Mould mould everywhere!

Of the 310 paintings at Knole at least 80 have some level of mould on the surface. Although mould is present or suspected in all rooms, the worst appears to be in the Spangled Dressing room, the Billiard room, the Leicester Gallery and the Reynolds Room and is a direct result of the very poor environmental conditions.

Mould on the surface of the painting ‘Heraclitus’ in the Billiard Room

Mould penetrates the varnish and paint layers on paintings causing a white bloom on the surface, flaking paint and degradation of the canvas support. If left untreated this damage can become irreversible.

More mould on a portrait in Lady Betty’s China Closet

In order to plan how we improve the environment in the showrooms in the future and how we can conserve the paintings, we need to better understand this mould growth; why it appears on some paintings and not others and in some rooms and not others; what factors influence its growth; how can we conserve the paintings and ensure the mould doesn’t return.

‘Cimon and Iphigenia’ bt Sir Peter Lely in the Spangled Dressing Room

We have just started working with The Courtauld Institute of Art on a research project to investigate this mould problem. Six second year students are undertaking a full survey of environmental conditions in the showrooms, looking at data from the past and present to see how the current building works will affect the conditions.

Mould spores already growing in The Billiard Room…

…and in the Spangled Dressing Room, spores began to appear within 48 hours.

The Petri dishes will collect mould spores that can then be analysed and identified. Samples have also been taken from the surface of some paintings and again will be analysed and identified. This project will run for 1 year.

Siobhan

Eek! Only 15 days till we open

It’s been a while since our latest post about what we’ve been up, but we promise we have definitely been busy.  The last few weeks of the winter clean is always fairly hectic.  This year however added to te usual mayhem has been the deinstallation of internal protection work from the first phase of building work, plus preparations for the next phase.  We have also had various contractors and conservators in and out of the house.

The dust protection tunnel and hoarding has now come down in the Leicester Gallery, Museum Room, Billiard Room, Spangled Dressing Room and Spangled Bedroom.  This meant we could finally deep clean the rooms, and it’s a good job we had the protection because it turns out there was a fair amount of dust!

Volunteer Zena, gives the bay window of the Museum Room a thorough clean after the tunnel was taken down.

Our contractors dismantling the tunnel section in the Billiard Room.

With the tunnel  removed from the Billiard Room, it was time to move the Billiard Table back in to its usual place in the room.

The team re-hang net curtains and blackout curtains in the Billiard Room.

This image demonstrates perfectly the need for internal dust protection during building work.

The tunnel coming down revealed that an area of plaster ceiling in the bay window of the Spangled Dressing Room had become unstable.  With our building surveyor Robin and our contractor we discussed what approach should be taken to make it safe.

Some small bits of plaster had broken off altogether.

After investigation and discussion it was decided to remove the unstable are of plaster. It turned out to be a modern plaster skim…

…and not as much of the plaster needed to be removed as we first thought.

Earlier in the month we took a delivery of some parts of the James II Bed, including the headboard and and some curtains.  They have returned after several years of conservation work.  As they are very carefull packed and in quite large boxes we took the decision to store them in the Venetian Ambassador’s Bedroom.  The Headboard will be no display to visitors during the 2013 season.

Conserved parts of the James II bed have returned from the National Trust textile studio in Norfolk.

It took a whole day for the conservation Team with  two of our volunteers to move all the boxes from the Great Hall to the Venetian Ambassadors Bedroom.  There has been lots of other lifting and moving around of various objects in recent weeks.  Including two tapestries on 4.5 metre long tubes.  They came from Lady Betty’s Bedroom which is now empty for the building work and were stored in the Billiard Room last year.  As the Billiard Room has been re-instated we needed to find another temporary home for them.  It turns out they both fitted rather nicely under the refectory table in the Great Hall.

So where do you store two tapestries on 4.5 metre long tubes…? Under a table of course!

Cliveden Conservation have been back carrying out more work to the Great Hall and Great Stairs floors.

