To Preserve

In London the Royal Academy made an important announcement. It has appointed a distinguished committee of artists and scientific experts "to investigate the very perplexing problem of cleaning old masterpieces." For a long time restoring and cleaning has been a matter of the greatest secrecy and not infrequently a matter of disaster. The Academy hopes to make it an international study, thus protecting museums and private owners of the treasures of the past. Whereas the Louvre has been overcautious, for years allowing varnish to darken her priceless paintings, Germany and Holland have gone to the other extreme, scrubbing and revarnishing to a state of startling newborn brilliance. In the U. S., the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard has recently been concerned with this problem. Under Director Edward W. Forbes it has been carrying on a great deal of original research, particularly in the chemistry of paints and pigments.

Not only is this matter of the highest significance to those possessing old paintings; many of the examples of what we call modern art have proved shockingly impermanent. Sargent's Madame X and Renoir's Madame Charpentier, to mention only two of the paintings in the Metropolitan (Manhattan), are badly cracked and peeling. Professor Forbes has suggested that "perhaps a time will come when all artists may be able to obtain certified paints the quality of which has been passed on by a commission; ... if the canvases, pigments and varnishes bought by artists are not good, their pictures will not last. It is too much to expect every artist to be a chemist who can test his own pigments. ... So far as our resources have permitted we have undertaken the pioneering work in this direction."