Paper Conservation: Decisions & Compromises

Removable Loss Integration in the Re - Treatment of Robert Delaunay‘s
Three Graces, Study for “The City of Paris” at the Albertina, Vienna.
Irene Brückle | Maike Schmidt | Eva Hummert | Elisabeth Thobois
Studiengang Konservierung und Restaurierung von Graphik, Archiv- und Bibliotheksgut,
Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart, Germany;
Kupferstichkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany;
Albertina, Abteilung Restaurierung, Vienna, Austria
The case study illustrates core questions that
concern loss integration of artworks on paper:
defining and refining the treatment goal in
discussion with curators; developing a minimally
invasive method for loss integration that
respects the potential future treatment desires;
the technical challenge of creating a visual
match for an unevenly discoloured, machinemade
paper. The project was carried out as a
cooperation between the Museum Albertina and
the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste
Stuttgart. The large oil sketch “The three Graces,
study for ‘The City of Paris’” by the French painter
Robert Delaunay, measuring ca. 190 x 140 cm
(Fig. 1), is one of several preparatory works for
the famous painting The City of Paris in the Centre
Georges Pompidou. It belongs to the Batliner
Collection in the Museum Albertina (Inv.Nr.
GE29DL). The artwork, drawn on thin, machinemade
woodpulp-paper, was apparently torn into
several large pieces by the artist himself. After
Delaunay’s death in 1941, however, the work
was reassembled, lined on canvas and mounted
on a strainer. The mounting was at least once
removed and renewed. The sketch shows many
damages, many of them caused by historic restoration
treatments such as filled losses, which
are visually obtrusive, wrongly overlapping tear
edges and aged retouchings. It also had undergone
extensive aqueous treatment of which no
record exists, most likely including bleaching,
which subsequently caused mottled discolouration
and brown tide lines along the oil paint
edges. Patches of untreated, and therefore even
coloured and darker brown paper have remained
in isolated areas between paint strokes where
treatment had not been dared. This mottled appearance
of the original paper was to be matched
in the production of an insert. The problem
that was addressed in our treatment concerned
two large distracting losses resulting from the
1940 ties damage, one at the right lower edge ca.
Fig. 1: Robert Delaunay, “The three Graces, study for ‘The
City of Paris’ “ (Albertina Inv.Nr. GE29DL), 1912, normal
light, before treatment (08.07.2010).
49 x 13 cm, the bigger and more prominent one
at the lower left edge ca. 46 x 74 cm. They had
soon been filled with woodpulp paper inserts
that had discoloured to a dark-brown tone contrasting
with the original paper colour. The old
inserts had been pasted onto the lining, overlapping
the edges of the original. Black-and-white
photographs of the work in earlier exhibition
catalogues starting 1956 already show the paper
fillings (Anon. 1956; Schilling and Platte 1962;
Jenderko-Sichelschmidt 1976), but indicate that
their colour once was much brighter than today.
This suggests that the paper darkened in the
ICOM-CC Graphic Documents Working Group Interim Meeting | Vienna 17 – 19 April 2013
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