Wet paper towels are left overnight on recently repaired areas of grouting to help it set properly.  If it dries out to quickly the new grouting can fail. 

Toning in the new grouting to match the colours of the stone. 

This week CSC Window Films have been in working int he first half of the house, where windows have been repaired.  They apply a film to the windows that absorbs ultraviolet light out of sunlight coming in the windows.  It is very important to minimise or stop completely any UV coming in to the show rooms as it is the most damaging part of the light spectrum and especially harmful to our textile collection.  Light damage is cumulative and completely irreversible.

Applying new UV film to the windows. The Museum Room window has never had film on before as it has been behind a display cabinets since the 1960s!

More shifting and lifting about!  This time four large portraits needed hanging at the north end of the Leicester Gallery.  They had been taken down while the dust protection was up in front of the window.

The deep clean of rooms has now been finished, leaving two of the long galleries, the Billiard Room, Great Stairs and Spangled Rooms floors to be waxed and polished.  We have already started uncovering some of the rooms and putting the furniture back in to place.  Two more weeks to go and we’ll be open again.  Where did winter go?

Sarah, Lucy, Melinda and Emily

p.s it’s snowing AGAIN!

Reynolds – a risk taking painter!

In January Siobhan (Project Conservator), Helen (House and Collections Manager) and Victoria our project fundraising manager, visited the studio of paintings conservator Melanie Caldwell.  Melanie is carrying out a conservation trial on our Reynolds self portrait.  Here is a report of the work so far:

Knole has an extremely important collection of paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds. They were collected by the 3rd Duke who was a close friend and possibly the biggest patron of Reynolds in the late 18th century.  The Reynolds self portrait was probably painted in 1775 and is mentioned in the Dukes account book as being in his London residence in 1778.

The first mention of the room being known as the Reynolds Room is in 1828 when three Reynolds portraits were hung here.

The current picture hang dates from the 1890s

Reynolds, as with many of his contemporaries had started to experiment with techniques and materials and a trip to Italy influenced him greatly.  On his return he began to experiment with painting materials in an effort to emulate the brilliant colour and rich impasto of the old masters he had seen.

Reynolds took many risks combining volatile pigments, waxes and resins. The initial effects were stunning, but even during his lifetime the instability of his paintings was becoming apparent:

Carmine red pigments used to create flesh tones faded rapidly giving many of his portraits a characteristically pale appearance.

Fugitive blues and browns darkened leading to paintings that are considerably tonally different now from when they were created

Reynolds also used bitumen and waxes added into pigments and varnishes to create rich velvety dark backgrounds. Unfortunately these cause massive problems during drying resulting in deep cracks of the paint surface.  There is evidence that Reynolds himself tried to restore some of his early paintings in later life. But his experiments continued and today conservation of his paintings is notoriously difficult.

Raking light showing raised paint and cotton wool fibres.

Complex paint and varnish layers make any consolidation and cleaning of Reynolds paintings very difficult.  There is currently a Reynolds Research Project at the Wallace Collection with a view to restoring up to 12 paintings, and Tate Britain has also carried out considerable research.

At Knole we are now looking at how we can conserve the fine collection shown in the Reynolds room. Problems with technique have been exacerbated by the poor environmental conditions at Knole and the collection is now in a fragile and unstable condition.

To plan for this work we have taken one painting to carry out a conservation trial.  The Reynolds Self Portrait is currently at a conservator’s studio undergoing close examination and tests to establish a method for conservation.  The Knole trial includes:

•         Detailed condition assessment
•         Examination under magnification and UV light
•         Sampling of paint and varnish layers
•         Surface cleaning and consolidation of flaking paint
•         Minimal restoration and revarnishing.

Melanie looking at the painting under the microscope.

Initial Results:

The painting has a thick paste linen lining which has probably been done in the last 80 years although we have no records of this work. There has been a previous attempt at cleaning with wear visible in the face, hair and hands.

There are many clumps of old cotton wool on the surface – again evidence of previous attempts at conservation.

Magnified x 5, showing cotton wool fibres, brown varnish and opaque lifting varnish.

