Page 61 - Eye of the beholder

STaGeS in The cleaninG
of The riVerScaPe PainTinG
Before After
Cleaning, restoration and framing is to a painting as make up is to a woman. If properly done, the results in both instances are spectacular.
When I originally bought this painting in June 2014, it was on an impulse. I had been looking for a work by JP for sometime, and having been unable to find one for some time, was getting rather desperate. On second thoughts, I was almost sure that I had overpaid for a painting in poor state of preservation.
The canvas had been relined in India shortly before it came to my possession. In Basel, the painting subsequently went through some cleaning and restoration by the old restorer near Petersplatz who had cleaned the Early Bengal Durga. This intervention stabilized the paint layer, and took away some of the old varnish and grime. The craquelere was clearly visible, but the painting was otherwise OK.
I love craquelere. For me, craquelere gives a sense of originality and righteousness to a painting. For paintings that have lived in India, where the alternation of seasons is pronounced, craquelere endorses the genuineness of the work, because it is almost impossible to fake.
J P Gangooly executed many a riverscapes. The river Padma is a recurring theme in his paintings. This however, does not seem to a scene from the gangetic plains. Going by the looks of the pine trees and the mountains beyond, this seems to be a scene from the lower Himalayas (probably around Mussourie) where Gangooly often spent his holidays, and is known to have executed a few other mountain views.
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