About a year ago, I reported on the cleaning of a cubist masterpiece by Tạ Tỵ. The painting The Guitar was covered in a large amount of overpaint, which took a long time to remove. It was only after overpaint and dirt removal that the full extent of damage and paint loss was visible. It […]

The auxiliary support of a canvas painting is usually a wooden frame onto which the canvas is stretched. This holds the canvas under tension, thus reducing movement of the fabric and allowing the artist to paint on a flat support. There are two common types of auxiliary support. Strainers are rigid frames with fixed corners. […]

Tears or holes in canvas paintings can be repaired using a number of different techniques and materials. One of the methods involves thread-by-thread reweaving of the torn area, and is described in the following section. The strainer of a painting had been attacked by insects, which had eaten through one of the wooden members. In […]

The Guitar is a cubist oil painting on canvas. It was painted by Tạ Tỵ in 1957, and was purchased by Witness Collection at auction in France in 2009. Prior to entering the collection, the painting had undergone extensive restoration. Tạ Tỵ (1922-2004) is known as Vietnam’s leading proponent of cubism and abstraction. Large areas of […]

As a result of severe environmental conditions and poor storage during the war, poor condition is characteristic of many paintings in Vietnam, and many are in urgent need of conservation. As part of a research project instigated with Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, two paintings by Nguyễn Trọng Kiệm (1933-1991) were sent to undergo scientific […]

Phố Hàng Cá (‘Fish Street’) was painted in 1962 by Bùi Xuân Phái (1920-88), a Hanoi artist who became one of Vietnam’s best-known painters for his depictions of the old streets of the city. On this painting from Witness Collection, oil paint was applied on the textured side of a hardboard panel. This cross-hatched texture, […]

In 2005, Witness Collection approached the Conservation Unit at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK, for advice on suitable care and conservation of rare and fragile Vietnamese art works belonging to its collection. To support further investigation, Witness Collection arranged a research trip to Vietnam by Jean Brown, a senior faculty member, to […]