Detail of surface, magnified x 2, showing cotton wool fibres.

There is also some relatively recent retouching along the cracks in the face.

Magnified x 5, showing discoloured retouching in face along crack.

Other problems revealed, as a result of the poor environment at Knole, is mould growth, perished surface coatings and flaking paint.

Detail of opaque lifting varnish and mould.

Conclusions so far:

The specific problems with Reynolds technique mean that these paintings need to be considered separately to the rest of the paintings at Knole. It may not be necessary to give full conservation treatment to all the paintings in the Reynolds Room but some treatment such as cleaning and lining may be inevitable. Flaking paint must be stabilised and it must be decided what level of surface deterioration is acceptable.

Proposed treatment:

1. Take 5 samples from the edges of the painting to look at cross section under magnification. This will tell us whether the background is over painted and how many varnish layers there on the surface, which will inform what cleaning is possible.

2. Medium analysis by FTIR (Fourier transfer infra red spectrometry) will inform if and how much wax or varnish was added to the paint by Reynolds. This will affect cleaning and choice of consolidant

When the analysis has been completed the painting will be surface cleaned removing the top layer of varnish to allow localised consolidation of flaking paint from the front. The painting can then undergo minimal restoration and revarnishing.  Once environmental conditions have been improved within the Reynolds Room the painting can be reinstated safely and displayed once more for many years to come.

Emily

What lies beneath

The National Portrait Gallery have discovered a hidden painting beneath their copy of the 1601 portrait of Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset.  This work is a part of their Making Art in Tudor Britain research, which Knole have been taking part in.  You can read our previous blog on the work carried out on some of our portraits at Knole: http://knolenationaltrust.wordpress.com/2012/07/14/dendrochronology-isnt-easy-to-say/

The team from the NPG will be back later this week to carry out some more dendrochronology on more of the paintings in the Brown Gallery set.

Double click on the image to enlarge it, or read it on the Daily Telegraph website

Emily, Melinda, Sarah and Lucy

All 212,000 of the United Kingdom’s Oil Paintings are Now Online

Today the Public Catalogue Foundation (PCF) and the BBC completed their hugely ambitious project to put online the United Kingdom’s entire collection of oil paintings in public ownership. This makes the UK the first country in the world to give such access to its national collection of paintings. In total, 3,217 venues across the UK have participated in the project and 211,861 paintings are now on the Your Paintings website at http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/

Your Paintings is a partnership between the PCF and the BBC. The PCF started making a photographic record of the UK’s oil paintings in 2003. The Your Paintings website, built by the BBC, was launched with 63,000 paintings in June 2011. The project covers paintings not only held by museums and galleries but also works in universities, local councils, hospitals and even paintings held in fire stations, zoos and a lighthouse. Typically 80% of these paintings are not on view whilst the vast majority have never been photographed. All oil paintings owned by the nation are shown irrespective of perceived quality and condition.

Your Paintings now allows everyone to see the full extent of the national collection for free together with BBC TV documentary archive and biographical information for selected artists from Oxford University Press. It is a project that will benefit art enthusiasts, students, curators, researchers, tourists and anyone unable to make the journey to the collections. In February 2013, the BBC will lead a nationwide celebration of Your Paintings with many opportunities for the public to discover paintings that have rarely been on view. More information will be announced on Twitter @your_paintings .

To help the PCF and BBC identify and catalogue what can be seen in each painting, the public is being invited to ‘tag’ the nation’s paintings. Tagging is fun, easy and you don’t need to be an art expert to do it. The results will allow future users of the Your Paintings website to find paintings of subjects that interest them. Your Paintings Tagger can be reached through the Your Paintings website.

Paintings
Taken together, this collection of 212,000 paintings presents an unparalleled insight into the nation’s culture and history over 600 years both at the national and local level. Much of it constitutes an important pre-photographic record. It also presents an important survey of changing tastes and collecting habits. Approximately a quarter of the paintings are portraits with a preponderance of mayors, admirals, royalty and unknown sitters. Nestling among the tens of thousands of portraits are Eric Cantona and other Manchester United footballers painted in the style of Piero della Francesca and Mantegna; the entire town council of Crewkerne in Somerset painted by a fellow councillor; and Sean Connery painted as a life model in 1952 at the Edinburgh College of Art.

