April 2012 – Page 5 – The History Blog

African Queen restored and bearing a Bogart again

April 10, 2012

Modern(ish)

Last December, Captain Lance and Suzanne Holmquist announced that they would restore the African Queen and put her back to work doing inland water tours. After three and a half months of work and almost $70,000, the 30-foot riverboat used in the iconic 1951 John Huston movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn is officially back in business.

The steamship, built in England in 1912 then used by the British East Africa Railway Company to carry cargo and passengers in the Belgian Congo and Uganda, had been deteriorating in dry dock for ten years. Her previous owner, Jim Hendricks Sr., had rescued from her a land bound horse farm in Ocala, Florida in 1982, then used her for tours and took her around the world twice for special events. Once Jim Sr. died in 2002, the boat passed to his son Jim who unfortunately could not afford to maintain her as his father had.

The Holmquists could see the Queen sitting forlorn on her dock as they operated their charter boat business. Captain Lance, who has a passion for restoring boats, noticed that even decrepit in dry dock the African Queen was still a hugely popular stop for tourists. Hundreds of people would come every day to take her picture. So they struck a deal with Mr. Hendricks: they’d restore the boat as historically accurately as possible, and in return Jim would lease them the Queen to use for charter tours.

The restoration was challenging, but not as hard as some of the other restorations Captain Holmquist has done. The African Queen was still structurally sturdy. First they had to fix the hull. Made from 10-gauge British steel, most of it had toughed out the tough times. Only 20% of the steel panels were corroded enough to need replacing, but that 20% took three weeks of welding to fix. Watch this YouTube video to see the welders, and their commanding officer/Chihuahua, Stewart “The Killer” Kipp, in action.

Also salvageable was much of the original black African mahogany used for flooring and siding. The Holmquists just had to oil and condition it. For historical authenticity and ambiance, they decided to spend $26,000 to install a new steam boiler even though during the shooting of the film the boat wasn’t actually powered by steam; they just made it look like it was. Last up was a new paint job, which lasted just a few hours before Captain Holmquist took a rag and some brown paint and messed it up so it would look like it looked chugging through the jungle with Bogie and Hepburn.

“We wanted it to look beat up, like it appeared [in the Congo] in World War I,” said Suzanne Holmquist. “It’s starting to get its sheen back, and its authentic look.”

The African Queen will be officially relaunched Thursday. The Key Largo Chamber of Commerce is throwing her a party and fundraiser dockside at the Holiday Inn Key Largo. Stephen Bogart, son of Humphrey and Lauren Bacall, will be there. The first ride on the Queen with Stephen Bogart will be auctioned off at the event, as will the original steel pieces from the hull that were replaced. The party is open to the public; the suggested donation is $15.

Starting at the end of the month, the African Queen will be taking passengers on two-hour canal cruises several times a day, and for six-passenger dinner cruises around Key Largo on select evenings. She will also be available for private charters. See her back on the water and hear her lovely bell in this video.

St. Petersburg restorers find pre-Revolution treasure

April 9, 2012

Modern(ish), Treasures

Construction workers restoring a 19th century mansion that once belonged to the noble Naryshkin family discovered an immense treasure of silver services, pearl- and porcelain-handled flatware, enamel, jewels, and medals, hidden in a secret storage compartment between the second and third floors of the building. More than 1,000 individual pieces from the 19th and early 20th centuries were found, all of them in excellent condition thanks to careful packing in vinegar-soaked cloths.

The objects were then wrapped in newspapers from March, June and September of 1917, which gives us a handy time frame for when the treasure might have been buried. This was a turbulent time in Russia, to say the least. The Duma had taken control in February, setting up the Russian Provisional Government and forcing Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate. Some months later the October Revolution would bring the Bolsheviks to power. Within days, Lenin’s Decree on Land abolishing private property was passed by the Second Congress of Soviets. The first floor of the mansion was put to use as a stolovaya, a cafeteria-style restaurant where workers could get a cheap meal.

The Naryshkin family, whose many illustrious members include Nataliya Naryshkina, wife of Tsar Alexis and mother of Peter the Great, and Princess Maria Naryshkina, mistress of Tsar Alexander I, fled the country in 1917 leaving behind a wealth of riches that were moved to the State Hermitage Museum in 1920. Several of the silver sets found in the mansion bear the family crest. The treasure might not all have belonged to the Naryshkins. Documents belonging to army officer Sergei Somov were also found among the objects, so perhaps some of it was once his. Somov also fled the country after the October Revolution. He died in France in 1976.

