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The painting had been missing for almost 200 years–a great 18th-century work by an important French artist that was exhibited just once, at the Louvre in 1783, and subsequently vanished. Then one day in 2022, a family reached out to Christie’s in Paris. There was a painting in their home that had been in the family for generations, but nobody knew what it was.
Months later, on a January afternoon, Swicklik was standing at his usual spot in the National Gallery’s painting conservation lab, a cheerfully bright workroom in a private area of the West Building. The Vallayer-Coster stood in front of him, removed from its frame—which was being restored separately—and attached to a heavy easel, where the conservator had been working five or six hours a day to clean, repair, and preserve it.
When the flower painting arrived on Swicklik’s easel last summer, he was finally able to investigate the condition problems, including that worrisome piece of plywood. First, he put the canvas under ultraviolet light to better see what was going on. As he feared, the wood had been slapped onto the back to repair a tear; the front had been smeared with plaster and thick paint—a hack job.
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