Fine art of working with old masters

by Agnes Stevenson© The Herald
Originally published: 29.08.2006






IT IS the moment every restorer dreams of, but which few honestly believe will ever happen to them. As they carefully clean away the dust of centuries to reveal the true beauty of an artwork, there it is, the ghostly shadow of another painting which lies beneath.

Tarn Brown considers herself lucky to have experienced the thrill of finding a hidden treasure. Tarn, 41, a paper conservator with Glasgow City Council's museums, remembers that she had just placed a drawing by Guernico, master of the Italian baroque movement, on a lightbox prior to beginning restoration work when, beneath it, she glimpsed the faintest outline of a drawing.

"It was the most exciting moment of my career, " says Tarn. As the Da Vinci Code reminded readers and filmgoers world-wide, the art world is filled with ghosts and secrets, some of which it is reluctant to give up and others which hide in plain sight, if only we knew how to see them.

For the moment, Tarn's mystery remains unsolved. "The hunt is on to determine if the drawing was a sketch for one of Guernico's otherworks or if it was by a different artist altogether, " she says.

Solving such puzzles is just part of a job about which Tarn is passionate. Glasgow City Council has one of the most impressive municipal art collections in Europe.

Between the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, the world-renowned Burrell Collection and the Gallery of Modern Art, the city owns thousands of artefacts spanning the centuries from ancient Egyptian times to the Middle Ages, when the great Flemish tapestries were being stitched, right up to the paintings and sculptures of contemporary artists.

Held within the collection are countless prints, sketches and water colours and it is these treasures which Tarn is in charge of looking after.

Paper is a fragile medium and, although artworks in the care of Glasgow City Council are stored and displayed under optimum conditions, time inevitably takes its toll.

"Once in our care, works aren't exposed to much light damage but they can come to us with a build-up of dirt, and sometimes poor framing can cause problems, " says Tarn.

She is based at the Martyr's School, close to the Royal Infirmary, and here, within this Charles Rennie Mackintosh masterpiece, Tarn and her colleagues carry out the painstaking process of ensuring each work of art is preserved so that it can be enjoyed by gallery visitors today and in the future.

In her 12 years in the post, Tarn has worked on paintings and drawings by some of the world's most famous and celebrated artists including Rembrandt, Gaugin and Goya.

While most of us would find the prospect of even handling these masterpieces daunting, fear is not an emotion that Tarn can allow to take over.

"A great deal of what we do is small, careful work and it needs lots of patience, " she says. "You just cannot think about how valuable things are. It would make you too nervous. We often wash the artwork in water and you just have to be very calm to do it."

Even when she was at school in Callander, Tarn knew that her future lay in galleries and museums. "I used to watch all the Horizon programmes when I was at school and was fascinated by things like Peat Bog Man, an ancient body that was preserved after falling into a peat bog thousands of years ago, " she says.

After studying for an honours degree in art history at GlasgowUniversity, Tarn completed an MA in conservation at Newcastle Polytechnic. After a spell with a private conservator, she joined the team in GlasgowMuseums.

Conserving works of art is not a quick or easy process and the aim always is to preserve rather than change the look of the painting.

"There are strong ethics behind what we do, "Tarn says. "Everything has to be totally reversible and our starting point is always to work from the artist's original intention.

"We try to reduce discolouration, but once the original colours have faded, they have gone and can't be brought back. Our job is not to make anything look brand new.

Rather, we are conserving the artwork and making it sound for exhibition or storage."

It is the relationship between conservator and artworkwhich keeps Tarn committed.

"You think about the artist all the time and you work so intimately with the piece that you get to know him really well, " she says. "Sometimes you can even see his fingerprints."

Working so closely with such an important collection of art is one of the reasons that Tarn enjoys her job so much, although it doesn't stop hervisiting galleries and museums when she and her husband, Neil Tester, a geologist, are on holiday.

"I love going round galleries but I do find myself looking at details that most visitors miss, such as the mounting, " she says. "This job certainly gives you a critical eye."

In fact it is her discernment which prevents Tarn from becoming a painter in her own right. "I used to paint but not any more, " she says.

"I stopped, partly because of lack of time, but also because I was working with such beautiful art all the time that my efforts seemed to pale by comparison. For now, I get my fix of art at work."

In the picture THE first requirement for a paper conservator is an understanding of art. Tarn completed a degree in history of art at Glasgow University, studying the works of some of the greatest artists the world has produced. Renaissance art, Oriental art and surrealism are on the syllabus along with classes on the political and cultural backdrops against which the artists worked. Entry requirements are four Highers at B or two As and one B.

*Call 0141 330 200 or www. glasgow. ac. uk Glasgow School of Art offers degrees in fine art. Students can take technical training and gain exhibition experience. They can specialise in photography, painting and printmaking or environmental art and sculpture. Entry requirements are three Highers at BBC including Higher art and design and Higher English.

*Call 0141 353 4500 or www. gsa. ac. uk Northumbria University at Newcastle offers a two-year postgraduate MA in conservation. There are 14 places each year and, in addition to holding an honours degree, usually in fine art, chemistry or physics, candidates must attend an interview and submit a portfolio of their work.

*Call 0191 232 3002 or www. northumbria. ac. uk Some conservators specialise in maps, bank-notes or photographs. As well as fulltime jobs in civic collections, freelance conservators can work in the private sector.