The mansion is itself a historical treasure, despite the hard treatment it has received. It used to be two separate buildings, one of them built in the 17th century by Prince Pyotr Trubetskoi, the other owned in the 18th century by Abram Petrovich Gannibal, the African great-grandfather of poet Alexander Pushkin who as a child had gone from being a hostage of the Ottoman Sultan to the godson of Peter the Great who had him raised and educated along with his own children. In 1832 the two houses were made into one large mansion which Duke Vasily Naryshkin bought in 1875.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Trubetskoi-Naryshkin mansion was converted into apartments. In 1999, the St. Petersburg International Center for Preservation set up offices in the historical building. Ten years later, construction company Intarsia began a three-year program of re-engineering, restoring and adapting the building for use as a restaurant (doubtless a pricier one this time) and a conference and cultural center.

Intarsia reported the discovery to the police on Thursday, March 29, but it appears some pieces were discovered by workers a few days before that. Police searched the site and discovered two caches, one containing three gilded silver salvers, the other a box of silver forks and spoons, which had been secreted behind construction debris. Some workers apparently hoped to smuggle them out when the coast was clear.

A full inventory and assessment of the treasure by St. Petersburg’s Committee for the State Control, Use and Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments (KGIOP) is ongoing. When they’re done, the treasure will be put in a museum. Intarsia hopes they’ll be able to put it on display in the second floor exhibition rooms of the Trubetskoi-Naryshkin mansion once the restoration is done later this year.

The question of ownership might get thorny, though. By law, the workers who discovered the treasure can claim 50% of it and the property owner the other half, unless it is deemed of historical or cultural value, which in this case seems a foregone conclusion. If the treasure is deemed historically significant, the state will claim ownership and reimburse the finders/owners the market value.

Then there are the family members. Any Naryshkin descendants who might be out there could make a claim, as could any Somov descendants.

Ivan Artsishevsky, chairman of the House of Romanov, said the discovery of the treasure could cause self-proclaimed Naryshkin descendants to step forward, demanding the treasure be returned to them.

“In my experience of working with the Romanovs, I can say that ‘secret’ descendants from the Emperor’s dynasty regularly appeal to me with all kinds of claims and demands. In this case many such ‘relatives’ may appear,” Artsishevsky was quoted as saying by Interfax.

Artsishevsky said all of the precious objects found should be donated to a museum, adding that he was sure that no real Naryshkin descendants would come forward in hopes of claiming the treasure.

“All this should be given to a museum. All of these objects actually belong not to the Naryshkins, but to all Russian people. I doubt any of the duke’s descendants would believe otherwise,” he said.

Mucha’s “Slav Epic” goes to Prague despite protests

April 8, 2012

Modern(ish), Museums, Treasures

Alfons Mucha, the Czech artist who basically invented Art Nouveau (it was originally known as “Mucha Style”) and whose characteristic berobed women with flowing hair against a field of flowers have been selling everything from theatrical productions to champagne to chocolate since the late 19th century, rejected the Art Nouveau label, considering himself and his art first and foremost a product of the Slavic folk tradition in which he was raised. In 1900, he traveled all over the Balkans in preparation for his work on the Bosnia-Herzegovina pavilion for the Paris World’s Fair. Although he returned to Paris and continued his customary work, he was inspired by the trip to dedicate himself to “work for the [Czech] nation.”

Mucha was born in 1860 in Ivancice, a rural community in Moravia that was then part of the Austrian Empire. The area was a hotbed of Slavic nationalism, even more so in reaction to the Habsburg efforts to “Germanize” the many cultures in the empire. He left in 1879 to do design work for a theater in Vienna. He returned to Moravia after the theater burned down, doing some freelance art work including murals for Count Karl Khuen of Mikulov who would fund his first formal artistic education.

In 1887 he moved to Paris, studying and getting jobs as a commercial artist. He became famous in 1895 after a chance encounter in a print shop resulted in his making a poster for the play Gismonda, starring the incomparable Sarah Bernhardt. She loved the poster so much that she signed him to a six-year contract.

His fame spread worldwide, but back in his homeland he was considered something of a sell-out, more French than Slav. Although Mucha saw himself as Czech and his art as an expression of his Slavic identity, his countrymen tended to disagree. When he was commissioned to paint murals in the Mayor’s Office at the New Municipal House in Prague in 1909, the move was roundly criticized by the public.

Undeterred, in 1910 Mucha moved his family to Prague and, while still taking some commercial gigs to pay the bills, poured his talents and resources into the passion project of a lifetime: a series of 20 monumental paintings (the biggest canvas is 26 feet wide and 20 feet tall) depicting the history of the Slavic people. The Slav Epic took him 18 years to complete, during which time World War I saw the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the creation of the new nation of Czechoslovakia with Prague as its capital.

On September 1, 1928, Alfons Mucha donated the complete Slav Epic to the people of Czechoslovakia. All 20 paintings went on display in the Trade Fair Palace in Prague where they inspired a range of reactions, many of them negative. The left-wing nationalists considered the style and pan-Slavic sentiments old-fashioned, and the fascists held Slavic nationalism itself in contempt.

