The Public Is Watching as Conservators Carefully Restore a Rembrandt Masterpiece to Its Former Glory

Visitors to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam are watching one of Rembrandt’s most famous paintings, The Night Watch, change before their eyes. Behind a glass barrier, conservators are removing the painting’s old varnish as it hangs on its gallery wall—the first step in the masterpiece’s restoration.

Rembrandt’s 12.5- by 15-foot painting is being restored as part of Operation Night Watch, the Rijksmuseum’s ongoing study of the 17th-century Dutch masterpiece. During the project’s five-year research phase, experts re-stretched the canvas and examined the painting’s physical components, discovering arsenic sulfide pigments behind its golden glow and lead in its base layer. The second phase of Operation Night Watch began this month when eight conservators started stripping away its varnish—clear, protective layers often applied atop paintings.

“The varnish that is now on The Night Watch is discolored, has yellowed and it saturates poorly, so it really impacts the legibility of the paint surface,” says conservator Ige Verslype in a video from the Rijksmuseum. “To treat this, we have to remove the old varnish. And as well, you can see on the paint surface there are many old, discolored retouchings. They often have been applied very broadly, covering original paint. So we want to remove those and apply new, fine retouchings.”

The Night Watch has undergone several revarnishings: one in 1975, after a man slashed the artwork with a bread knife; one in 1981; and one in 1990, after another man sprayed the painting with acid, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“Former restoration projects happened very quickly,” as Rijksmuseum director Taco Dibbits tells AFP. The current restoration will involve the application of a new varnish, bringing the painting “as close as possible to its former glory,” he adds.

Finished in 1642, The Night Watch depicts a group of civic guardsmen—Amsterdam’s 17th-century local police force. Rembrandt painted The Night Watch at the height of his career, and it’s famous for the artist’s masterful treatment of light and shadow.

Conservators are cleaning The Night Watch by applying small pieces of tissue, each lightly soaked in solvent, to the painting’s surface, says Verslype. “With that, we remove the bulk of the old varnish.” They then use cotton swabs to remove remaining remnants of older varnish.

“I think the most exciting and perhaps the scariest bit is that the people are watching over our shoulders,” conservator Esther van Duijn tells AFP. “But once you are working, you tend to forget that.”

Where the varnish has been removed, the painting appears matte and “very grayish,” Verslype says. As Dibbits says in a statement, “It will be a truly unique experience for the visiting public to be able to follow the process from so close by.” He tells AFP, “You will be able to see The Night Watch, in a sense, naked, without makeup.”

For a conservator, removing a painting’s varnish is “an absolute privilege,” as Paula Dredge, a conservationist at the University of Melbourne, tells the Washington Post’s Kelsey Ables. It’s “a moment of contact with the artist’s creation that very few people experience.”

Dredge adds the restoration is a “process of discovery,” in which “we may find more of Rembrandt.” She lauds the museum’s decision to open the operation to visitors.

“Collections in public institutions belong to the people, and they have the right to know what is being done to them,” she says.

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.