In the Works at Winterthur

While many of the interns in the paintings conservation studio at Winterthur are University of Delaware art conservation undergraduates doing work for credit hours, the department also hosts several volunteers doing work to gain pre-program experience. In order to be a successful applicant to a conservation graduate program, many hours working under a professional conservator are necessary. Volunteering with local conservators helps people who come from backgrounds in various other careers to gain conservation skills, awareness, and those necessary pre-program hours.

Some of the volunteers in the lab, such as Carlos Moya, are UD undergraduates who previously completed the for-credit internship with Dr. Joyce Hill Stoner, paintings conservator and UD professor, and have returned on a volunteer basis to work on new projects or complete those begun during their previous internships. Carlos was able to complete the treatment he had designed for a landscape painting by Harrison Bird Brown he had examined as part of his previous internship. This painting was donated to the WUDPAC program by the Portland Museum of Art for student research. The painting had suffered several large losses which Moya was able to very successfully mend, fill, and inpaint using reversible conservation materials. In order to match the texture of Brown’s paint application techniques, Carlos used an acrylic gel medium in combination with the PVA paints used for inpainting the fills to imitate the original brushwork.

Another pre-program volunteer working in the paintings lab is Christine McIntyre. Christine is an experienced graphic designer from Doylestown, PA who is taking additional courses required for conservation graduate school application such as chemistry and building up pre-program hours and her portfolio by volunteering in the lab in her free time. Christine has worked on several of the large projects and is also working on a project of her own, a painting brought in to the monthly clinic held for the public. Little was known about the artist or time period of this work by the owner. The subject matter, however, is a scene which is familiar to many people in this area, the Smith Bridge in Centerville, DE, located only a few miles from the Winterthur grounds. McIntyre found photos online taken by covered bridge enthusiasts that helped her date the painting to 1950-1961. In the photos prior to 1950, the bridge was painted white but appears in the painting in the post-1950 red, identified by dated photos. The bridge burned down in 1961 and was not completely rebuilt until the 1990s thus providing the current span of possible dates. The treatment of this piece included consolidation of extensive curled, loose, and flaking paint using the heat-set adhesive BEVA 371, solvent gel removal of discolored varnish, filling areas of loss, and reversibly inpainting the filled areas to reconnect the visual elements of the disrupted composition.

Both Carlos and Christine will be able to use their documentation of these valuable pre-program experiences to build their graduate portfolios and springboard them into future endeavors in conservation.