When in 1939 Nazi Germany followed its occupation of the Sudetenland by invading the rest of Czechoslovakia, Mucha was one of the first artists to be arrested by the Gestapo. They released him, but he died shortly thereafter on July 14, 1939 of pneumonia. In his will, he bequeathed the Slav Epic to the city of Prague, on condition that they build a special pavilion to house them.

Building a pavilion for enormous Slav nationalist paintings wasn’t Prague’s top concern during World War II. Just keeping the paintings out of Nazi hands was challenge enough. The Slav Epic was rolled up and hidden in storage rooms (as well as, rumor has it, a crypt) to keep it safe. Unfortunately the end of the war wasn’t much help, as the Soviet-backed Communist Party which took power in the 1948 Czech coup had no love for the Epic. They certainly weren’t going to build a pavilion for it.

The paintings were moved to the southern Moravian town of Moravský Krumlov in 1950 for safekeeping but remained in storage. Finally in 1963 they went on display at the local castle. When the Communist regime fell in 1989, there was discussion about bringing the paintings back to Prague, since the artist did give them to the city, but the Moravský Krumlov community vehemently protested. The Mucha family sided with Moravský Krumlov, noting that legally Prague couldn’t claim the paintings without complying with the condition in Alfons’ will requiring a dedicated pavilion. They were concerned that moving the works only to put them up in some transitional space would be detrimental to their delicate health.

A decade of legal wrangling ensued, in the middle of which Prague approved plans for the construction of a new pavilion which was scheduled to be complete by 2010. Disputes over the proposed architecture of the pavilion kept it from ever getting built, but come 2010, Prague sent movers to the Moravský Krumlov castle anyway.

The Mucha family got an injunction to stop the move until they’ve built this everlovin’ pavilion like they’re supposed to, but five of the paintings made it out the door anyway, going on display in early 2011 at Prague’s Veletrzni Palace after restorers examined them. A year has passed and the legal issues remain unresolved, but over the protests of the Mucha family and the town of Moravský Krumlov, now Prague has taken the remaining 15 works.

The Veletrzni Palace is the only place with the wall space to display all 20 gigantic paintings, but its conditions are far from ideal. Temperature and humidity levels fluctuate enormously with the weather, and again, a temporary exhibit in an old building does not comply with the conditions stipulated by Alfons Mucha. The Mucha family and the foundation they run are working assiduously to create a permanent location for the Slav Epic in Prague’s central train station.

The Mucha Foundation says that Prague’s main railway station is the best permanent home for the paintings. [The artist’s grandson] John Mucha says that the foundation is in negotiations with the council about the plans. “Everyone’s pulling in the same direction,” he says. “If we all manage to keep this momentum, the Slav Epic should be unveiled [there] in spring 2014.” When describing the suitability of the venue, John Mucha says that the train noise can be screened, and appropriately the art nouveau station was designed by Josef Fanta, a friend of Alphonse Mucha.

We’ll see if that ever happens. Meanwhile, the Epic will have to make do with the drafty, moist palace.

Vermeer’s “Woman in Blue” is back to her bluest

April 7, 2012

Museums, Renaissance

Johannes Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter has been thoroughly cleaned and restored, revealing new details about the original masterpiece and removing later interpolations. Woman in Blue was the first Vermeer the Rijksmuseum ever acquired. It was purchased from a London art dealer by Amsterdam banker Adriaan van der Hoop in 1839. He bequeathed it to the city of Amsterdam which put it on display at the city’s Academy of Fine Arts from 1854 to 1885, then loaned it to the Rijksmuseum where it has remained ever since.

Over the years, age, yellowed varnish, retouchings and other questionable conservation choices dimmed the glory of its sublime blues, but major projects to correct those issues are so expensive they’re usually reserved for works that have major condition problems that endanger the immediate health of the painting. Museums rarely have the funds to overhaul a painting just to make it look great again.

In 2010, the Rijksmuseum got its chance when Japan requested they allow Woman in Blue to tour the country, which would be the painting’s first trip to Asia. Japan offered to fund a full restoration of the painting before it left Amsterdam in return for the loan, and the Rijksmuseum accepted.

Conservator Ige Verslype, supervised by an international committee of experts, spent more than a year painstakingly restoring the piece, focusing on returning the picture as much as possible to its original condition. Before doing anything, he examined the work with the latest imaging technology (infrared reflectography and X-ray fluorescence scanning) and took five tiny paint samples from key places. He then removed most of the yellowed, cracked varnish, thus bringing the original color of the woman’s jacket back to vibrancy and unveiling the secret of Vermeer’s blue paint.