Artists
Paintings by over 37,000 artists are shown on Your Paintings. Old Masters and leading British painters are represented in considerable numbers: 391 paintings by Joshua Reynolds, 348 by Turner, 281 by Gainsborough, 273 by Walter Sickert, 189 by Stanley Spencer and 114 by Van Dyck. The less well-known John Everett and Marianne North have over 2,000 works between them. Surprising inclusions include paintings by Noel Coward, Cecil Beaton, Gertrude Jekyll, Derek Jarman and Dwight D Eisenhower. Approaching 30,000 paintings do not have firm artist attributions leaving the possibility of important discoveries in years to come.

Collections
The National Trust is the largest single collection on the website with 12,567 paintings followed by Tate, Glasgow Museums, the National Maritime Museum and National Galleries Scotland. However, approximately half of the collections on the site have ten or fewer paintings.

117,000 paintings are held across 2,197 collection venues in England outside London; 46,000 paintings (273 venues) in London; 30,500 paintings (441 venues) in Scotland; 12,500 paintings (195 venues) in Wales; 4,000 paintings (63 venues) in Northern Ireland; and 1,800 paintings (48 venues) in the Channel Islands.

40,000 paintings have been added to Your Paintings today in this final upload of paintings to the site. Collections added include the National Galleries of Scotland; the National Trust for Scotland; Manchester City Galleries; Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, Paisley Museum and Art Galleries, the Palace of Westminster, Dulwich Picture Gallery; The Courtauld Gallery; The Wallace Collection; and many more collections from Edinburgh, Southern Scotland, Bristol, Greater Manchester and Greater London. Also included in this upload are all the Oxford Colleges and many of the Cambridge Colleges – institutions that are not in public ownership but have joined the Your Paintings website for the benefit of wider public awareness and research.

The words you don’t want to hear over a radio call are…

… “there is a leak in the Ballroom!”
Thankfully it wasn’t quite as bad as it sounds and water wasn’t pouring through the ceiling, but dripping through a crack in the panelling and running down the wall.

Unfortunately the water was running in to the path of one of the paintings and gilt wall lights.

Water running down the panelling in the Ballroom, behind a painting (you can see the bottom of the picture frame at the top of the photo)

So we immediately sprung in to action to remove both objects from the wall.

Painting of the 3rd Duke of Dorset removed from the path of the water.

The gilt wall light that hangs above the portrait of the 3rd Duke.  It is temporarily resting on a sheet of plastazote and acid free tissue till it is safe to be re-hung.

Once the painting was down we thoroughly inspected the back of it to check for any water damage.  The back of the frame in one corner and a very small area on the back of the canvas were slightly damp.  We will allow this to dry out before going back on the wall and monitor it to ensure there is no mould growth or further physical damage.

Very small damp area on the back of the canvas.

Once the movable objects had been taken down from the wall and away from the route of the leak, we set about protecting others that were too big to move, and as the leak was so small unnecessary to move.  We wrapped the large portrait of Elizabeth Colyear, 7th Duchess of Dorset, in tyvek so if there were any further drips they would not come in to contact with the painting or frame.

Absobent pads placed on top of some dusters, on top of the tyvek protecting the picture frame and painting. Although the leak has been isolated this has been left in place just in case more drips find their way down through the crack in the panelling again.

As we were busy moving paintings and hanging Tyvek our Premises Team were hunting down the source of the leak.  Thankfully they found it quite quickly and were able to isolate the problem until it can be permanently repaired.

Just an average Thursday afternoon for the Conservation Team!

