Drawing of a Dog, Before and After

The treatments are finished!  This is the fourth in a 12-part series on selected conservation treatments of artwork and photographs.  "Preserving a Family Collection" concludes on August 31.

I love this photo of a treatment in progress.  I call it “Washing the Dog.”

This dog – and another dog that my father painted – were just neighborhood dogs.  My father didn’t grow up with a pet dog of his own and didn’t own one until he was in his forties, when our family brought home a Saint Bernard puppy.

As a dog enthusiast, I like this picture a lot.  It captures a certain doggie dignity that’s very appealing. 

Or maybe he’s just begging...

Marion Verborg, 2010-2011 N.E.A. Fellow at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts, treated this pencil drawing.  She surface cleaned it, washed it in calcium-enriched deionized water, mended some tears and losses with Japanese paper, and humidified and flattened it.

Note the three dark areas along the right edge of the paper in that “Washing the Dog” picture.  These areas surrounded small holes that were torn into the paper in order to place it into a three-ring binder.  Following the bath and Marion’s mends to the back of the paper with Japanese paper, the old damage to the paper is barely visible at all.



Drawing of a dog by Art Price, before treatment.

Drawing of a dog by Art Price, after treatment.

© 2011 Lee Price