Ige Verslype: “The greatest surprise was when we discovered how Vermeer produced such an intense blue colour. We now know that he used a copper-green undercoat to give the colour extra depth. Once the yellowed glaze had been removed, this magnificent blue came back into view in all of its glorious nuances.”

Before the restoration, the dark blue on the back of her jacket that’s in shadow looked the same color as the blue velvet on the top of the chair. After the restoration, you can clearly see that they are different shades.

Next to go were the retouchings and overpaintings from previous restorations. In 1928, restorers mistook three white spots on the box or paper on the table in front of her as pearls. Vermeer used pearls in many of his paintings, and there were other pearls on the table in this painting. The restorers daubed some yellow on those white spots to make them noticeably pearls. This time around, conservators had scans to show that in fact those spots weren’t pearls, but simply white highlights. Verslype removed the yellow, returning the superfluous pearls to highlights.

Removing overpaint and varnish from the chairs showed them in a whole new light. You can see details of the upholstery that before were shrouded in darkness, like the edges of the velvet backing wrapped around the side. They also discovered a whole new row of brass nails on the side of the chair seat that had been completely covered in dark paint.

Once the restoration was complete, the Woman in Blue went on her first Asian tour, starting in June 2011 in Kyoto, then moving to the Miyagi Museum of Art in Sendai, and finally Tokyo’s Bunkamura Museum of Art. The tour ended on March 14, 2012, and the painting returned to the Rijksmuseum.

There it was put back on display on March 30, the first time Dutch audiences had a chance to see the restored work, and the first time in two years they got to see the painting at all. Along with the freshly blue Woman in Blue, four frames that have encased the painting over the years at the Rijksmuseum are also on display. The first one is a neo-rococo frame that was on the painting from when Adrian van der Hoop bought it all the way through the 1940s. Then it was reframed using a carved oak frame from around 1700. In the early 1960s, Woman in Blue was reframed again, this time in a gilded French Regency frame from ca. 1710. The last of the four was a modern ebony reproduction frame used starting in the 1990s.

Gilded French Regency frame, 1710, used 1960s

Contemporary ebony reproduction, used 1990s

None of them are quite right for the masterpiece. Conservators have taken the opportunity to study carefully what Vermeer preferred to use for frames. Ebony seems to be the consensus material, but the contemporary ebony-like frame, smooth and machine-tooled, flattens the look of the painting. The Rijksmuseum is looking for a simple ebony frame from the 17th century but hasn’t been successful yet. While the search is on, they’re using the gilded Regency frame.

More pics of largest find of Bronze Age artifacts

April 6, 2012

Ancient, Treasures

Last December, I blogged about the extraordinary discovery of hundreds of well-preserved artifacts from the daily life of the Bronze Age residents of what is today the Must Farm Quarry in Whittlesey, southeast England. Hundreds of 3,000-year-old artifacts were found, among them textiles, swords, eel traps, spear tips, tools, a charred platform bridge and bowls of nettle stew, nettle stew still within. It’s the largest Bronze Age find ever made in Britain.

The most astonishing discoveries were six log boats dug out of oak and ash trunks. Finding an entire wooden boat from the Bronze Age is rare but not unheard of; finding six seemed nigh on miraculous. Now that already exceptional number has increased to eight and the team from Cambridge Archaeological Unit is still excavating.

It’s the unique geology of the Cambridgeshire fens that has kept this slice of Bronze Age life preserved 13 feet below ground level. If it hadn’t been for brick-making company Hanson which owns the quarry and mines its Jurassic clay to make their bricks, it’s unlikely that anybody would have dug so deep to find a 3000-year-old fishing village virtually frozen in time. Laudably, the company is funding the archaeological exploration and has promised to continue to do so.

When I first posted about this spectacular find, there were only a couple of small pictures in news stories and it was a huge bummer for me and everyone reading. Two days later, Cambridge Archaeological Unit photographer Dave Webb posted a comment to the entry with a link to a bunch of great pictures, particularly of those spectacular dugout canoes. I edited the link into the entry, but I think most people missed that the first time.

Now I’m making up for it and then some. Past Horizons has posted a second set of David Webb’s pictures, these focusing on some of the other artifacts, like a bronze sickle or bill hook, spear heads, some textiles and the bowl of stew. They also have a composite picture showing one of the excavation areas (the one with the collapsed platform) peppered with artifacts.

Excavation composite, collapsed platform

Nettle stew bowl, spoon removed with stew still attached

I also found a fascinating description of a visit to the Must Farm site by Sheridan Kirby of the Fenland Witters blog. You can see more of the pictures from that visit on her Flickr stream. Joan Munns was with her on the tour. Her pictures start here (click the “Older” right arrow button to browse through the rest) and here’s a video of their visit so we can live vicariously through them:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuDIrG08ORA&w=430]