Mr. Paul Himmelstein has been working in private practice since 1972 at Appelbaum and Himmelstein, a New York-based conservation firm. He specializes in the treatment of paintings and objects and is also a consultant in collection management and museum design.1 Mr. Himmelstein received his training at the Intermuseum Conservation Laboratory in Ohio. He has been a consultant for the Brooklyn Museum and has continued to be actively involved in professional organizations such as the American Institute for Conservation (AIC), where he served as a president.2 With over fifty years of experience in the field, he has participated in notable projects, including the relighting of the interior of the Hyde Collection and the renovation of the New Jersey State Museum.3 This interview took place on the occasion of his conservation of Carl Friedrich Lessing’s Landscape with Figures in a Wagon, included in the exhibition Landscape(d).

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Victoria Hazell (VH): Thank you for speaking with me today. Let’s begin with the condition of Lessing’s Landscape with Figures in a Wagon. Can you elaborate on what you encountered when you first inspected the painting?

Paul Himmelstein (PH): What struck me immediately was how the painting had a thick layer of varnish on it, which I could tell just by looking at it. To me, it was clear that this varnish had to come off. As for the process, I took the painting out of its frame, tested along the edges, and found that the substances were coming out brown, so I knew that all the varnish had to come off. The painting was also brittle on the corners, where it was being held on the stretcher. I replaced it with a new, thicker stretcher, and added a strip of linen to the back of the original canvas with an adhesive to make it tighter.

VH: After having been treated, what stands out the most to me is how the painting has brightened up. Does this have to do with the removal of the discolored varnish? How does the application of varnish affect the appearance of paintings, in terms of color saturation and gloss?

PH: Yes, paintings that have not been cleaned, or whose varnish has not been removed, have this yellowed appearance to them. Nineteenth-century paintings are often varnished with a natural resin, usually tree sap, that tends to yellow over time. As these sorts of paintings age, people tend to cover it with more layers of varnish, in the hopes that they can make it appear more transparent. The varnish in the Lessing painting gave a uniform tone to the whole painting. It didn’t have any of the depth of the appearance that it does now. The reds in the foreground, for instance, were hidden behind this layer of varnish, and details like the figures in the wagon were concealed. It wasn’t three dimensional at all; it made the painting appear very flat.

VH: The blue portions of the sky have also become more visible, when compared to the painting’s appearance before conservation. Can you speak about the process of doing the in-painting for these specific portions?

PH: When I in-paint, I match the colors on a glass palette. I use a little tray with different colored pigments, and a clear liquid that is a synthetic resin (I use AcryloidB72) because it doesn’t yellow and it is removable in milder solvents. This means that if we need to take off another layer and re-do it, it won’t damage any of the paint at all. As for the process, it is very organic. I mix colors and don’t always get things perfect in the first round. It is more of a trial-and-error process as you go along and test different mixtures. I try out little spots, and along the edges first, to see how it works. It varies a lot, and you change constantly as you are making your mixture to match the overall appearance.

VH: What was the most difficult section to in-paint in the Lessing?

PH: I would say the sky was the most difficult because it is quite subtle. It also has to do with coming to terms with the idea that the colors that we see in the sky are not just blue, or white, but a mixture. For instance, I was surprised to find that there were bits of yellow in areas that were original to the painting. So, you end up finding colors that you would not initially assume were there.

VH: What pigments were used to create the blue sky? Did you make any other discoveries about the presence or absence of pigments in the painting?

PH: Yes, I realized right away that this was not a blue sky. In fact, no blue pigment was used at all to create the sky. I used little bits of black, a little bit of white, and red-orangey hues, but it was more of a mixture of different colors. As the colors thin out and get more transparent at the edges, I found that there were yellow tones in them, even if we don’t see yellow immediately. Another interesting bit were the clouds which, although they appear purple, are not purple at all. It is more of a mixture of gray with other warmer hues. This juxtaposition of colors really gets you thinking about the artistic process, and you end up wondering what these painters did to get specific colors. It’s about understanding what you see, and understanding how different pigments interact to affect color perception.

