The restorer’s mark: investigating the past restoration of an NGV chair

The value of an artwork can be measured in countless ways, and this pair of Italian Rococo style, mid eighteenth-century armchairs are a case in point. Acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria in 1939, the armchairs were part of the vast Howard Spensley Bequest along with Italian maiolica, bronzes and Old Master drawings. In 2014, one of chairs was inspected for potential display and it piqued staff interest due to an intriguing note pinned to the back of one of the chairs.

The note reads:

‘Restoration – Jan 1943
includes entire removal and stripping of seat upholstery.
– New webbing has been strained and shows the perished original faced on same for identification.
– The original internal hair has been recurled to recover the original camber curves of seat.
– The original seat cover has been entirely remodelled, by cutting away all light back-ground and stitching the pile decorative motifs on the substituted under fabric. The perished goat skin rear back lining has been constructed from similar material recovered from seat interior.
– Repairs have been effected to the rocalli carved toes of legs, and all upholstery restorations has been finished with the original metal studs.
A. E. Anderson
Meis. … NAT. GALLERY
16-1-43′

The note details a restoration treatment carried out on the chair in 1943. In the 1940s, the art conservation profession was in its infancy, and the Gallery didn’t have a restorer on staff until 1952, so who was the ‘A. E. Anderson’ who carried out the treatment? A COVID-19 lockdown provided the time to go down internet rabbit holes, specifically the National Library of Australia’s Trove research database, which solved the mystery of who but prompted another. A newspaper article titled, ‘Man who takes art to the people’, describes Mr Andrew E. Anderson as a Guide Lecturer at the National Gallery, a position that was sponsored since 1938 by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation.¹‘Man Who Takes Art To the People’, The Herald, Tue 18 Nov. 1941, p. 4. It prompted the question – why would a guide lecturer be restoring furniture at the NGV?

Thanks to newspapers of the day recording his activity, we can see that Anderson had training in the area of furniture-making, which was the standard qualification for restoration at the time. Beginning his career as an art teacher for the Department of Education in the late 1890s, Anderson was soon recognised for his talent and became Director of Art at Sale Technical School,²‘School of Mines’, Letter to the Editor’, The Argus, Tue 5 Nov. 1907, p. 8;
‘Technical Education’, The Ballarat Star, Mon 17 Apr. 1905, p. 6. thereafter moving to Geelong to take on the position of Art Master of the Gordon Technical College, where he taught cabinet-making.³‘Cabinet Making Class at Gordon’, Geelong Advertiser, Sat 26 May 1928, p. 6. In 1917 Anderson wrote a letter to the editor of the Geelong Advertiser newspaper titled, ‘Why is Melbourne furniture brought to Geelong’, arguing for more support and investment in the local Geelong industry.⁴‘Why is Melbourne Furniture Brought To Geelong – Letter to the Editor’, Geelong Advertiser, Mon 18 Jun. 1917, p. 4. By 1917 he was also the Honorary Secretary of the Geelong Art Gallery,⁵‘Geelong Art Gallery- Letter to the Editor’, Geelong Advertiser, Mon 19 Aug. 1918, p. XX then President from late 1922 until 1929. In 1931, he received Honorary Life Membership for his service to Geelong Gallery.⁶‘Geelong Art Gallery: jubilee history, 1900–1950’, www.geelonggallery.org.au/membership, date accessed 9 Dec. 2021. Concurrently he also worked as the Art Master at Geelong Grammar School in the 1920s,⁷‘New furnishing firm’, Geelong Advertiser, 29 Apr. 1924, p. 2. and in 1924 as manager of what appears to be a family furniture-making company, which had recently expanded into Geelong from Ballarat.⁸‘New furnishing firm’, Geelong Advertiser, 29 Apr. 1924, p. 2;
‘Ballarat enterprise’, The Ballarat Star, 30 Apr. 1924, p. 3.

As President at the Geelong Art Gallery, he nurtured a relationship with the National Gallery to borrow artworks, refresh displays and acquire artworks – often directly from artists, such as Arthur Streeton. By all accounts, he was an enthusiastic and highly knowledgeable educator, continuing his education work while at the Geelong Art Gallery in various roles, including Director, until the completion of its new wing in 1937.⁹‘Geelong Art Gallery’, Geelong Advertiser, 11 Mar. 1920, p. 2;
‘National Gallery pictures’, Geelong Advertiser, 15 Jul. 1922, p. 4;
‘Alterations at art gallery’, Geelong Advertiser, 4 Sep. 1926, p. 8;
‘Geelong Art Gallery’, The Australasian, 24 Apr. 1937, p. 11;
‘Art can aid a nation’s efficiency’, The Herald, 19 Dec. 1938, p. 10.

