Michael: This painting by Henri Rousseau is
called "The Sleeping Gypsy."
It was painted in 1897.
It depicts a lion coming across a sleeping
woman in the desert.
It's really one of my favorites of Rousseau's
paintings.
It seems like he's watching over her in a
way,
maybe protecting her rather than thinking
about lunch or dinner.
Henri Rousseau was a self-taught artist who
was based in Paris.
His subjects included jungle scenes and we
know that Rousseau never left France,
it's not that he traveled to Morocco or other
parts of Africa and witnessed these kinds
of subjects
but that he imagined them with the help of
some of the things he saw in Paris.
And the one source that we know of for the
Sleeping Gypsy for the lion is a bronze sculpture
that's in the botanic gardens that he would
have seen.
Rousseau wrote to his hometown of Laval offering
them the painting for 1,800 Francs.
Whatever happened, the painting did not end
up going to Laval but basically it disappeared
from view until 1924.
The painting was supposedly found in a charcoal
merchant shop in Paris.
You wonder you know, how it was displayed.
And if, yeah, at some point, we know it was
quite dirty.
The dealer who was associated with it wrote
to us and said that he had had it cleaned
and varnished.
So, it has had several conservation treatments.
Some of the treatments we know exactly what
happened.
Some we don't know exactly.
Part of the detective work really was just
going to our archives in the painting and
sculpture department, and seeing what kind
of written documentation there was
 
And it turned out there was quite a bit, letters
from Rousseau and then we also had some photographs,
early photographs from the 20s and the 40s.
After consulting the documentation, then,
of course, we have the painting here in the
studio, we look at it under different lighting
conditions.
And that includes infrared light, ultraviolet
light, even x-ray.
The painting had never been x-rayed so we
were keen to do that.
It’s been on continuous view so it’s really
the first time we’ve been able to spend
time with it and get to really know the painting.
All those different techniques give us clues
to the condition of the painting that's very
helpful for
starting any kind of treatment.
The sky looked particularly blotchy because
the old restorations no longer matched and
we knew also that it had at least three layers
of varnish on it that had been applied over
the years.
And some of those had discolored quite markedly.
Diana: What you’re seeing here is the fully
stitched together xray.
This can tell us you know, this tear is actually
pretty significant over an inch or two of
the mouth
or down here a very old repair might be hard
to see because they might have used the paint
like that is very similar to the original
paint, so oil paint over oil paint,
but we can see that there is something going
on here that doesn't look great.
All of this darkening you know something happened
to the original paint and then new paint was
added to fill that loss.
Compositional changes are always interesting
so finding a vessel where there is no longer
a vessel is always kind of surprising and
exciting.
Now that we know it's there if you look at
a certain angle in the painting you can actually
see the outline of it,
because he didn't erase it, he left the paint
he just covered it with more paint.
I hope that he wouldn't be too embarrassed
with us knowing his changes or maybe what
he considered mistakes,
definitely doing it for the sake of research.
Michael: I mean the sky has been challenging
because first of all it was very heavily varnished,
not by Rousseau but by restorers in the 40’s
and 50’s
So now 65 years later these materials have
really discolored and degraded and they are
altering the original colors of the painting
so I am removing them to reveal the real Rousseau
palette.
So I’m doing that with this tissue and solvents.
That causes the varnish to be dissolved and
safely absorbed into the tissue and peel it
off the surface.
It’s quite gentle because it doesn’t involve
rubbing the surface more than necessary
and then the varnish layer comes off onto
the tissue.
So removing that really revealed the true
colors of the background but it also revealed
some areas that had been heavily over painted.
Once I’ve finished the varnish removal I’ll
go back and remove all those old restorations
using a gel material which is
applied to the surface and left on there.
It swells the overpaint and then that’s
removed with a brush.
There’s so much to do and not so much time
that we’re taking the opportunity to work
side by side
so right now Diana is working on the dress
of the gypsy which has some cracks.
Diana: So I’m just using a teeny tiny brush
to feed color into areas that are cracked.
You know, you don’t want to miss so you’ve
to be pretty precise
because you’re matching the color to look
good in the crack not on top of the paint.
Michael: There was some small damages in the
body of the lion and in the face of the figure,
so those needed to be restored.
Typically you use a kind of material that
is reversible because if you chose the same
materials that the artist used they would
essentially fuse with the surface and you
wouldn’t be able to remove them after they’ve
dried,
so that's why we don't use oil on an oil painting.
We might choose a synthetic paint instead
because the solvents you need to remove it
will not harm the original oil paint.
We found areas of the sky that were totally
white that revealed the priming layer.
So getting to match the, you know, oil paint
from 1897 can be challenging.
And particularly blue is difficult to match
because it looks different in different lighting
conditions.
Typically in the studio since we have nice
diffuse northern light it's even enough so
we get a good color match
but it's also possible in the galleries it
could look slightly green or slightly pale,
but we will bring it to the galleries and
look at it,
hopefully before its you know actually installed.
The way he thought about how the moon reflects
on the figures and
highlights certain things,
that to me is like really magical about this
painting.
As we have a different approach these days
and than we had in the 50’s,
everything is a little more minimal so the
painting won't need to have a whole varnish
removal ever again.
I mean it was really the first time I’d
worked extensively on a Rousseau painting
so it was really exciting to see especially
the colors in the sky revealed
and the stars start to twinkle as the varnish
came off.
It’s a magical environment you could picture
yourself in I guess,
as long as you're not afraid of large animals
coming up in the night.
