Kate Warren, National Trust Collections Manager at Kingston Lacy, has written a regular diary on the conservation of Guido Reni's ‘The Separation of Night and Day’, and the preparations that took place at the house for its return.
13 March 2006
We are now in the final throes of preparing the house for opening. In the Library, the scaffolding has gone, the new mouldings are in situ, the decorative scheme is finished and we are very busy getting ready for 18 March, when Kingston Lacy's house opens for the 2006 season.
This is an exciting time of year for us. It is always a thrill to see the covers coming off and the rooms gradually coming back to life. We spent a happy morning recently with the gardening team, who helped us to unroll the Library carpet (a 10 person job).
After that, we reinstated the furniture, which has been carefully cleaned during the winter, putting everything in its proper position. We are finally able to see the painting, and the decorative scheme, in their full context and the result is spectacular.
It's now over to you to visit and see this glorious object, in its extraordinary and opulent setting, for yourself.
10 January 2006
There was great excitement at Kingston Lacy on Friday 6 January, when we finally reinstated the Guido Reni fresco, the culmination of six years of work!
Earlier in the week we had brought the painting back into the house. It arrived rolled on a huge tube and had to be carried into the garden, onto the terrace, and then in through the window.
We lifted it onto the scaffold by hand, using straps and safety harnesses, and there was a definite air of relief once it was safe on the scaffold.
We worked late that evening unrolling it, which was an anticlimax because we only saw it painted side down! The next big job happened the following morning, when a large group of us carefully lowered the wooden stretcher onto the canvas.
The conservators then stretched the painting onto the stretcher, made some minor adjustments, and we were ready for the big lift.
The entire project team was at Kingston Lacy for this very special occasion. We were all a little nervous as we only had one chance to get the lift right.
In the end things went extremely smoothly, which was largely due to the endless rehearsals our site foreman, Lloyd Palmer, had conducted.
The minute the painting was secure everyone crawled underneath it, and we spent a happy half an hour lying on our backs admiring it.
© National Trust
It looks truly wonderful and I'm sure our visitors will enjoy it. Afterwards we had a little party to celebrate.
When I first saw the painting, prior to treatment, I was concerned that it would look heavy and oppressive. Having seen it within the room I'm no longer worried.
The conservators have transformed the painting, revealing its true quality, and it no longer has the heavy quality that was the result of the extensive over-painting on its surface. It has a true fresco quality, with wonderful light tones.
Throughout Friday evening I couldn't stop thinking about the painting, so on Saturday I went back into the house and spent the afternoon with it.
© Phil Yeomans/ BNPS
This was my last chance to view it in any detail from the scaffold. We have now temporarily covered it in a protective film so that the builders and decorators can get to work again.
The mouldings, which are going on the ceiling, arrived yesterday. They have been beautifully made and will look very dramatic on the ceiling.
They are being assembled and decorated and will start to go up by the end of the week. Meanwhile, the decorator has already transformed parts of the cornice.
The paint colours for the walls and ceiling have occupied everyone's attention over the last month. We are returning the walls to precisely the colour they were in the 1904 photograph.
We have removed the top layers of paint to reveal this colour in two places in the room, but we've had a lot of difficulty finding a paint which is an exact match.
So, last Friday in the midst of all the excitement, we took scientific readings of the paint, which will be used to custom-make the colour. The ceiling colours are still a secret, but we have made progress in this area too.
About a year ago, I discovered the treatment record for work carried out on the painting in 1961. This gave us the name of the conservator who did the work. He sadly passed away fairly recently, but the Trust's Painting Conservation Adviser, Christine Sitwell, was able to track down his widow.
Christine visited his studio, which is still intact, last week, and came away with colour slides of his work. This gave us lots of information about the colours of the ceiling in 1961, which has helped to shape our final decisions.
We are now into the final month of the building work. Over the next few weeks we'll be reinstalling the mouldings, redecorating, striking the scaffold, reinstating the floorboards in the South East Bedroom, and clearing and cleaning the site. Then, for the house team, the next phase of work begins.
We have an awful lot of work to do before we open on 18 March.
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12 December 2005
The last few weeks have been incredibly busy as the project gathers pace. We have now completely taken up the floor in the South East Bedroom suite.
This was more interesting than we had expected because it became apparent that large areas of the floor have never been taken up before.
Underneath is the 1663 builders' rubbish, which our archaeologists will find very interesting.
The contractors spent a long time getting the 'setting out' of the painting and its moulding just right.
This was a fiddly job because the two short walls in the Library are not completely parallel, which affects the positioning of the empty box mouldings either side of the painting. After much jiggling and adjustment of a set of templates we got things right.
© National Trust
The builders are now about halfway through the process of drilling through the ceiling to the fixing points. This week they will finish fitting the secondary floor joists, which take the fixings for the painting.
We've also been running in the cabling for the electric lights, which will protrude through the moulding. The only possible cabling route turned out to be the most difficult one! Considering the disruption involved, the cabling work was completed very quickly to the relief of everyone involved.
We've had a visit from one of the painting conservators, who spent a day removing layers of paint from the Library walls and ceiling to reveal the earlier schemes.
This was a fascinating day for me and it was amazing to actually see every paint colour on the Library ceiling since the house was built.
Every colour, that is, except the one we wanted, so we still have no physical evidence of what colour the ceiling was in the 1904 Country Life photograph. We had a meeting last week to make a final decision on the ceiling colour, which I'm keeping a secret for now…
© National Trust
Between now and Christmas, the builders will be finishing the work to install the fixings for the painting and mouldings. Before Christmas we will be doing a trial lift of our template to see how the fixings work in practice.
We'll also be finishing our preparations for the return of the painting in January. Meanwhile, we have the rest of the house to clean, which is keeping the conservation team very busy.
At the conservation studio, work on the painting is almost complete. I'm visiting this week to see the picture for the last time before its return.
We are all feeling a huge sense of anticipation at the thought of seeing it in the Library. For the first time in my working life I am actually looking forward to returning to work after the Christmas break!
© Rowan Isaac
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21 November 2005
The Guido Reni project is in full swing now that the house has closed for the winter. Two weeks ago, I visited the conservators’ studio, Bush and Berry, to see the painting for the first time since February. The picture has changed enormously since then, and is coming along beautifully.
They are currently completing the retouching of the picture, racing to their Christmas deadline. I liked the tonal quality of the picture very much. It looks much warmer and more lively then it used to, and there are some really sublime passages in it. It will have a tremendous impact within the room when we get it back in January.
The Library at Kingston Lacy is currently unrecognisable. Over the last two weeks we have emptied it of furniture, and borrowed staff from Stourhead and Montacute to fit protection to the remaining contents in the room.
This week we have also built an enormous scaffold in the Library, which was not entirely hiccup-free but we got there in the end! This will help us raise the painting back to the ceiling in January.
We'll also be 'setting out' in the Library, marking the positions and fixing points of the painting and the elaborate historic moulding. And we are expecting a visit from the conservators, who have kindly agreed to remove a layer of paint from a section of the Library wall to reveal the 1904 colour scheme. At the same time, they will be taking paint samples from the ceiling again to find evidence of the ceiling colour scheme.
We’ve completely emptied the South East Bedroom suite, which is above the Library, to allow us to lift the floor next week. A secondary set of joists will be installed to take the fixings for the painting and the frame moulding. We are also altering the position of the smoke detectors and running in electrics for the (historic) lighting.
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