Anderson succeeded 300 applicants for the new position of Guide Lecturer at the National Gallery and joined a staff of around four people in 1938.¹⁰‘About people’, The Age, 28 Nov. 1938, p. 10. The 1941 article also details that ‘[Anderson] … had a long practical experience of the teaching profession, and he himself practise[d] many of the crafts whereon he lectures. He ha[d] run an expert hand over all the Gallery’s period furniture and has replaced a good many pieces of wood-work (some of them elaborately carved), which had vanished in the course of time. He made the Gothic-style base of the retable in the rotunda near the Kent Collection. Working against time, in order that the trustees should be able to see the work on the following morning, he chiselled out the long and intricate bar of leaf pattern in a single night’.¹¹‘Man who takes art to the people’, The Herald, 18 Nov. 1941, p. 4. If you can imagine the wartime period in which he worked, all resources were diverted to the war effort, so there were very few staff and presumably scant ability to pay contractors to repair artworks. Night-time work seemed not to be unusual for Anderson, as he was also listed as giving short lectures to the public from 7.20pm as part of his employment.¹²‘Gallery open tonight’, The Argus, 12 Oct. 1945, p. 16. He stayed in his position until retirement in 1947.¹³‘Country news: Geelong’, The Age, 28 May 1947, p. 3.

Education in art: Mr A. E. Anderson, guide lecturer at the National Gallery, discusses an old masterpiece with a group of girls from Penleigh Presbyterian Girls’ School, Moonee Ponds. The Argus, 6 Apr. 1939, p. 8, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne

While there is not the same tacked-on restoration documentation found on any other artwork in the NGV Collection thus far, it’s implied from the 1941 article that many other furniture items were restored to some degree by Anderson. How would we judge Anderson’s treatment of the armchair compared to conservation standards nowadays? It’s unlikely that a conservator would undertake the same treatment process today, as we have more information at our fingertips, technologies to examine with and modern materials that may today be able to stabilise the old upholstery in a more sympathetic way. Today it’s rare for conservators to remove original material from an artwork without significant analysis, discussion and that no further options are available to make the work presentable. Sometimes, retaining an object with the original materials in situ is of as much if not more value than the overall appearance of the work. Twenty-first century audiences have more of an understanding of conservation ethics, such as that a heavily worn but original surface (especially of an object that has had a past function) may be preferable to the loss of its materiality in an effort to make it look cleaner and neater for display.

Also, Australia has a professional body for conservators, the Australian Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Materials (AICCM), which provides both a Code of Conduct and a Code of Ethics to ensure our work preserves the materiality, meaning and cultural value of an artwork. Without such formal ethical guidance, Anderson nonetheless displayed a sensitivity to the materials and the passage of time by retaining samples of the original webbing and other materials, re-using the original studs, reconditioning the original horsehair (which could have been replaced at the hands of a less educated person), and using similar materials where replacements were needed. While we don’t know what the chair looked like prior to this treatment, we must be grateful to have the documentation of the work undertaken, so that any researcher looking at the armchair in the future can know what is new, original, or repaired. We may be a little alarmed at the level of intervention he applied to restore the armchair, but it seems that we can also be grateful for his stewardship of the Collection during those challenging times.

These days, each artwork has its own dossier held in the NGV’s Conservation department, which includes information such as the history of its display, condition and treatment reports, the results of any analysis, and copies of pertinent curatorial information. The files contain information mostly dating from the 1980s onwards, which correlates with the establishment of the NGV’s Conservation department and indeed the profession in Australia. Prior to this, information regarding treatments may have been added to the curatorial records or the NGV’s general records management system.

While this treatment and its documentation is confronting in contemporary terms of conservation standards, it gives us rare insight into the restoration work undertaken on the furniture collection during the war years. To me, the armchair’s interest lies not so much in its condition or quality of manufacture, but in the recording of an interesting moment in the history of conservation and restoration at the NGV. Having worked at the NGV for more than two decades, the revelation of previously unseen artworks found in the Collection remains a thrill. Even more so when you can picture the hand of the person who cared for the furniture collection before you.

A photograph of the chair’s pair on display, as published in the Quarterly Bulletin of the National Gallery of Victoria, vol.3, n.1, 1948, fig.1 (p.4).

Suzi Shaw is Conservator, Frames & Furniture at NGV.

Notes