Preservation of Drawings

The plan of preserving the water-colour drawings of Turner, devised by the late John Ruskin, may fitly be mentioned here. It was described in a letter to the editor of the Times (October 28, 1856). The recommendation is to enclose each work in a light wooden frame, under a glass, the interior surface of which is prevented from coming in contact with the drawing by means of a raised mount. A number of such frames (five to fifteen) are kept together in cases, which can be carried or wheeled to any part of the room where the drawings are to be studied. Each frame slides vertically into grooves in the case. Professor Ruskin's reasons include the following: 'A large number of the drawings are executed with body colour, the bloom of which any friction or handling would in a short period destroy.' This argument, it will be seen, is directed against the keeping of such works, in their unframed state, in portfolios. Another reason given by Mr. Ruskin is that in the case of these drawings ' their delicate tones of colour would be destroyed by continuous exposure to the light, or to smoke and dust.' He fortifies his position in reference to such exposure in a letter to the Literary Gazette (November 13, 1858), in which he says that 'the officers of both the Louvre and of the British Museum refuse to expose their best drawings or missal-pages to light, in consequence of ascertained damage received by such drawings as have been already exposed; and among the works of Turner I am prepared to name an example in which, the frame having protected a portion, while the rest was exposed, the covered portion is still rich and lovely in colour, while the exposed spaces are reduced in some parts nearly to white paper, and the colour in general to a dull brown.' 'That water-colours are not injured by darkness is also sufficiently proved by the exquisite preservation of missal paintings, when the books containing them have been but little used.

Observe, then, you have simply this question to put to the public: "Will you have your Turner drawings to look at when you are at leisure, in a comfortable room, under such conditions as will preserve them to you for ever, or will you make an amusing exhibition of them (if amusing, which I doubt) for children and nursery-maids; dry your wet clothes by them and shake off the dust from your feet upon them for a score or two of years, and then send them to the wastepaper merchant?"' Mr. Ruskin in another letter to the Times, which appeared on October 21, 1859, wrote thus: 'I take no share in the responsibility of lighting the pictures either of Reynolds or Turner with gas; on the contrary, my experience would lead me to apprehend serious injury to those pictures from such a measure; and it is with profound regret that I have heard of its adoption.' Although considerable weight is rightly given to the opinions of Mr. Ruskin above quoted, it must not be forgotten that all paintings of the modern school are not to be classed with those of Turner and Reynolds in respect to susceptibility to the injurious action of the products of the burning of gas and of continuous exposure to moderate light.

When, therefore, Mr. Ruskin wrote (in the Daily Telegraph, July 5, 1876): 'I do not think it necessary to repeat my former statements respecting the injurious power of light on certain pigments rapidly, and on all eventually,' I find myself compelled to reject so sweeping an assertion. That light injures all pigments eventually cannot for one moment be conceded. And if we could but succeed in so modifying the light that illuminates our pictures as to remove from it certain particularly active beams, we might considerably augment the list of permanent pigments. Experiments on a small scale prove that several fluorescent substances, such as a solution of quinine sulphate, while intercepting dangerous rays, do not sensibly modify the colour of the light, and yet lessen its chemical activity. In the first edition (published 1890) of the present handbook, I wrote: 'Possibly a transparent screen of this character will some day be used for our picture-galleries.' Since then an arrangement of coloured glass - peacock blue and yellow - has been devised by Sir W. Abney and introduced into one of the galleries of the Victoria and Albert Museum, with the object of preventing the entrance through the skylight of a great part of the injurious rays.

Thirteen years ago I used the following words in relation to this subject: 'It is instructive to note how much difference exists between different specimens of apparently colourless glass in their absorptive power for the so-called chemical rays. These differences may be tested by framing a strip of paper washed with carmine and covering it crosswise with the samples of glass to be valued, adding for comparison a plate of rock-crystal. Under the last-named material the fading is nearly as rapid as it is where the pigment is without any cover. It may be safely affirmed that miniatures should be protected by glass, not by rock-crystal. Further experiments on the selection of protective glasses and the construction of transparent screens are needed. A partial discussion of this subject will be found in the next chapter, and to this I would refer my readers.' In this connexion a paper by Sir William Crookes, P.R.S., may be named. It was published in the Phil. Trans. of the Royal Society, Vol. 213A, and is entitled 'The Preparation of Eye-Preserving Glass for Spectacles.'