Project Summary:

The New York Herald is one of W.H. Harnett’s iconic still-life paintings. The painting appeared to be on its original stretcher, but only a fragment of one key remained. The main condition issue was the extremely brittle canvas - detached fragments of canvas, visible cracks and splits were located along the verso edges. The frame’s holding clips caused the canvas to tear, and a lack of padding on the frame rabbet resulted in abrasion of the varnish and paint layers around the perimeter and an abraded and torn canvas at three of the corners. The canvas was also slightly slack on the stretcher, leading to shallow deformations. Lastly, there was a cloudy haze across the face of the entire painting and significant dust and debris build up on the verso.

The canvas was carefully removed from the frame to prevent further damage to the brittle canvas, and all areas of paint loss and damaged canvas were locally consolidated using a conservation appropriate adhesive.  It was dry cleaned to reduce the dirt and debris, and then the surface was wet cleaned using custom cleaning solutions to further reduce embedded grime and haze. As the canvas was too brittle to safely increase tension by keying out the stretcher, the shallow distortions were left untreated at this time. The weak areas of canvas around the tacking edges and corners were locally strengthened to reduce the risk of further damage. Areas of loss and flaking paint were secured, filled, and inpainted to restore visual continuity overall, and a dilute synthetic varnish applied. Prior to reframing, the frame rabbet was padded to help protect the paint face and the installation hardware was replaced to limit future canvas damage.