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| I thought this looked remarkably like Peter Paul Rubens self portraits |
The journey into almost becoming a fine arts dealer...almost...
This wasn't one of those $3 specials that turn out to be worth thousands...you actually had to invest a small chunk of change.
[Here is one of those stories you always here about, about 2 1/2 minutes.]
We're talking several hundred, still a small sum if it were worth thousands, but was it real or a fake? I knew there were plenty of "period pieces" being made in China. Some are hand painted, some are prints applied to canvas with a finish put on them that makes them look like authentic originals. Those prints are referred to as "giclée".
[This is a little lesson about the "giclée" by artist Karen Talbot available on youtube, about 7 minutes.]
[Here is a lesson about how the "giclée" is texturized and embellished to look more like a real painting by Jackie Jacobson available on youtube, about 6 minutes.]
This is done all the time. Being aware that this technique is out there is helpful...and these artists are NOT trying to deceive you. This is just a useful technique to improve the quality of prints. They look nice on the wall and are much less cost than an original.
There are prints...and there are ORIGINAL PRINTS. A professor at ASU explained it to me this way many years ago. If you take a rubber stamp, ink it, and then stamp it, THAT is an ORIGINAL PRINT. If you take a picture of the original print, perhaps a photocopy, that would be a reprint. Original prints can be worth some money, so don't think it is not worth your while to have a look at them. Often they will be part of a limited edition. They are numbered and signed generally in pencil at the bottom of the artwork. So you might see 47/150: meaning this print was the 47th in a printing edition of 150. The artist's signature may or may not be part of the artwork, and there may or may not be a pencil signature as well. I don't believe I have seen originals marked in anything but pencil. Perhaps India ink. I HAVE seen reprints of limited editions with the edition marks showing...there could be thousands of those 47/150 showing on the reprint. Always look closely at artwork. Is that pencil actually pencil? Or is it a reprint of a pencil mark?
Now we have prints covered briefly because many people have been fooled, sometimes just by lack of knowledge, and sometimes because someone is going out of their way to fool you, even though we are trying to decide whether the painting is an old painting or not. (Have a look on eBay and you can find many nice looking "old masters" copies that are either painted in China or they are prints mounted on canvas with texture applied...they run about $50 to $200 generally. Often they are not trying to hide that fact...they tell you straight up.)
As I said, I could tell straightway that the painting in question was in a newer frame, not consistent with what the age of the painting seemed to be to me. I am no expert. I am not pretending to be an expert, it just seemed that way to me.
I only looked at it from afar the first time I saw it. I didn't really know what I would be looking for if I did ask them to take it down so I could look at it, so I left. I knew two things. The painting itself looked really old...I was thinking a Flemish artist may have painted it. I knew it was more money than I had with me, so I better go home and hit the computer for info 'cause if this thing was the real deal I wouldn't have much time to find out.
At home I discussed it with my husband, and decided it would be worth having a good look at it. I was armed with information gleaned from hours of searches on the internet and took some jewelers loupes and a small lighted handheld microscope to look at the painting up close and personal.
Next morning I went in and "whew" it was still there. I had to wait for about 20 minutes for them to get the people to bring it down from the wall. I looked closely at the front and could see quite a bit of damage to the actual paint. There was a long section on the left of the painting that the paint was off altogether and someone had "repaired" it with varnish or shoe polish or something. That was not visible up on the wall. Our eyes tend to "fill in" and "normalize" things for us. Since most of the severe loss of paint was in the background, again, I thought, ok, also a liveable thing considering I was thinking the age to be perhaps to the 1600's - 1700's. There was also, unfortunately, great loss of paint to the hat...a primary part of the painting. This is not so good. It also had been washed with whatever had been used to darken the area. Background and sky repairs are not so bad compared to important features of the painting.
The canvas was somewhat loose. There was no signature to be found. Those two facts, along with the new frame made me suspect that the picture may have been cut down. Why would someone cut down a painting? Too much damage to restore...or a stolen piece of artwork might be cut down. There was no smell of smoke, as in fire damage, but I have heard that to fake age sometimes the forger actually BAKES the painting. This damage can make a great painting irreparable. Hmmm...what was causing all the chipping and loss of paint? I almost thought some type of acid or chemical spill could have accounted for that. How would that affect a restoration?
Art collectors and dealers will always want to look at the construction of the painting itself. To do that you must be able to see the back. Better yet, to be able to view the painting out of the frame is best if at all possible. You are playing detective. You want to see if everything is consistent with what you are being told, or what the painting itself is implying. In this case the back of the painting was a thrill to me. It seemed consistent with the type of canvas stretcher one would expect. (Canvas stretchers are the wood that the canvas is stretched over.) It did bother me slightly to see some pencil markings along the center bar of the "H" type stretcher. Since pencils seemed to have been in use by artists as early as the early 1600's...then that seemed ok too, but still bothered me a bit.
Todays canvas stretchers may or may not have a center stretcher bar. You can purchase linen or cotton canvases on stretchers...some even primed and ready to paint on. In the 1600's the artist or a student or assistant would contruct them. Modern canvas stretchers usually have the canvas stretched and stapled, but I believe you may still find some using small nails. (If you find old nails, but they seem like the tops are a bit on the shiny side...it may be they are supplanted, replacing staples with old nails to make it appear older than it is. Thus, it is "shiny" because it has come in recent contact with a hammer.) More info about modern canvases here.