Emily, Lucy, Melinda and Sarah

Clean, pack, move…

…and four days later two show rooms are cleared of their contents.  It sounds like three easy steps, but nothing is ever that easy at Knole.  Packing away Lady Betty’s Bedroom and Sitting Room for the next stage of the external building work required a lot of planning, overcoming logistics and weather issues and some hard work from staff and volunteers.

For the internal dust protection to be installed it was decided it would be easier to remove all the contents to store, as there is no space elsewhere in the show rooms to store the objects.  Both rooms will remain closed to visitors now until the end of the season.  As they are two of the smallest rooms on the visitor route it would not have been feasible to install the protection and maintain visitor access safely.

Dust screen in the window of Lady Betty’s Sitting Room.

Inside this box is Lady Betty’s bed. It was much simpler to leave it in-situ than dismantling it and finding space to store the parts.

By boxing in the Lady Betty’s bed to protect it in-situ we risk creating a micro climate inside the box and the levels of relative humidity could be increase beyond what the materials of the bed are used to.  Therefore we are monitoring the environment inside the box with a relative humidity and temperature sensor.  The sensor sends regular readings back to our computer so we can track the conditions over a 24 hour period.  Should the levels of relative humidity remain consistently too high we can open hatches in the box to get some air through and allow the additional moisture to dry out.

Environmental monitoring equipment inside Lady Betty’s bed box.

Lady Betty’s bed before being boxed in. The plain wood of the walls is now visible as we have removed the two tapestries.

So what did we have to do pack away all the objects…?

Every object being moved to the store room was cleaned and condition checked.  It is important that we make an accurate assessment and record of the condition of each object before we move it so that we can determine if any damage occurs during the moving process or while the objects are in store.  Of course when handling objects we are always extremely careful, but carrying them out of the house, across two courtyards and up over 40 stairs to the store room does carry some risk of potential minor damage.  However the risk of moving them to store is considered to be a much smaller than leaving them in-stiu during the building work.

One of out volunteers cleans and condition checks one of the chairs from Lady Betty’s Bedroom.

Sarah and volunteer Lisa cover one of the cleaned chairs, after photographing and updating its condition report form.

Every object was also photographed before having their dust covers put on.  At the end of each day we carried the collection up to the temporary store room.

The Conservation Team working very hard. Lucy updates object condition reports on the laptop.

Sarah, Melinda and volunteers Zena and Jo clean 2 of the 30+ paintings from Lady Betty’s Sitting Room and Bedroom.

The smaller and medium sized paintings are carried and stored in crates. The bottom of the crate is padded out with plastazote (a high density inert foam), then each painting is interleaved with plastazote. The paintings are placed in the crate back to back or face to face. Acid free tissue paper and bubble wrap are used to fill voids in the crates and limit movement of the paintings during the journey to the store room.

Paintings on the move!

Happy smiley Conservation Assistants.

Just a few stairs to climb!

After four stools, six chairs, one table and many many paintings we then had two tapestries and a carpet to role!  Here is a time lapse video of the four days work to pack away all the contents: Packing away Lady Betty’s Rooms

A massive thank you to our volunteers Sam, Zena, Lisa and Jo for their help, we couldn’t of done it without you!

Emily, Melinda, Lucy and Sarah

 

 

Dendrochronology isn’t easy to say…

…or type, so from here on in, we’ll refer to it as dendro’.

Last week Catherine Daunt (Leverhulme-funded PhD candidate, National Portrait Gallery (NPG)/UniversityofSussex) returned to Knole with her colleague from the NPG, Dr Edward Town, to continue her research on the set of portraits on panels in the Brown Gallery.

The NPG team are researching the portrait set that hang on the south wall of the Brown Gallery

The NPG team are researching the portrait set that hang on the south wall of the Brown Gallery. Catherine’s research is part of the NPGs Making Art in Tudor Britain (MATB) research project (2007-11).  In a summary of her research so far Catherine explains “the Brown Gallery set is of great interest to me because of its size, its range of sitters, its derivation from a variety of sources, and the fact that it is probably in the house for which it was originally made. No set like it survives inBritainand it was probably always unique, tailored for its original owner.”

