The Conservator Did It

Fall is unfortunately here and the longest summer in history (at least the pandemic induced self-quarantine made it seem that way) is over.  This means that I have returned to class.

 

The Doc and I married at an early age, and at the time my mother professed that her only regret was that marriage meant I would probably never finish college.  In retrospect, she was right, since although I have long since graduated, I have never stopped going to school.

 

Now, in retirement from Enema U, this has meant that I have the freedom to pick and choose among the courses that I study.  Some of this is the university’s fault.  When I went to work for Enema U, among the retirement benefits promised was a ‘special parking pass’, free golf, and unlimited free tuition.  The special parking permit turned out to be an opportunity to purchase a permit at full price.  They reneged on the golf, too.  But, the free tuition for taking courses remains in effect.  So far.

 

This semester I am taking a course on the restoration of paintings.  Last semester I took the restoration of pottery class in which the instructor had each students paint a terra-cotta flower pot that she promptly smashed to pieces and threw away a few of those.  This semester, this same vandal will have us painting a canvas while she sits in a corner, calmly sharpening her knife.  I think I see a pattern developing.

 

Though I have only just started studying the conservation of paintings, I have already discovered that after a painting is restored—even if this only involved cleaning away the grime of centuries—critics always claim the restoration was done wrong, the painting is ruined, and the conservator is to blame.  Just as in bad Hollywood mysteries the murderer is always the butler—in the world of art—the conservator did it.

 

Take for example, the case of the Norman Rockwell painting, Breaking Home Ties.  Produced in 1954 as cover art for the Saturday Evening Post magazine, Rockwell sold the painting in 1960 for $900 to his friend and neighbor Don Trachte.  Rockwell was obviously selling the painting for far less than the market value, as the painting was already famous, having been part of a traveling exhibit of Rockwell’s work that had been shown from Cairo to Moscow.  Trachte, an artist himself, was the illustrator for Henry, a comic strip that appeared daily in some newspapers from 1938 until 2018. 

 

Needless to say, Rockwell’s painting was a prized possession of the Trachte family.  Voted the second favorite cover from the 321 Rockwell paintings the magazine had showcased over the years, the painting depicted a young man seated beside his father on the running board of a pickup along with the boy’s suitcase and the family dog.  The boy, dressed in his best clothes, is obviously about to leave home for the first time.

 

From time to time, the Trachte family received inquiries from collectors eager to purchase the painting (including one from H. Ross Perot, the billionaire and one-time presidential candidate).  Trachte politely refused all offers and the Rockwell painting, along with seven other valuable, though less famous paintings, remained in the Trachte home.

 

Unfortunately, the Trachte marriage splintered into a protracted and messy divorce case in 1973.  Though it took some time, eventually it was worked out that, while all the paintings would be held in trust for the children, Don would keep the Rockwell painting and two others in his home while his wife, Elizabeth, would receive the other five paintings to display in her home.   Even after the split, the paintings stayed relatively close together, since Elizabeth moved to a new home across the road, but still on the Trachte farm.  Although she lived directly across from her former husband, the two apparently never spoke to each other in the next 32 years.

 

For decades, the Rockwell painting remained in the Trachte home in Sandgate, Vermont, leaving only once for a curator to clean the accumulated dirt and smoke residue of a wood burning fireplace.  In 2002, Don moved to an assisted-living home, turning the farm home over to his children.  In 2003, the family loaned the painting to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts for safekeeping. 

 

While at the museum, experts noticed that the painting had changed over time.  The colors were not as bright as before, so that the overall effect was somewhat diminished—a change the experts attributed to excessive cleaning by the curator.  Nevertheless, the painting was included in several shows of Rockwell’s work.

 

Once again, a sloppy curator had inadvertently damaged a valuable painting.  Typical.

 

In 2005, Don Trachte passed away and his son began cleaning out some of the accumulated paperwork in his father’s house.  Among the papers, he found correspondence from Rockwell praising Don’s loyalty in refusing to sell the painting despite an offer of $35,000.  He also found two photographs of the painting, both showing the framed painting hanging on the living room wall.  As he compared them, the son was puzzled by some minor discrepancies between the two pictures.

 

Obtaining original photos of the painting from the Saturday Evening Post, the son traveled to the museum to compare them to the painting.  After careful study, it became obvious that the painting that had been hanging in the museum from 2002 to 2005 was not the original.  Experts at the museum tested the painting and declared that it had never been cleaned and the painting was an original—there was no other painting hiding underneath.

 

After a careful search of his father’s home, the son noticed a crack in the living room wall of his father’s house.  After moving two shelves from a bookcase, and sliding back the panel, he discovered eight original paintings—including  the real Rockwell painting—hidden behind a fake wall. 

 

There was only one inescapable conclusion:  Trachte didn’t want to part with any of his beloved paintings, so he had forged eight copies to substitute for them:  Copies that had fooled experts—and his wife and family—for decades.

 

When Elizabeth Trachte was told of the deception, her only comment was, “Not surprising.”

 

All of the paintings, real and forged, were the focus of an exhibit at the National Museum of American Illustration in 2016.  Eventually, the family decided to sell the Rockwell painting, bringing in $15.4 million.

 

And just like the butler isn’t always the murderer, in this case, the curator didn’t do it!