T
on the conservation of panel paintings, organized
by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Conservation Institute,
has created the conditions for one of those rare, defining moments
in paintings conservation that are not always apparent at the time they
occur. With a meeting and publication such as this, our disparate and far-
flung profession has stopped for a moment, reflected on its contexts, its
motives, and its actions, and then stepped forward with more unity and a
better collective understanding.
At the last major conference to consider the treatment ofpanel
paintings—the 1978 International Institute for Conservation congress
“The Conservation of Wood in Painting and the Decorative Arts,” held in
Oxford—about one-third of the papers presented were on the theme of
panel paintings. For the record, four of the speakers at that conference also
have articles in the present volume.
Although the Oxford conference is often cited as the natural
predecessor of this symposium, I have been reflecting more on adifferent
week, in 1974, when the Conference on Comparative Lining Techniques
took place in Greenwich, England. This was, without doubt, a key moment
for our profession, as agreed by all who attended. For the first time, the
history, ethics, and practice of the structural treatment of easel paintings
(albeit on canvas) were debated in a straightforward and scholarly manner.
After Greenwich, treatments could no longer be mysterious, unfathomable
rituals rooted in the past. Traditional methods and craft-based skills still
served as the basis of much good practice, but now these methods and
skills had to be rational, explicable, and accountable. More important, the
old automatism—the repeated major treatment of paintings for no other
reason than habit—was no longer acceptable. In a brilliant keynote paper—
still one of the wisest ever written about paintings conservation—Westby
Percival-Prescott, the organizer of the Greenwich conference, spoke of the
lining cycle—the relentless spiral of ever-increasing treatment and deterio-
ration into which paintings can all too easily fall. He pointed out some-
thing so daringly radical, so threatening to all our livelihoods, that it
produced a palpable sense of shock: to do nothing is often the best form of
treatment. Today, when the notion of preventive conservation is taken for
granted and advocating minimal intervention is common, when unlined
paintings and untouched panels are prized beyond measure, it is difficult to
recall just how often we intervened, even in the early 1970s.xiiiIntroduction: Keynote Address
David Bomford