A three month project has begun to restore and clean the large Panorama canvas of Mesdag – 1680 square metres of canvas. The museum will remain open during this time.
Cleaning process
The process consists of three steps: the layer of dust is removed with a special hoover. Next, a suitable sponge is used to remove greasy soot particles. This sponge bulks up the dirt, like an eraser. Then a soft brush wipes away these particles. This restores the colours of the canvas to their original, bright state. Thanks to this treatment, the canvas and paint are once again better protected from future dirt.
Restoration and retouching
The colour layer of the painting is carefully monitored and touched up where the top layer has decoloured. Any gaps visible from the dune are filled and integrated with retouching.
Jorinde Koenen, chief conservator of Museum Panorama Mesdag: “…For retouching, we use, among other things, special pencils with a high concentration of pigment and therefore high colour strength and very high lightfastness. When de-staining areas where the paint has discoloured because of old leaks, we prefer dry materials, because of the specific properties of the Panorama canvas (matt, no varnish, very porous and absorbent, but also the enormous surface area)…”
Conservation
This year, the main focus of the work is on conservation including careful monitoring and documentation of the current condition of the canvas. Every five to seven years, the Panorama will be cleaned, checked and treated where necessary. This is necessary to preserve the Panorama so that future generations can be assured of visiting Mesdag’s Panorama.
Minke Schat, museum director: “…It is an honourable task to keep the heritage of the Mesdag artist couple accessible to the widest possible audience for as long as possible. Proper conservation of the 143-year-old Panorama canvas is therefore of the utmost importance. We are delighted and grateful that this project has been made possible thanks to support from the Friends of Mesdag, the Zadelhoff Cultuurfonds and BAM Infra Nederland…”.
Panorama Mesdag remains open
The cleaning of the Panorama canvas can be seen live. While visitors imagine themselves on the Seinpost dune overlooking the Scheveningen of 1881, they can simultaneously also watch the conservators working on the canvas. By breaking through the optical illusion, suddenly look like giants. An extraordinary experience that can only be seen once every five to seven years. The restoration work will take place during the months of June, July and August. Museum Panorama Mesdag will remain open to the public during the maintenance work.
Previous restorations
The last maintenance of the Panorama was in the summer of 2017. Back then, the entire canvas was cleaned and cleared of dust and soot particles. However, this was not the first large-scale maintenance. In the late 1980s, the world-famous Panorama of Scheveningen, was in poor condition. The 114.5-metre-long canvas was showing considerable wear and tear and action had to be taken quickly. A major restoration* followed in the early 1990s. A large team of conservators, art historians and technical experts joined forces to prevent this artistic Mesdag highlight from being lost.
About the Panorama of Scheveningen
The Panorama of Scheveningen is over 140 years old. In 1880, Hendrik Willem Mesdag was commissioned by a Belgian panorama company to create a 360-degree painting. As subject, he chose his beloved village of Scheveningen, location Seinpostduin, then the highest dune in the village. With the help of his wife Sientje Mesdag-van Houten, George Hendrik Breitner, Théophile de Bock and Bernard Blommers – all important painters at the time – he got the Panorama of Scheveningen finished in four months.
Previous restoration
The documentary Panorama Mesdag: Restauratie van een schilderij zonder grenzen (26 min., 1996) shows the restoration in the 1990s. This documentary is in Dutch with English subtitles, and can be watched on YouTube:
Zestee 