This is a self portrait by Paula Modersohn-Becker.
It was painted in 1907.
It’s in really, really good condition considering it’s age.
She's holding her hand over her belly which is suggesting that she's pregnant.
The same year this was painted in 1907, she gave birth to her daughter and subsequently
died of complications from this pregnancy and she was only 31 years old.
But she made a lot of paintings in her short life
and this is a very precious example of one of her paintings.
It's actually on its original stretcher which is really rare.
And you can see along the side the tacks that she used to actually stretch the painting
onto this stretcher.
There are couple of little tears and holes along the edges.
These are very vulnerable areas.
Typically when we repair holes or tears in the canvas, we would be using a method
that requires access from the front or the back all of our traditional techniques
but we really didn't want to remove the canvas from the stretcher since this is the original
way the artist mounted it.
So thinking about this problem and just racking my brain,
how do we fix this?
How do we repair a tear that we don't have access to the back?
We discovered from other colleagues in the field the use of these itty bitty surgical
sutures that are normally used for eye surgery.
Because the needles are curved, we don't actually need access to the back of the work.
So I'm working all from the front.
Something I've developed specifically for this project is adhering linen thread on to
my eye surgery needles.
And that's something that took a lot of trial and error to figure out how to actually get
these to adhere.
I just ran the thread, the tip of the thread, through the adhesive.
And then used two tiny insect needles to wrap the frayed tiny ends of the linen thread around
the needle microscopically and then let it dry and shaved down any excess adhesive or material
that bulked up that end.
So I'm just going to position the microscope to be right over the tear I'm working on.
And the first thing I like to do when I sit down is just get my tools.
No tools displayed on this tray were made specifically for conservation.
This is glue made from the swim bladder of a sturgeon fish.
We'll be making some sturgeon glue pretty soon.
We have a whole fridge full of bladder, so.
What I'm going to do is apply a little of the sturgeon glue adhesive to the linen thread
in order to stiffen it just a little, so that it has a little bit more stability.
The method of tear repair here involves actually reweaving the little canvas threads back into the original
woven pattern in order to basically microscopically darn a hole in a canvas.
You know, we sort of have to count as you go to make sure you're doing the right stitch.
You really don't want to have a lot of coffee before doing this or be nervous in any way.
I think what really helps is just not getting frustrated at all with yourself.
It's a lot of practice and trial and error.
There's gonna be two bigger holes that I'm gonna repair, and then that corner,
which is a really large loss is gonna be repaired with a slightly different technique.
Sometimes I'll close my eyes and then a weave pattern will just be there.
That's when I realize I should probably take a break.
So, I'm just gonna look through this box of old canvas scraps that we've just collected here through the years
just to find the perfect match for a little insert I'm gonna make for the corner of the painting.
What I'm going to be doing now is cutting a little insert out so that I can just fit it where the canvas is torn.
There was also this large gap at the miter of the wood stretcher, I decided just to make a little wood insert
for that area in order to have something behind the canvas to add some structural stability there.
Another interesting part of this project is I X-rayed the painting, which can tell us
a lot about how the artist painted and the construction of the work.
Something really interesting is that she did make some changes.
She used to be wearing a collar, and there's also something above her head, it's really, really faint.
It almost looks like maybe she had a hat on, maybe not.
Maybe if you flip it upside down it used to be a fruit bowl.
It was a still life, and she flipped it and painted her self-portrait.
We don't know, it's really hard to see, but it's a pretty interesting find.
So, I have a very thick and sturdy piece of mylar, clear mylar, so I can see what I'm doing,
and then I'm gonna take a fine tip sharpie and put very light pressure onto the mylar and just trace.
So, I've cut it a little bit bigger than it has to be so, I'm just gonna see how this fits.
I might have to cut it a little more still, but it's getting pretty good.
So then once the piece is fit perfectly in place, I will take my little needle and thread
and I'll just stitch it in
and once the insert is sown into place I might do a little bit of retouching using maybe
really dilute water colors or something just to tone the insert a little bit to better match.
And then I'll do a final check, and then it'll go back in its frame.
I'm just about finished.
There's just a couple really like microscopic losses I'll just dab and then just sort of
integrate this fill insert just a little bit more.
So now I'm just sort of blending the color, just toning just on the new piece of canvas.
And then, of course, it's upright on an easel now that it's all secure and it seems to be pretty happy.
This painting was acquired in 2017 and we've basically been thinking about this project
since it first came into the studio.
It was definitely almost six months to a year of just sort of looking and thinking and
figuring out this new method for repairing the holes without having to remove it from
the stretcher.
And then the actual treatment maybe took a month to complete.