew it was a common practice. So sometimes when you receive a painting, you can think that it was the original one, and it was not. In this case, the painting was donated directly from the widow to the museum, and there are no records that the painting in the museum was treated before this time. So the answer could be that the varnish was the original one. This information is really important for the conservator. When you make a decision of the treatment to varnish or re-varnish again the painting, it's a big decision. But in this case, I can feel confident to proceed with the next step of varnishing the painting, even with the same amount of gloss and saturation of the color that still would have wanted to have in his painting.