One of several major conservation projects carried out at the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa was the treatment of the painting Beached Margent of the Sea by F.M. Bell-Smith (1846- 1923).

Bell-Smith studied in London, England, and arrived in Montreal in 1866. He later became co- founder of the Society of Canadian Artists. In addition to being a superb craftsman, Bell-Smith's work and style inspired and influenced many younger artists of the time. He showed great interest in painting subtle atmospheric effects. Beached Margent of the Sea is a classic example of Bell- Smith's style, which falls somewhere between the Victorian movement and the modern movement of expression.

The painting had been cleaned as part of a previous restoration. Several tears in the canvas had also been repaired and heavily overpainted. Since that restoration, the original colours of the painting had become greatly obscured by embedded grime and by a darkened non-resinous coating over large areas of the work.

The oil in the primer and paint layers had weakened the linen canvas, making it inflexible and extremely vulnerable to mechanical damage.

To facilitate treatment, the painting was removed from its stretcher. Polyester canvas strips were attached to the edges of the painting with a heat seal adhesive. The painting was then stretched onto an expandable working stretcher. Old patches and embrittled adhesive residues were removed from the reverse of the canvas. Several cleaning tests established the degree to which the tonality of the painting had changed over time. An appropriate emulsion was used to remove the embedded grime layers. After further testing, a combination of organic solvents was applied to remove disfiguring brownish accretions and the discoloured overpaints from the painting.

Next, the painting was lined onto a polyester canvas. Voids in the paint layers were filled with a putty of chalk and rabbit skin glue. Fills were then inpainted with watercolours followed by glazes of powder pigments in a stable medium. A thin coating of natural resin varnish was brushed onto the entire painting. The original frame was cleaned, and the painting was secured in the frame using brass mending plates. Finally, a protective backing board was secured to the reverse of the stretcher.

Figure 1. The painting before treatment. The true brilliance of the colours is obscured by layers of embedded grime and discoloured overpaints.

Figure 2. The painting in its original frame after treatment. Accretions and overpaints have been removed. The painting has been lined and tears have been repaired. The original colours and tonal nuances are now clearly visible.

Figure 3. The brittle ground and paint layers caused a network of cracks throughout the pictorial surface, as seen here under raking light.