Schooner Jilt
Date made: 1864
Description: Painting of the schooner 'Jilt' built at Port St Mary. Made while entering Naples April 1864. Captain Duke.
In December 2023 this painting will go on display in our National Art Gallery at the Manx Museum in a section dedicated to explaining how we conserve our artworks. It came into our collection in a poor state and in the gallery it will have a label explaining how we might fix such damage:
Emma Le Cornu, Paper Conservator for Manx National Heritage writes:
This is a watercolour and gouache (opaque watercolour) on paper. You can see some quite severe yellow staining, which was likely the result of water damage. This has caused severe stains and colour change in the pigments. There is evidence of mould growth before it came into our collection, which has weakened the paper in patches and caused fading of the pigments.
To reduce this kind of staining, water and other solvents need to be applied to these areas. With this treatment there is a high risk of the solvents spreading to other areas of the image causing more staining. There is a particular piece of equipment that can facilitate this, a vacuum suction table.
This table draws air through its perforated surface. When using water and solvent treatments it will hold the paper flat and constantly draw liquids through. This means you can work in one area without risk to the rest of the support.
This equipment can be used for posters, maps, plans and documents, especially those with very fragile paper supports and sensitive inks. These make up the majority of our extensive archival collection.
With this suction table we could start to conserve and display large parts of our collection that we have previously not been able to. This specialist suction table costs £20,000, but we currently do not have funds to buy this piece of equipment.
Measurements: overall: 48 cm x 71 cm
Materials: watercolour and ink on paper
Object name: Painting
Collection: Art Collection
ID number: 1954-5101
Subject tags : #artgallerydamaged
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