The Way of the Modern Adventurer by John Steuart Curry
Before Treatment
Painted Artifacts
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Artist John Steuart Curry was born on a Kansas farm in 1897 as the eldest of five children. He grew up painting the farm’s animals and admiring reproductions of work by Peter Paul Rubens and Gustav Doré in his childhood home, both of which influenced his later style. Curry attended the Kansas City Art Institute prior to transferring to the Art Institute of Chicago and, upon graduation, created illustrations for notable magazines including Boy’s Life and The Saturday Evening Post. In 1926, he traveled to Paris to study the works and techniques of artists including Gustave Courbet, Honoré Daumier, Titian and Rubens. The Federal Art Project began creating Depression-era employment for artists in 1934; by 1936, Curry had been commissioned through the Project to paint murals for Washington, D.C.’s Department of Justice Building and Main Interior Building. He died in 1946 after leaving his artistic mark as a prominent painter and muralist.
Curry’s mural project was originally commissioned for and installed in the offices of the James Boring Travel Agency, located at the famed Crown Building at 730 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY. Boring’s travel agency headquarters coordinated luxury first class-only cruises to dozens of exotic countries and ports throughout the Americas, Europe and the Mediterranean. This painting depicts the routes of his world cruises. There was once a companion piece, also mounted on the walls of the agency, depicting North America; however, its whereabouts and condition are unknown. Boring overextended his cash reserves to book cruises and tours in Eastern Europe, and fell into bankruptcy in 1937 due to the effects Nazi occupation. Boring however, at the ripe age of 100, drove from the northeast to Florida to show his family he could still do it. After his death, the mural was pulled from the wall of the travel agency where it had been and wound up tacked high up in to rafters of a Pennsylvania-German bank barn on the outskirts of Philadelphia, and was sold to our client. The painting had gotten wet, was stained, torn, stretched out of plane, and was streaked with rodent excrement and urine.
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The image depicts a map of Europe and northern Africa, with names of prominent cities, oceans, and rivers using the spellings and borders of the period. There were many small painted vignettes around the bottom and side edges of the painting showing important landmarks, Gods, or people in native costume. A sun and moon had been painted in the upper right and left corners, a polar bear in the north Atlantic, a narwhal off the coast of Spain, and over the Soviet Republic a double seahorse flanking a capital “B” with an ocean liner atop denoting the Boring Agency. The painting was signed and dated by the artist in red oil paint (wet into wet) in the lower proper left corner in the country of Arabia – “John Steuart Curry, made this map, Feb. – March 1928.”
The 10’h x 15’w mural was executed on a medium-weight, plain weave canvas with a white artist-applied ground coating. It was painted in a pigment-rich oil medium and the client noted that the paint used was most likely house paint. The painting had an extremely discolored varnish coating, which had not been evenly applied in the past. Some areas looked as though there was little to no varnish, while other sections appeared to be very heavily coated. The varnish appeared to have fractured off of the canvas along with the paint where the canvas had been previously creased or folded. In addition to all of the damage noted above, there was evidence of staining from past mold growth. Mold spores did not appear to be active, however, they can lay dormant for many years and are easily reactivated by moisture or high humidity. The mural had also been folded in half vertically and twice horizontally, then it had been rolled and squeezed flat.
Although the painting did maintain some of its original integrity, it was no longer capable of sustaining its own weight, particularly along the fold lines where there was a lot of paint loss. There were many edge tears ranging from ½” to 20” around all four sides of the painting with many small folded-over sections of painted canvas associated with the edge tears. There were many minor canvas losses and four major canvas losses. A deteriorated layer of paste and small remnants of wallpaper was still extant, suggesting that the painting was attached to a wall covered in wallpaper at one point. This may have occurred at its original display location at the travel agency offices. Tacks were used to hold the painting on the wall in addition to the paste as shown by tack holes around the edges of the painting. A molding was then nailed over approximately 1½” to 2” of the edges of the painting. A 1” section of discolored varnish can be seen on all edges outside of the painting border strip. The bottom and top of the painting still retained a 1” primed but unpainted tacking margin, which was not present on the sides.
Scroll Table
Image - Setting up the scroll table
The painting was carefully unrolled from the tube while being vacuumed from its reverse side. A custom scroll-like jig was designed and built so the painting could be rolled face-out on two larger diameter tubes covered in Mylar. This system safely supported the fragile painting and allowed for sections of the canvas to be rolled and unrolled to accommodate cleaning, paint consolidation, tear repairs, canvas inserts, and other localized treatment.
Cleaning & Consolidation
Image - Surface cleaning
Surface dirt, discolored varnish, staining, surface accretions, and embedded dirt in the structure of the paint were removed with a combination of organic and aqueous solvents, solvent mixtures, and gels. This cleaning process took nearly 90 hours for conservators to complete. The creases caused by the canvas being folded were locally relaxed and areas of flaking paint were locally consolidated using appropriate conservation-grade adhesives and varnish coatings.
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All wallpaper paste, and wallpaper remnants were carefully removed from the reverse side of the canvas in order to prevent lumps forming between the original canvas and lining support. Mold spores were neutralized and removed from the canvas by solvent application. All canvas tears, breaks, and weakened folds were joined and mended using a conservation-grade adhesive. Canvas inserts were also attached to replace missing areas.
Image - A scalpel is being used to carefully remove remnants on the back of the canvas
Lining & Fills
Image - Positioning the mural on to a secondary lining canvas
A secondary lining canvas was prepared with an infusion of wax resin adhesive. The painting was carefully unrolled onto the vacuum hot table and infused as well, serving to further consolidate and flatten the canvas and paint. The prepared lining canvas was attached to the painting using a thermoplastic adhesive and controlled heat. The lined painting was stretched onto a new custom poplar stretcher with expansion bolts and appropriately placed cross-bars. It was then secured with staples and keyed out to make it taut on the stretcher. An isolating layer of spray varnish was applied to the painting to separate the original artist’s work with that of the conservator.
Inpainting & Final Varnish
Image - Color matching and painting over areas of paint loss
All losses were filled with gesso. Losses, abrasion and any unremovable staining was then inpainted with conservation-grade paints; an extensive process which took about 300 hours to complete. A final combination of spray varnish and brush varnish coatings was applied to the painting. A backing board of corrugated plastic was added to the back of the painting along with handles for stable handling of the large mural. The painting was then shipped to Kansas State University, where it is currently on display at the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art.
