Watch this MFA conservator very, very carefully clean a Van Gogh
May 24, 2016 | In the PressFrom Boston.com (https://www.boston.com/news/arts/2016/05/24/watch-mfa-conservator-van-gogh)
A famed painting from Vincent van Gogh got its own version of spring cleaning earlier this month at the Museum of Fine Arts.
With a scalpel and light brush in hand, MFA conservator Lydia Vagts delicately and expertly freshened up the Dutch artist’s 1890 painting “Houses at Auvers.”
In the video from the MFA below, Vagts sweeps away what she calls the “gunk”—a mix of varnish, wax residue, and cotton fibers that had built up over the years—to reveal the original, vibrant flourishes of Van Gogh’s thick brushwork.
“All of these materials that are stuck there are really interfering with the ability to look at the brushwork and really appreciate the variation and the beauty of Van Gogh’s strokes because it’s covered with gunk,” Vagts says.
“Houses of Auvers” shows the early summer landscape of Auvers, a rural town northwest of Paris, France. In a vote several years ago, the painting was chosen by Bostonians as the favorite impressionist masterpiece, WBUR reports.