The set was not always hung in the Brown Gallery.  In 1821 John Bridgeman stated that the paintings were originally in the Cartoon Gallery but were moved when the cartoons arrived in 1700/1 (John Bridgman, An Historical and Topographical Sketch of Knole inKent; with a Brief genealogy of the Sackville Family,London, 1821). On a previous visit Catherine and Ed found traces of a light blue paint found beneath the gilded ovals on some of the paintings, which supports this view as this paint colour was used in the decoration of the Cartoon Gallery at this time.

Portrait of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, part of the Brown Gallery set

So far Catherine and her colleagues have undertaken the following research methods:
-  Surface examination and stylistic analysis.
-  High resolution digital photography and infra-red photography.

On this visit Dr Ian Tyers accompanied Catherine to carry out dendro’ on 8 of the paintings; Sir Francis Drake; Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex; Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey; Henri, Duc de Guise; Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset; William Cecil, Baron Burghley; Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury; Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester.

Dr Ian Tyers begins the dendrochronlogy on one of the paintings.

The microscope used to measure the rings in the end grain of the panels. This website explains the dendro process: http://www.arts.cornell.edu/dendro/painttex.html

Catherine has summarised some of the research findings so far:

- Stylistically, there appear to be a number of subgroups. It is likely that several painters worked on the set.
- Dendrochronology has indicated that the paintings date from around the early years of the seventeenth century and that the panels are made from Eastern Baltic oak, which was was common during this period.
- Eight paintings from the set have so far been examined by Ian and three were found to have been painted on wood that derived from the same tree. Two others were found to contain wood from another common tree. These links indicate that the paintings were made together in the same workshop and were probably always intended to form a set.

Catherine and the team hope to carry out further dendro on more of the portraits.

Our thanks go to Catherine for providing details on her research so far, and we look forward to finding out more as the research continues.  Watch this space!

Emily, Lucy, Melinda and Sarah.

You can out more about the research project via the NPGs website:
www.npg.org.uk/matb

Lots of cleaning…and scaffold developments!

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve carried out a deep clean in the Collections Store.  It’s long over due and needed, especially as we have a pest insect problem that has developed, despite the room being environmentally controlled.  Good housekeeping is the best way of preventing infestations developing.  Now the room has been reorganised and we are spending more time in there condition checking objects, it will be much easier for us to keep on top of the cleaning too.

Susie and Rob hard at work cleaning in the store.

The room needed a full deep clean from ceiling to floor.

Tom condition checking objects in the store this week.

Rob from Dyrham Park, a ‘Our Passport To Your Future’ programme trainee Conservation Assistant, spent 2 days with us last week as a part of his year’s training.  Here is a link to his blog he has written over the last year, including a post about his time with us at Knole http://robsblogdyrhamnationaltrust.wordpress.com/

On Tuesday this week we re-hung the Van Dyck of Sofonisba back in the Leicester Gallery.  She had spent time re-acclimatising in the Great Hall after returning from exhibition.

Melinda and Emily re-hang the Van Dyck

The chains the painting hangs from are not secured to the wall at the same height. The ring of the chain the right frame hook was on needed adjusting.

During the closed day clean of the show rooms we took the chance to get our tallest ladder out on the Great Stairs to clean dust from the highest windowsill.  It was a good time to look closely at some of the coloured glass and check the condition of the glass.

Emily cleaning the dust from a windowsill on the Great Stairs.

Beautiful coloured glass in the Great Stairs windows.

The scaffold for external building repairs has began to be built across the East and North fronts of the building over the last 2 weeks.  Soon the contractors will be here to remove cement rendering that is failing and apply lime wash render instead.  The windows will also be coming out to be repaired and re-fitted.  The scaffold is huge as it is going right up over the roof.

Scaffold going up on the East front

A new view from the Spangled Bedroom

A 90 tonne crane is coming next week to lift the giant scaffold beams for the roof.  The building of the scaffold is being captured on a time lapse camera, we’ll post the film when its completed.

