Restoring The Faceless Painting - Part 3

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business after weeks and weeks in fact

months of work I'm now finally ready to

tackle a thing that has been racing

through my mind in my dreams haunting me

around every corner of the studio the

retouching of this painting and the

missing face and because success is no

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domain now because I do have to retouch

a missing face I'm going to start by

picking some loow hanging fruit this is

a technique that I've used throughout my

conservation work and throughout my life

and it's one that allows me to notch an

easy Victory because even though it's

easy it's still success and it begets

more success so if I'm able to retouch

the face here well and feel that it's

going well and that my color matching is

on point and that I like how I'm working

well then I can feel good about this

painting and I can start to move on to

more difficult areas if this isn't going

well then I know that it's not the right

time to do retouching I'll step away and

find something else to do in the studio

I won't try to force my way through it

the no pain no gain motto doesn't work

here or in life anybody who tells you

that is just misleading

you so by working on this painting and

just tackling some of these little

losses I can start to feel my way

through this retouching and start to get

a sense of the pallet that the artist

used how they applied paint and what the

painting is supposed to look like

because remember I'm going to have to

make a lot of decisions about how much

to retouch I don't want to go too far

and retouch every little Mark on this

painting and make it look flat and new

but I don't want to leave a significant

amount of marks and make it look damaged

there's a fine balance between leaving

some things like abrasions and cracks

and covering them all up and so working

on an area like this allows me to test

different approaches and figure out the

one that I think is going to work

throughout the entire painting and then

I can move on to the rest of the

painting while kit joked that I had

volunteered to do all of the retouching

on this painting she's not totally

incorrect I have included her in just

about every step of the process it's

part of her learning some of these more

complicated techniques and becoming a

better conservator and also me of not

doing some of the stuff I don't want to

do having an assistant is great because

you get to teach them learn from them

and give them some of the dirty

work over the many years that kit has

worked here she has proven to be an

invaluable resource in just about every

aspect of conservation and retouching is

no exception she has an incredible sense

of color and a depth laying down of

paint and you can see here how she's

maneuvering through this skinned area

with real Grace and sensitivity not

glazing in the whole area but working

through just to break up the losses so

that it still feels old and authentic

without feeling damaged and

broken and this is something that comes

with years of experience at least it

took me years of experience kit has

responded to this incredibly fast so

fast that I'm shocked in fact but it's a

testament to her skill the way she

learns and maybe maybe maybe how I've

instructed her no I think it's all

her anyhow she's working through just to

break up all of this damage in an area

like this where the entire face has lost

its glazes it's really tempting to want

to repaint it and while reglazing is not

a verboten technique in some instances

like this one we could very easily argue

that because all of the glazes have been

lost and because we're using reversible

paints it makes sense that we would Reg

this painting but if we can avoid that

then we will now if ultimately we do

have to do some glazing we can add it

later but for now kit is doing such a

good job of breaking up this damage that

I don't think we're going to need to in

fact maybe kit should just do the whole

painting how about

that and while I'd like to have Kit just