This is an H style stretcher as you would see it from the back, and this one is very similar to the way the back of the painting looked, though the one I was examining looked even older than this one. Believe it or not, there were spiderwebs with leaves caught in them in the keys in the upper left hand corner. The canvas on the painting I was examining looked similar to this one also, with almost a greenish cast to it. I gently felt the back of the painting to see if I could tell if the painting had already had a repair or (with intent to deceive) an older canvas was adhered to the back of the print or painting using beeswax or other adhesives. It would have a hollow sound if it were tapped lightly, and feel heavy and thick. (Also do anything like this GENTLY so as not to disturb the paint on the front!) I felt it was a single canvas and that the canvas appeared old. The canvas did not seem to be tampered with, and seemed consistent with suspected age.
One of the stretcher keys were missing, making the canvas unstable, loose on the left side. I did not notice any traces of paper or paper labels. There should not be paper backings on this type of painting, and paper labels can give some information, but those can be faked as well. I did see some random numbers scrawled in white on the back of the stretcher. Those might be a number from an auction...or it could be random numbers written on it to make it appear it had been through an auction. I should have looked more closely to the area of the canvas that was behind the cross bar. It should have appeared a little lighter than the exposed areas, but I failed to check that. I could not remove the painting from the frame, the owner would not allow it. I would have been afraid to do it anyway, seeing it was unstable to begin with. If I had been able to do so, I would have been looking to see if the paint on the edge was consistent with the rest of the painting, and how the canvas was attached to the stretcher. A painting this old should have had nails. I also would have expected a painting this old to have an inner frame and an outer frame. Since this painting had a new frame, there was only one. The wood on the frame was quite light, and showed no signs of aging.
I had observed all I could on the back, and returned to examining the front, the painting itself. I tried to use my jewelers loups and a small magnifying glass, but the light was awful and I couldn't really tell anything. I brought with me a lighted magnifier which I placed on the paint itself. I was struck with awe! The paint that I was looking at appeared to be wholly black to the naked eye, even up close and personal. Through the magnifier I saw what appeared to be tiny flecks of gold! I am not sure what I was seeing exactly, but since I have prospected and panned for gold, that is what it looked like to me. It wasn't in just one area of the black, it was all over. (The majority of the painting was black) I asked a question on the Facebook page of the Phoenix Art Museum (A big shout out to them for all their help and friendliness!) wanting to see if they had an explanation for the phenomena I was seeing. They said it was possibly a chemical reaction of the pigments and whatever thinners and varnishes etc were used, and it only appeared to be gold. A painting of this age should be using either bone black or vine black or lamp black. None of which under magnification would show up with the golden flecks. This is still a mystery.
Now for the strokes of the painting. I thought I should be seeing peaks and valleys, especially under the microscope, and it wasn't as great as I thought it should be for an original. I am not a painter, but I have painted a few paintings. It bothered me that I couldn't seem to see peaks and valleys. The business where I was examining this painting was getting busy, and I felt that I needed to do more research before plunking down the money...so I left to go home to continue the research, hoping that the painting would still be there if I returned the next day to purchase it.
I did a lot more research, never finding the answer about the golden flecks, though pigments were made by grinding rock and natural substances for color, so to see bits of something like that would make me think the paint was consistent with the time period I beleived it to be. Here is a bit about natural pigments.
The painting itself, overall, seemed a little "plain". I mean, that the subject matter was just a very simple portrait. Head with plain hat and plain white collar. Nothing "decorative". No buttons. No highlight around the head. (whatever you see in my photograph was "added" by the camera) This is also one of the reasons I thought the painting may have been cut down. The lack of a signature and the lack of the second focus in the painting. Usually you see the head AND something else...and there was nothing. Still, it was a nice painting. If I thought I would have liked to have it hanging on my wall forever, I would have bought it, knowing that if it weren't worth thousands of dollars, it would still have had a good home. While I thought it was very pleasing, I didn't want it for my own pleasure. I was hoping to be like the guy in the video at the top of the page...
If you are of a mind to, it wouldn't hurt to just sit at the computer and learn about canvas, and stretchers, and frames, and brush strokes. The more you know BEFORE you find that painting or other objet d'art, the better chance will be of you recognizing and being able to take advantage of the situation.
There was medium craquelure, something between the Italian and the French, the cracking of the paint.
In summary: Consistency is what you are looking for when trying to determine the age of a painting or anything antique or collectible.
The Pro's and con's of the painting.
It appeared to be a 1600's--maybe 1700's painting.
Pro:
- the subject was consistent (dark portrait of a man)
- the paint appeared to be made from natural pigments
- the canvas appeared to be old and possibly made of linen
- it did not appear to be lined or backed with another canvas
- the wood on the stretcher showed quite a bit of age
- the stretcher appeared to be of the style that would have been in use
- no paper was used on the back of the painting
- no labels were present and no remnants of paper labels
- craquelure (the cracks and crazing in the paint)
- the frame was new, not consistent with age of painting and a sign of covering up damage
- the canvas was loose
- the painting had a large area on the left side that had no paint and several areas with chunks out
- there was no signature
- the area on the figure (the hat) had lost a good amount of paint
- I couldn't explain why I did not see peaks and valleys in the paint up close
- if a painting of that type and presupposed quality were not in the original frame and perhaps cut down, why would that be unless it might have been stolen.
I hope the new owner does well with it. They were either more knowledgeable OR they felt that the gamble was worth the money.
You might find the following information helpful as well.
- Determining Painting's age
- Original or Reproduction
- microscopy
- remember to use the search engine for images. You can learn a lot just by seeing a lot of the same things.