VH: That is interesting to hear. When I was researching this painting, a primary source I came across was Goethe’s Theory of Colours. I think that what you’re getting at really resonates with these developments and ongoing discussions at the time about how perception is dependent upon a series of other factors, like lighting, and how colors interact in complementary ways. It is interesting to hear that when you were doing the process of the in-painting, what we perceive as a specific color in the final picture, like blue, was not necessarily what you used in pigmentation.

PH: Yes, exactly. By going through these processes, you end up with a better understanding of seeing. You understand how the artist constructed a series of different perspectival levels, and how artists were incredibly skilled in the way they painted. You start to see this incredible depth in how he brings things forward by using different colored greens or contrasting tones, like the mossy hues that are different from the yellowish ones.

VH: Let’s now turn to lighting. Your use of ultraviolet (UV) light to inspect the label on the back of the painting helped reveal underlying features that were not visible under normal lighting (“O. Ames Estate” and “Colemans” in script). Can you speak about the ways in which conservators use UV light in their practice? Do you think the use of UV light is helpful for determining other factors, like identifying the use of specific pigments, or verifying the authenticity of a painting?

PH: UV light was one of the first tools conservators started to use. We always start with UV because we want to see what it will show us. Sometimes you get surprised to see entire portions missing in the canvas. That is how we identify that others have filled in portions in a painting, or covered something up, in cases where there has been damage to a painting. Certain pigments respond in different ways to UV light, and some tend to fluoresce. If we put the Lessing under UV light right now, my in-painting would appear as black on the surface.

VH: Let’s conclude with a question on future directions of the conservation field. Can you speak about any recent innovations or advancements that you are particularly enthusiastic about?

PH: I think the most exciting innovations in conservation do not necessarily have to do with the treatment part of it, but more to do with using these technologies to gather more information about paintings. Certainly there are materials that are available to us now which would not have been available previously, like varnishes that are easier to apply or remove. But it is more about using innovations to learn more about the materials that are on the painting. Using technology to facilitate the identification of pigments on a canvas can be very useful when looking at matters related to authenticity, for instance.

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Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Professor Frédérique Baumgartner and Dr. Roberto C. Ferrari for their commentary and guidance in the editorial process of this interview, and Tim Trombley for his assistance with the digital conversion of this text. 

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Works Consulted

AIC’s 47^th Annual Meeting.“Speaker: Paul Himmelstein”. May 14^th 2014. https://aics47thannualmeeting2019.sched.com/speaker/aandh.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von. Theory of Colours. 1970. United Kingdom: MIT Press.

Himmelstein, Paul, and Barbara Appelbaum. “The Process of Compromise: A Team Approach to Conservation Environments.”APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology 27, no. 3 (1996): 8–11. https://doi.org/10.2307/1504410.

Johnson, Jacinta. “42^nd Annual Meeting – Engaging Communities in Collection Care Session: Current Conservation Education and Practice: Are They Sustainable?” American Institute for Conservation, Conservators Conserve: AIC’s blog archives 2008-2018. June 30^th 2014. https://resources.culturalheritage.org/conservators-converse/2014/06/30….

“The Science of Art Conservation” NPR, NPR, 11 July 1997. https://www.npr.org/1997/07/11/1010733/the-science-of-art-conservation.

• 1

  Paul Himmelstein and Barbara Appelbaum. “The Process of Compromise: A Team Approach to Conservation Environments.” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology 27, no. 3 (1996): 8–11. https://doi.org/10.2307/1504410.

• 2

  AIC’s 47th Annual Meeting. “Speaker: Paul Himmelstein”. May 14th 2014. https://aics47thannualmeeting2019.sched.com/speaker/aandh.

• 3

  Ibid.