March 20th, 2012
Ann Massing
Published by the Hamilton Kerr Institute and Harvey Miller as volume 3 of the series Painting and Practice
During the second half of the eighteenth century, the profession of painting restorer became established in France. Documents concerning the careers of the restorers of that period employed by the French Royal Collection, and then by the new French Republic, have been examined, resulting in this study in which the biographies of the main painting restorers of the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are placed into the historical and cultural setting of the period. Details of the techniques used by these restorers are presented in detail. The narrative concludes in the early nineteenth century with the death of François-Toussaint Hacquin in 1832 – about the time of the Restauration (of Louis-Philippe to the throne) in 1830.
Ann Massing has a degree in the History of Art and Fine Art from Indiana University, Bloomington Indiana and has the title of Diplom-Restorator from the Institute für Technologie der Malerei, Stuttgart, Germany. She is a painting restorer and was Assistant to the Director of the Hamilton Kerr Institute from 1978 to 2007.
This work has been compiled under funding from a British Academy Research Readership from 1995 to 1997 and a Leverhulme Research Fellowship from 2005 to 2006. The Samuel H Kress Foundation contributed towards the cost of the illustrations.
The book may be ordered directly from the publisher, Brepols.
Hardback. ISBN: 978-1-905375-34-9