do all of the retouching and I can sit

back with my feet up scrolling on the

internet that's not how it works

but I'm also really excited to challenge

myself with this to see how the inlay

worked to see if it's a viable solution

I think it's going to work but I'm not

sure and we're going to find out as I

start this retouching now ultimately the

inlay and the image is really only good

for the first pass of paint I'm using

paint that's a little bit thinned out so

it's a little bit transparent so that I

can see through it but you can see that

once paint goes down the under image or

under painting as it were disappears and

then it's up to me so this technique

isn't a Panacea it's not going to do all

of the retouching for me it's just going

to get me onto let's say second base

give me a head start so that I don't

have to start from scratch and really

it's the the form and the shape and the

volume that I'm looking to capture here

I have some images of this painting set

up on either side of the easel and I'm

looking at those while I'm doing the

touching to see how the highlights go to

see where the Shadows are just to have

another reference you can see that this

image is also a little pixelated it's

not as high resolution as I would have

preferred so I'm working with a couple

of other images that are smaller so they

appear higher resolution they're not as

you know broken up and

blurry then you can see that I'm kind of

inching my way towards the complicated

part starting off with the neck and then

the ear and then the cheek I'm really

kind of avoiding the Eyes Nose in mouth

because they're going to be really hard

and I want to again pick the low hanging

fruit try to give myself the best

Advantage now this is going to take

several passes and over the course of

this retouching I'll work a little bit

then I'll step away then I'll come back

and do a little bit more then I'll leave

it for a day or two and the retouching

of this face took a couple of weeks not

because I wasn't moving through it with

speed but because I needed time I needed

time away to take a more analytical

brutal look at the retouching that I had

laid down the day or week before to look

at it without rose-colored glasses and

to say well that didn't work so well so

let's come back and change that chin or

add a highlight here and it's slowo

goinging there's no easy way about it

you work a little bit you step back you

come back you reassess you work a little

bit more step back come back reassess so

on and so forth and what I'm trying to

do is get the forest and the trees

correct and by that I mean I'm trying to

get all of the little details but I'm

also trying to get the overall feel and

that's a real hard balance because I

don't have the original painting I have

images but I can't see the

original and trying to capture a feeling

I mean that's like trying to capture

lightning in a bottle it's almost

impossible so I'm doing the best I can

to work on making this face come

together but also to make it fit with

this painting because copying the

original might not be the right answer

it might fall flat so there's a delicate

balance between simply replacing what

was lost and making it feel unified and

again this is one of those things that

comes with tons of

experience the first time I did

retouching of this caliber I thought it

was great it looked great but my father

told me it didn't feel right I didn't

really understand what he meant until

many years later that something can be

color matched correctly it can blend in

but it can not be in accord with the

overall feel of the painting and it's

really hard to describe feeling but you

know it when you see it something just

matches it fits you don't see it as an

addition you go right past the damage

and everything comes together not only

does it get rid of the damage but it

complement the painting and so that's

kind of what I'm going for but like I

said it's a long road and it takes a ton

of time

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after a lot of passes on the face more

