Restorations at the Musée Jeanne d’Aboville

6/1/25 - Restorations - La Fère, Musée Jeanne d’Aboville - A dodo appears in this composition, and every detail has been restored. The Musée Jeanne d’Aboville is continuing the restoration of its permanent collections (see news item of 19/1/24), which include some 400 paintings from the 15th to the 18th centuries, with a particular emphasis on Flemish Primitives and Dutch landscapes. The collection was assembled by the Countess of Héricourt and bequeathed to the town of La Fère in 1860 to create a museum in memory of her mother.

The composition by Jan Pauwel Gillemans was no longer legible, hidden by several layers of yellowed varnish and old overpainting (ill. 1 and 2). As Mariel Hennequin, curator and director of the museum, explains, "the protective layer present on the work before restoration was very thick and very shiny, and had been superimposed on the remains of old oxidised varnish present in poorly cleaned hollows. There were also occasional areas of bleaching in the rabbet. Overpainting was visible, particularly in the sky, which was annoying because it was oxidised, and the sealants were deformed by swelling". The varnish therefore had to be lightened and some repaints removed. The old mastics were replaced by new ones, allowing the gaps to be levelled out before the pictorial reintegration. Restorer Igor Kozak also took care of the support: it was necessary to replace a previous lining that had oxidised and no longer adhered to the original canvas. As for the stretcher, which was not original, it had structural weaknesses, particularly at the corners, and was therefore replaced by a permanent structure with keys.