This is Van Dyck's 'Equestrian Portrait of Charles I',
which we have finished cleaning,
removing the old varnish and old restorations.
And it's now at a stage where we are going to start doing the relining,
that is taking off the current lining canvas
which was used to support the original.
And, before we do that,
we have to put on this tissue paper
as a protective layer
when the painting goes face down
and the lining canvas is peeled away,
and the old adhesive, in this case a wax resin-based adhesive,
is scraped from the back of the painting.
The reason why we're lining this painting
is because, firstly, it has a number of undulations in the surface
and other distortions,
and the painting is now coming away from the lining canvas.
As you can see here,
there's no longer any bond between the lining canvas and the original.
During the relining, we are very lucky
to have a number of people from other institutions
to help us with this relining project,
which is funded and supported by the Getty.
I'm Francesca Bettini and I'm a painting restorer.
I come from the Painting Conservation Department
of the Opificio in Florence.
I'm here for the Van Dyck project,
thanks to the National Gallery and thanks to the Getty Foundation,
and I'm very glad to take part in this project
because it's a great opportunity to improve
my knowledge about treatment of canvas structure problems.
It's a great opportunity to see different methods and approaches
on large-size paintings
and to learn all these methods,
the new technologies, new materials,
and also to reflect
on some problems
in some canvas treatments.
We're removing the lining
because it was causing problems to the painting,
and we are going to change it and put a new lining on.
My name is Lucía Martínez, I came from the Prado Museum, Madrid.
Of course, you always learn things
from each treatment, from each restoration,
because in Italy and Spain we have another tradition,
so this is a great chance
to learn about different materials and different procedures.
So far, we've applied a facing tissue to the front of the painting
to protect the front while we work on the back of the painting,
and once the facing tissue was applied,
we brought the painting downstairs,
where we removed the old lining.
There's quite a lot of excess wax resin on the reverse of the painting,
and so we went in with scalpels
to scrape off as much as we possibly could.
My name is Gerrit Albertson.
I'm a Fellow in the Paintings Conservation Department
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
I'm here at the National Gallery to help with the structural treatment
of Anthony van Dyck's 'Equestrian Portrait of Charles I'.
It's fairly common, actually, nowadays in conservation
not to do lots of structural treatment
on paintings on canvas, which is very good,
but sometimes you get a work, like we have here,
which really needs some treatment
to be structurally stable and sound for the future.
So, it's a really wonderful opportunity to come here
and to learn the techniques and the methods of the conservators here
and to learn how they work on such a large-scale painting.
So what we've done here is we've temporarily attached
these strips of polyester fabric to the front of the painting,
using a heat seal synthetic adhesive.
And you can see, if I flip the painting upright,
that we've attached the strips
not directly to the front of the painting
but to the protective facing tissue which covers the front.
We've done this so that we can now attach the painting,
using these strips, to the stretcher,
so that we can then flip the painting upright,
so that we can continue the lining treatment.
As you can see in the centre,
we've reinforced the original seam of the painting,
and we've done that because it's a very fragile part of the painting,
and when we move the painting,
we want to make sure that we don't cause any damage.
The original canvas here is what's called a ticking canvas.
Ticking canvas is a kind of utility canvas which is usually pretty strong,
and it's also very well woven, it's quite fine,
and this is probably why Van Dyck chose this particular canvas.
And in the middle here, just over here in the centre of the picture,
you can see Charles I's monogram for the collection of Charles I.
It says CR with a crown above it.
This is the lining canvas that we're going to use
to adhere the painting by Van Dyck to.
It's now stretched onto a wooden loom,
or wooden frame, which you can see here,
then it's stretched,
and then we've wetted it a couple of times already and re-stretched it.
And you can see, as it's wetted, it goes drum-tight.
That's because the fabric is shrinking.
We want to get it to shrink
in order to make the canvas more inert
to get all the shrinkage we can out of it.
And tomorrow, we will do the same thing again,
but that time we will wet it
with an aqueous solution of magnesium bicarbonate,
which will deacidify this canvas
and extend the life expectancy of the material.
Well, this is the lining setup for the Van Dyck.
It's called a vacuum envelope,
and essentially it's a plastic bag
in which the painting and the lining canvas go together.
The bottom of the plastic bag or envelope
consists of this thick plastic material.