Friday was a particularly busy, after the morning clean we had to set up for this months ‘Meet the Conservation Team’ event.  Cliveden Conservation also began remedial repairs to the Great Hall floor.  They began on the dais removing old grouting between the Purbeck Marble and then re-grouting it again.

Lucy vacuüm cleaning the upholstery of a stool from the Ballroom

Conservation work has begun on the Great Hall floor

In the evening we hosted a fundraiser garden party.  Although because of the weather it was held in the Orangery and some of the show rooms.  Melinda and Emily were demonstrating upholstery cleaning in the Reynolds Room and, showing guests our collection of pest insects.  As if on cue, just before the event began we had a heavy rain downpour and the window on the Second Painted Stairs leaked quite a bit, very real evidence of why we need to continue to raise funds towards our Inspired by Knole conservation project.

The leaky Second Painted Stairs window

Lucy, Sarah, Emily and Melinda.

One in, one out!

At the end of May I returned to Dulwich Picture Gallery (DPG) to oversee the de-installation of our Van Dyck portrait of Sofonisba Anguissola.  She was the last painting to come down, 2 days after the end of ‘Van Dyck in Scilly’ exhibition.  The gallery art handlers removed her from the wall to a table for the conservator and I to check.

One of the mitre joints of the frame that has opened up in the drier conditions at the DPG. If Knole had environmental control our relative humidity levels would be nearer to that of the DPG, and any change would not seem so drastic. This is why we have to allow for periods of acclimatisation when objects go on loan.

Using a condition report carried out before the exhibition when the painting first arrived at the DPG, we assessed the painting to see if there had been any change in condition or deterioration to the painting surface or picture frame.  The environmental conditions in the gallery are controlled and within the desired limits of 50 – 60% relative humidity (RH).  This is however much lower, and drier, than the RH at Knole.  The paint layer although fragile appeared to have no change in condition, and the frame seemed ok too.  However the mitre joints did appear to have opened up.  This will have occurred because the wood has lost a small amount of moisture in the drier conditions.

I examined the painting again once it had been delivered to Knole and using soft goat hair brushes I carefully removed dust from the frame and painting.

However there are not any other signs of physical stress to the frame and we are confident that as the frame re-acclimatises back to Knole’s RH levels and takes on moisture again the joints will close up again as the wood swells.  The painting and frame are being closely monitored during the re-acclimatisation period, it has been in the Great Hall for a week now.  The RH is higher in  here than at the DPG but lower than the Leicester Gallery where it normally hangs.  Providing the RH in the Leicester Gallery is not excessively high at the end of the week we hope she will be hung by the weekend, just as another portrait has left…

Sofonisba has been in the Great Hall re-acclimatising. A sheet of acid free tissue has been place over the painting to prevent dust settling on the surface.

…Now it was the turn of our portrait of Thomas Sackville, 1^st Earl of Dorset, which hangs in the Great Hall to go on loan.  It was collected on Wednesday and delivered to the National Portrait Gallery (NPG).  The painting is very similar to a painting already in the NPG. Both pictures are attributed to the significant Elizabethan and Jacobean artist, John de Critz the elder.

I supervised the art handlers taking down, wrapping and carrying the painting to the lorry.  I also checked it was secure and properly supported.

Thomas Sackville is carefully wrapped by the art handlers. It is a panel painting made of 3 oak panels joined with strips of Hessian on the back.

Extra padding was required for the name plate that protrudes from the bottom of the picture frame.

Recent research and tracings taken of both the paintings at Knole and the NPG has revealed that they correspond very closely. The exhibition at the NPG, entitled “Double Take” will explore the nature of versions and copies of 16^th century portraits by pairing five key portraits from the Galleries collections with other surviving versions.*

In the lorry and ready to go. The painting was soft wrapped in layers of acid free tissue paper and bubble wrap. Extra padding was put on the corners, and the it is wrapped in a blanket before being secured with webbing straps.

Emily

*You can find out more about the exhibition at the NPGs website
http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/display/2012/double-take-versions-and-copies-of-tudor-portraits.php