Gallery Sees Red
The Age
Wednesday September 27, 2000
NATIONAL GALLERY OF VICTORIA conservator Michael VarcoeCocks stands behind the infrared camera, pointing its lens towards Eugene Von Guerard's 1864 painting A View of the Snowy Bluff on the Wonnangatta River. On the computer screen beside him is a series of blurred lines, spirals and shades of black and grey.
But while, to the casual observer, the image may appear meaningless, to VarcoeCocks, it is sheer magic. After all, he explains, the image projected on to the screen is the underdrawing - the initial sketch made by an artist before putting paint to canvas - and a sight made possible only through a major research project by the NGV.
The project, which the gallery has been conducting for the past 12 months, seeks to reveal for the first time the underdrawings of nine of Von Guerard's most famous works.
Through the use of an infrared sensitive vidicon detector - a small camera that images any sketches beneath the paint layer - the gallery's team of conservators and curators have been able to explore a oncehidden element of Von Guerard's work.
``Until last year, this information wasn't accessible to us at all," says VarcoeCocks. ``The more we do it, the stronger an insight we have into his technique and his mindset. In a sense, this is a direct line to Von Guerard's thinking process as he constructed the painting."
The research will form part of a major Von Guerard exhibition, to be launched at the NGV gallery when it opens at Federation Square in late 2001. The underdrawings will be made available for public viewing for the first time, together with the artist's landscapes and sketches.
Some of the Von Guerard paintings examined by the gallery include Sydney Heads (1860); Weatherboard Creek Falls (1862); Mt William (1865); and Gold Diggings at Ararat (1871). The project is the first time the underdrawings of one of Australia's most prominent artists have been as extensively examined.
While infrared technology has enabled conservators to view the underdrawings of various paintings in the past, the process was an arduous one and the results were far from adequate, VarcoeCocks says.
In order to optimise the existing infrared technology, he developed a new computer software package that enables the underdrawing to be viewed as a complete image at a highlevel resolution.
The infrared camera is used to take ``snapshots" of whatever images lie beneath the painting. These images and subimages, of which there are hundreds, are then processed on to the computer screen and, through the software, joined together to form a mosaic of the entire picture - a clear image of the painting's underdrawing.
The NGV's senior curator, Terence Lane, believes the project opens up a range of opportunities for galleries to learn more about how some of Australia's most famous works were created and constructed.
``Previous scholars have not had access to the underdrawing, except to a certain extent with Xrays, but, with the camera, you can go all over the painting and immediately find out what's there," Lane says.
``We could access information before but it was a very ungainly process. This, however, is amazing - it's sort of like standing behind the artist as he was starting to work on the picture.
``This is information that the artist would have never expected anybody to see. Sometimes you find unexpected things. You find lots of pentimenti - where the artist has changed his mind (from drawing to painting). In some pictures you'll see the composition has been changed drastically, and there will be no sign of it on the surface, but with this camera you can access that sort of information. It's fascinating."
VarcoeCocks agrees. His software is being provided to galleries throughout the country to enable the hidden works of other artists to be explored. Most significantly, he says, the project will provide the public with a greater understanding of Australian art.
``Not only has this become available to us, but it can become available to the public," he says. ``It's building an understanding of these pictures in a much greater way than you could have before and then communicating that."
* The NGV's research will be presented at the International Institute for Conservation conference to be held from October 9 to 14 at Melbourne Town Hall. Some of the research from the NGV infrared project will be shown at the Seeing Red exhibition at the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne, from Friday, September29 to December3.
© 2000 The Age