And then we have the lining canvas, which you can just see in here,
which is prepared with the adhesive,
and then the painting goes on top of the lining canvas,
and then we have to establish a vacuum.
These grey pipes which run round the edge of the painting
have holes drilled in them,
and they run all the way round,
and then are attached to these points here,
where this tubing is, to vacuum pumps,
so that takes all the air out of the plastic bag.
And then we have a top sheet which completes the seal.
So, it's all under vacuum,
the painting is tightly held to the lining canvas.
It is then carried onto a lining table, which acts as the heat source,
but it has to be heated up in two halves.
So, this half will be heated up first,
and once that reaches the desired temperature,
it is moved across the table to the other side,
and so the second half will then be heated up.
Once it's achieved the temperature,
then the painting is just taken off back onto this table to cool down,
and that is the end of the lining.
This painting has been lined many times
and all these treatments created problems.
For example, we know that the canvas
is sensitive to heat and sort of buckles.
So, we had to take that element into account
because, obviously, that was going to be a big problem for the lining.
And so we had to work around that
and find a solution, which was the envelope,
because the painting doesn't fit on the lining table.
My name is Camille Polkownik, I'm a paintings conservator,
and I work for the Royal Collection Trust in London.
Paul doesn't get fazed by anything, it's like a problem comes up,
and immediately he starts thinking about the next solution
and the next solution and the next solution.
So, it's really reassuring to work with someone that experienced
because you know that whatever happens
there will be a solution for the next problem.
And I think the most important skill that I learned is problem-solving:
getting from one problem to another, staying calm
and just trying to find the next solution.
I am Eva Martínez.
I came from the Prado Museum in Madrid.
I am taking part in the Canvas Getty project
here in the National Gallery.
I have taken part in the preparation of the relining
and in the relining process.
It is a very good experience for me
because it has been an opportunity
to know the work of Paul Ackroyd,
who is a very important reference
in the field of conservation,
and it has been a very good opportunity for me
to take part in this project with him.
We're now in the final stages
of re-stretching the painting onto its stretcher.
And here, this is the edge of the lining canvas.
As you can see, we had stretched it and put in these copper tacks.
The copper tacks are good because they don't rust
and they won't degrade the edges of the lining canvas.
And then, after that,
we're just neatening up the edges and making sure that they're stuck down,
and then putting in the stretcher keys to tension the painting a little,
and then tying them in with this nylon twine.
That's fairly important because these have a habit of falling out of their slots
and falling down behind the back of the stretcher
and causing lumps at the front of the picture.
So, this will take us just the rest of this morning,
and then the painting is ready for varnishing and a bit more filling
and then retouching.
It is really nice to be part of this project.
In a good sense,
it's surprising how open people are,
so very welcoming to me and the international team.
My name is Lisette Vos
and I'm a paintings conservator at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
I have actually never done a lining myself.
Of course, every painting requires a different treatment,
so not all linings are the same.
But, for me, this is really a great opportunity to get this experience
and to really see how a lining in practice is done.
Well, the lining is now complete, and the lining went very well.
We gained an awful lot in improving the surface of the picture
during the course of the lining.
At the moment, we're just adjusting some of the filling that we did earlier
and texturing some of the losses.
In adjusting the fillings, we're trying to make them the same level
as the surrounding original surface.
Where there's a loss, there's obviously a hole
and that has to be filled to the level of the original,
and then that has to be textured
because if you just retouch on top of a smooth fill
those losses will look as sort of glossy patches,
which will be very noticeable and very distracting
when you look at the painting in the galleries.
So, once the filling has been completed,
the painting will be varnished by brush.
And once that is dried,
the retouching process can start,
and we do this in a synthetic retouching medium that is non-yellowing,
mixed with dry powder pigment.
The retouching will take
somewhere between nine to ten months
to finish,
and then, finally, we put on a spray varnish
just to even up the gloss of the surface.
I have to thank the Getty Foundation and the National Gallery
for providing this opportunity to come and to learn,
and then to be able to bring what I've learned here
back to the Metropolitan Museum.
Being involved with the Getty, it's being involved
with an international project but also an international crowd,
so it means you're learning from other people,
you're also networking.
And I think that because the Getty is so famous
for its educational projects,
for young conservators to be chosen to be a part of it
is really rewarding
and really encouraging for my career, definitely.