Photograph by Mike DeFilippo
Hidden away in the bowels of the Saint Louis Art Museum, Paul Haner’s office is a haven of artistry. Dozens of works sit in storage, waiting to be assessed or restored. A Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida painting rests near the doorway, while a damaged Renaissance frame lies on a desk. The paintings conservator’s tools litter the vast space: oversized binocular microscopes, fume exhausts draped from the ceiling, a palette of synthetic paints.
Haner didn’t start out hoping to conserve art—he majored in English and American studies before going back to college to study chemistry, studio art, and art history. It was the hands-on aspect of the profession that hooked him. “It’s a very pure way to learn about the artist and what he was feeling when he created the artwork,” he says. “You become very close to the artist’s thought process when you’re working on a painting.”
Over the years, he’s restored works from a vast array of artists, countries, time periods—van Gogh, European, Old Master. “Each painting is different, and you can only do to a painting what it will allow,” he says. “Take this painting, for instance.” He motions toward a portrait from 16th-century German artist Hans Mielich…
In preparation, I found other paintings by Mielich at the National Gallery in Washington. I had detailed photos taken to help me with the treatment.
With any conservation treatment, the conservator should intervene—or introduce new materials to an artwork—as little as possible to make the painting stable.
I can tell you every pigment in that painting. We know what painting materials were available 500 years ago. In modern art, that’s not always the case, because there are so many different synthetics that artists have mixed into their paint.
The only procedure in conservation treatment that’s not reversible is cleaning, ’cause once you take it off, it’s gone.
After a painting’s been cleaned, the surface receives a new layer of varnish in preparation for inpainting. I put it on the easel for inpainting, and I apply varnish in the spray booth.
Some paintings require inpainting—that is, if you have damage, and you retouch the lost area. We try to inpaint everything as close as possible to match the surrounding paint. It can be really tricky. The balance is to do as little as possible to unify the surface and make it look acceptable, understandable, readable.
Over the last 200 years, there have been huge improvements in techniques, equipment, and materials… That will continue so that someday paintings that are untreatable now will be [treatable] later on.
There are a lot of contemporary works made of plastic or rubber or organic materials or blood—you name it—but they’re not going to be around in 500 years. That’s a real issue in the area of contemporary art.
Everything that’s done in conservation today is documented with photography. You’ll take photos before, during, and after. That way the guy who works on it 50 years from now knows what you did.
