The Conservation Department

Conservation Department

Conservation of Cruikshank’s The Worship of Bacchus:

Demon Drink  |  Before Treatment  |  Conservation Treatment  |  Cruikshank's Painting Technique

Condition Before Conservation Treatment and Display

Cruikshank’s major work about the evils and horrors of alcohol has not been shown in public for nearly 100 years . Before this display it was in a totally unexhibitable condition.

For much of its life it has been exposed to smoke pollution and generally neglected . The visual appearance was extremely poor, mainly due to the accumulation of a considerable amount of dirt which consisted mostly of soot and to some extent the darkening of a varnish layer. These obscured much of the detail and colours.Since the Clean Air Act of 1956, it is easy to forget how much smoke there was in London’s air, two thirds of which was estimated to come from home and office fires.

General view during cleaning

In some places slightly worn areas of thinner paint indicate that a crude attempt had been made to clean the painting when it was first becoming dirty.

The canvas support had become fragile with age. There were fourteen accidental tears (the largest 80mm in length) and some small holes near the edges. The tacking edges had been further weakened by acidity from the supporting wooden stretcher and corrosion from the iron tacks used for the attachment. This has resulted in numerous losses and splitting of the edges in many places with the canvas literally hanging of the top edge of the stretcher by threads with large undulations in the canvas due to lack of tension . Pieces of the painting including the stretcher had been lost and damaged at the corners due to careless handling in the past. The stretcher joins were distorted and the edges generally damaged.

  
Detail of canvas splitting on top edge & detail of stretcher corner.

From the number of holes in the tacking edges, it is clear that the painting had been removed and reattached to the stretcher at least three or four times. This would have been during its provincial tour during the later part of the nineteenth century when the painting was rolled for transport between the different venues. An external strip lining had been sewn onto the front of the original tacking edges, probably to strengthen the painting on return to the National Gallery in 1896.

General view in raking light.

The rolling caused fine linear vertical age cracks with slightly elevated edges in the ground and paint layers. There is also a fine network of similar cracks over the whole painting and linear ones relating to the inner edges of the stretcher members (see raking light photo above). The cracks are stable and barely visible in normal viewing conditions.

Apart from the deterioration described, the condition of the painted image wass otherwise good.

Photos: Tate Photography