Conserving the Past, Learning from the Past: Art, Science and Copying in the Gallery

This chapter examines the entanglement of art, science and education in the National Gallery in London and beyond during the 20th century through the activities of the student artist, Rosa Branson (b.1933), and the German emigré painting conservator, Helmut Moritz Ruhmann (1891-1973). It discusses the changing place of copying in the education of student painters at Camberwell School of Art and at the Slade School of Art and the five years that Rosa spent copying paintings in the National Gallery to learn the Renaissance layering technics that she would use to paint contemporary topics. It traces the European painting conservation networks that supported Ruhemann’s appointment as consultant restorer at the National Gallery after his expulsion in 1933 from the Kaiser Wilhem Museum in Berlin on the grounds of his Jewish heritage. It considers the relation of art and science in the conservation of paintings at the National Gallery through which knowledge of the Renaissance layering technics that Rosa would use became increasingly understood. It also discusses the curriculum that Ruhemann devised for student restorers at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, which included both art and science and which he disseminated via the International Institute for Conservation, of which he was a founder member. The curriculum Ruhemann developed for student restorers at the Courtauld Institute included time spent copying in the National Gallery, where Ruhemann provided encouragement to Rosa as he supervised student-restorers copying. The conclusion argues that together these artistic and conservation activities illustrate a meshwork of forms of exhibiting where threads of informal formal education and learning at the Slade and in the National Gallery knot together the exhibiting of "old masters" and explanations of the scientific restoration processes that were central to Ruhemann’s conservation work and which inform the Renaissance layering technics that Rosa uses to paint contemporary topics.