Tutor: Jacob Simon
Price: £25.00
Platform: Zoom
More information: https://academicprojects.co.uk/courses/towards-a-history-of-picture-lining-in-britain-1680-1980/
Lining has long played an important role in the restoration of pictures on canvas. This seminar is an historical presentation rather than a technical discussion. It reviews the history of lining in Britain, treating the subject chronologically from the origins of lining in about 1680 until the immediate aftermath of the Greenwich lining conference of 1974.
In this seminar early reports, methods and terminology are traced from the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Specialist liners in the early nineteenth century are identified and differing practices traced from contemporary literature. Attitudes at the National Gallery and among artists are explored and the widespread adoption of lining as a standard process examined. The seminar concludes with the rise and fall of wax lining in the twentieth century, the introduction of hot tables, vacuum tables and new materials, the Greenwich lining conference of 1974 and the decline in lining in the late twentieth century.
The research by the presenter on this subject has exposed omissions in our knowledge, in particular on details of early lining procedures. Participants are therefore encouraged to help fill these gaps.
There will be a 55 minute presentation followed by 15 minutes of discussion.
Jacob Simon was, until 2011, the Chief Curator at the National Portrait Gallery and was formerly editor of the Walpole Society’s journal for British art history. He is presently a Research Fellow at the same institution.
