The magic of Marianne (From Richmond and Twickenham Times)

The magic of Marianne

9:50am Saturday 30th January 2010

• Print
• Email
• Share

In 1882, artist Marianne North donated her collection of 833 vibrant botanical and landscape paintings, that she created during her travels to 17 far-flung countries, including Sri Lanka, Jamaica and South Africa, to Kew Gardens.

The works were housed in a specially commissioned gallery, but the buildings and the paintings themselves have, over time, suffered from deterioration, causing Kew Gardens to launch an extensive renovation and conservation programme in 2008, that is now starting to come to fruition.

While Kew Gardens’ newly renovated Marianne North Gallery reopened to the public in October last year, the work to restore its vast collection of paintings is carrying on behind the scenes.

Renovation to the building was essential as its original single skin design failed to stop water seeping through the gallery walls, causing damage to the building and North’s artwork.

As well as water damage, Jonathan Farley, senior conservator at Kew Gardens, says that the paintings have also been put in jeopardy by the acidic nature of the board that the artist glued her paintings directly onto.

“Boardmakers were using low-grade material at the time as the good quality material was being kept for printing and writers,” he explains.

“North used whatever glue was available and often used different glues. She used quality paper because she could afford it but, when it came to the mounting, she just didn’t know about the dangers that lay ahead.”

Farley and his team of conservators work on approximately 10 paintings every week.

Removing the acidic backing board from the painting is the team’s main job and, while some of the paintings are easily removed from their mounts, others are not quite so easily freed and a painstaking process of scraping away firmly-stuck board with a scalpel has to take place.

A by-product of this process has been the amazing discovery that North used the backs of her paintings to make notes, draw sketches and, in one case, paint a completely new picture.

“A few months ago, we employed a new member of staff, Rachael Smith, who found a hidden painting that had been unseen for more than 120 years,”says Farley.

“It took Rachael 16 painstaking hours to uncover half of the image – a pace much slower than normal as the painting was never varnished, leaving the paint layers very fragile.

“She had obviously painted this painting, then decided it wasn’t good enough and just turned over to start again.”

Although the paintings, which have been replaced in the gallery by high quality facsimiles, will return to their frames by October, with the notes, sketches and the newly discovered painting, once again hidden from the watching world, all of this information will be viewable via state-of-the-art information screens.

For more information about the Marianne North gallery, visit kew.org

• Print
• Email
• Share