As part of the restoration of The Night Watch, an investigation is being conducted into what happened to the painting in the past. One hundred years ago, a mysterious layer of varnish was applied to the painting.
“I hate the empire and, better than to destroy someone, I can destroy The Night Watch,” he is said to have said afterwards. It is January 13, 1911 when a frustrated, unemployed ship’s cook is hacking into De Nachtwacht with a shoemaker’s knife. Fortunately he only scrapes the varnish and Rembrandt’s paint layer remains intact.
The experienced family of restorers Hesterman, consisting of father Albertus Johannes Hesterman (1848-1916) and his two sons, repaired the damage with a brush and some alcohol and with that the unpleasant incident seemed over.
But the affair revealed a bigger problem. Painting conservator Esther van Duijn (47) is researching the restoration history of De Nachtwacht. “At that time, The Night Watch was covered with many layers of varnish. A journalist described the varnish just after the attack as “as thick as a dime.”
Those thick layers turned out to be a good protection against the knife attack. However, they had also become highly yellowed and opaque over the years. Van Duijn: “People had few problems with that yellowing at the time. In fact, many thought it was part of the patina of a 17th-century Rembrandt. But the fact that the painting went blind was a bigger problem that people had been trying to tackle since 1889. ”
In that year, the “regeneration method” was used for the first time, a new way to make opaque layers of varnish clear again. The Night Watch was laid flat on the ground. A tray was placed over it and the bottom of the tray was lined with a cloth sprinkled with alcohol. The alcohol vapors softened the varnish and dried clear again.
Temporary effect
“It worked very well, but the effect was temporary. It had to be done over and over again and more and more regeneration had to be done. ” The scratches caused by the ship’s cook had been repaired, but the result was very glossy, in stark contrast to the rest of the painting. The responsible committee pushed for yet another regeneration.
The Hesterman family came up with a solution. “They recommended a varnish that would last for a long time. But the committee did not agree and wanted to know what was in that miracle varnish. However, Pa Hesterman refused to divulge his ingredients. That was his professional confidentiality. ”
In the end, Hesterman told everything to the secretary of the committee, the art historian Jan Six. He told the meeting that all ingredients of the varnish could be applied to the painting without danger: “There are secret means that owe their mystery only to their secrecy.”
In the RKD, the art history institute in The Hague, Van Duijn found a box with glass negatives showing how father and sons Hesterman applied the varnish. “Nobody had looked at that carefully until now. You can see in the photos that they are holding the secret agent in their hand. They also have cloths and cotton wool in hand. It remains speculation what they do exactly, but you can see that they work the canvas from bottom to top. ”
The negatives are also special because it was not customary at the time to take photos of a restoration. “This is an extremely early example of restoration photos. That also makes these recordings very valuable. ”
The exact composition of the secret varnish can no longer be traced, because this layer has now disappeared. The Night Watch underwent thorough restorations in 1945-1947 and 1975-1976, during which almost all layers of varnish were removed.
Van Duijn: “They seem like footnotes in history, but they are very important to me because these photos give me a good idea of what happened to The Night Watch and when which treatments were done.”