than I documented on video and more than

I've included here what we've seen is

just the first few passes it would have

been too much to capture all of it

really who wants to see weeks of

retouching I I know all of you but I

don't so this is what we got something

stood out to me when I looked at the

retouching it felt flat and I realized

that the cracks were missing so I had to

paint them in and I know it seems crazy

almost sacrilegious to un butiful clean

retouching paint damage but our job as

conservators is to make the damage

disappear to blend in and so in this

case adding these cracks painting them

in instantaneously takes an area that

your eye would jump right to because it

didn't fit to one that you go right

past now doing it on the body was pretty

simple doing it on the face well that

was a whole another level of

nerve-wracking because of course if I

mess up here I'm going to have to do a

ton of work to correct that mistake but

as I started to add these cracks the

face started to settle in it started to

feel natural it started to belong to

this painting and the retouching didn't

seem so pronounced now I have a few more

tricks up my sleeve with this face but

you're going to have to wait until the

end to see

it and after several weeks of retouching

this painting is complete and it's ready

for its final varnish and in this case

the final varnish is really mostly being

used to protect the painting give it an

Ultra Violet layer of protection and

also to control the sheen the retouching

and the first coat of resin I laid down

are a little uneven some spots are

glossier than others and some spots are

matte and that's not what we want we

want a unified sheen on the entire

painting and so I've mixed up a varnish

according to what I think is best George

trusts me implicitly and said just make

it look

great and now I'm applying it with my

spray gun and I've chosen to apply it

with the spray gun because it's a big

painting and I want a very thin very

even coat and I can get this with the

spray gun maybe a little bit better than

I can with the brush it's also just

simpler and I can move faster without

worrying about the varnish drying in

addition there are a couple of tricks I

have up my sleeve when I'm using the

spray gun that can modulate the sheen if

I find that it's too shiny like spraying

from higher up and letting some of the

resin dry as it settles on the surface

but in this case everything went very

very well and the application of the

final varnish was pretty simple so now I

can let it dry and return it to

George remind me George when you brought

this painting in I think it was August

of last year yeah right so a fall we're

approaching a year almost um we had some

delays and setbacks but suffice to say

this was quite a project to undertake

and I remember asking you in the

beginning what prompted you what you

know streak of insanity drove you to buy

a painting in this condition without the

face and I think you had said something

about what did you say that there was

something in it that needed to be

released there's something that needs to

be released that that needs to be um let

go there's a lot of story in it there's

a lot of history in it and it's just

it's really cool I wanted to figure out

why she was being taken out of the cave

or where she was at

and which direction she was looking at

and I figured be the person to do

it well yeah so it was I mean it was a

ton of work but you knew that we knew

that we had a couple of assists along

the way and I'll tell you about those in

a minute but uh I'm presuming you want

to see the painting oh God yes and not

the piece of canvas anymore huh not

anymore no all right I've been looking

forward to this for a while well let's

see

it wow

little bit of a change yeah just a

little it's

it's the face pops out a lot more than I

thought I have to say out of all the

ones that you have done this

is most impressive thank you this is

astounding for what you had to work with

because it was just in such a bad shape

I'm usually not one for no words but I

this this is

just I'm astounded on how well it turned

out no face to no words huh pretty much

it's just it's just I mean the

expression is perfect yeah you can see

the anguish and the agony in her face

and and the and the faces here on the

left where they're trying to struggle to

K her her from him like honestly I know

there was a lot to do I just cannot

remember how bad I I would love to look

at the photo and compare it to that cuz

it's just holy cow

right well

so that's what we started with

yeah yeah there's that big terar there I

remember when across the whole en the

whole painting was torn in half this

went all the way through it was really

in four or five pieces all of this was

disintegrated I mean it was just my God

I every bit of it was honestly I don't

know what possessed us to say yes to

this I just knew it had to

be given another chance it was just it

wasn't worth someone just disposing of

and it had to be saved you had you had a

feeling I thought you were kind of crazy

I I've been crazy but um on some of my

purchases but yeah this one definitely

not this was

something how did you figure out what to

do with her missing face yeah well I

mean I think back when we first saw it

we talked about all of the problems that

it had and how those were kind of those

were challenges but kind of wrote for us

we've done that many times before for

you too but the the elephant in the room

was the missing face and I think I

teased that I had a couple of ideas yes

you did yeah we were able to reach out

to the Hermitage in Russia who has the

original and um they pulled it from

Storage cuz it's not on display for me

and they took some photographs of the

piece some medium resolution photographs

and they they sent them to me which was

really really kind of awesome that they

were were willing to do that um and then

we took that and we printed it onto a

piece of canvas in archival ink and then

inlaid that canvas into the void and it

took a lot of manipulation on the

computer to get the color to get the

shape um because it didn't fit perfectly

it wasn't like a matching puzzle piece

but we wanted to use the original as the

basis for starting so that we I wouldn't

be led astray so that I had something to

work from so in comparison this to the

original that's in the

Hermitage it's true the form it is this

is a copy of the one that's original so

the artist took Liberties uh and you

know I I overlaid the original on top of

this one and you know slight things are

in different perspective you know the

faces are a little different but you

know this as it is now is a faithful

homage to the to the original that's in

the Hermitage perfect that was the goal

is get back to way it was supposed to be

right from its original creation right

to be enjoyed for many many more years

to come

well not here I want you to get this

thing out yes very much sick of looking

at

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it it was amazing it was something that

we've been looking forward to for a very

long time and when the curtain was kind

of dropped it yeah it was worth the wait

definitely worth the wait very

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impressed hopefully that after I'm gone

many more people can enjoy

it that was the whole whole point behind

art is meant to be shared and seen by

others when I'm looking for art to

either save or collect and add to the

collection that little voice in my head

always says is this something that

Julian can fix face or no face or

missing half the canvas this is

definitely something jul confin

what do you think I did

good I think she agrees

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