dk nkf - Nordisk Konservatorforbund Danmark

Figure 2. T. Kloss. Den danske eskadre under sejl på Københavns rhed. 1837. Statens Museum for Kunst. Detail in raking light,
showing tenting of the paint. This was caused by shrinkage of the canvas in connection with a glue-paste lining carried out in 1882.
Tenting identified in 19th
century Danish paintings
A survey of Danish 19 th century paintings in two
major collections intended to add a factual element
to the general perception of the shrinkage problem
being related to 19 th century paintings (fig. 2). In other
words, to investigate the actual dates of paintings
showing the typical effects of a shrinking canvas.
The collections of Statens Museum for Kunst, The
Danish National Gallery and ARoS, the art gallery
of Aarhus provided the material for the investigation
in which paintings produced in Denmark between
1800 and1900 were examined. The examination of
the paint layer, in raking light, included paintings on
view in the galleries as well as paintings in storage.
Tenting of the paint, i.e. the specific tent-like
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flaking in the directions of the warp or weft or both,
was used as the indicator of the particular canvas
reaction in question. Only paintings showing actual
localized or general tenting, or paintings which had
a conservation record with well documented tenting,
were recorded. Cupping of paint or cracks were not
counted as tenting, and neither were other kinds
of flaking, delamination or other signs of failing
adhesion in ground and paint layers. No examination
of the canvas in the paintings concerned was carried
out in this investigation.
In a material of 756 paintings in all, the investigation
identified 30 paintings showing the relevant features,
with the earliest examples dating from 1835. Seen
as a whole the distribution of paintings covers the
subsequent decades of the century with no clear
fall or rise in the incidence. The seemingly large