By RACHEL GOTTLIEB
Courant Staff Writer
September 13 2004
It was a tennis match in 1986 that changed the focus of Trinity College
chemistry Professor Henry DePhillips' work. And his life.
Really, it was a substitute playing in the regular match, Stephen H. Kornhauser,
conservator of art for the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, who triggered all
that change when, after a couple of post-match beers, he asked DePhillips to
analyze some paint chips from art in the museum's collection.
About a week later, six gelatin capsules arrived in DePhillips' lab. He peered
inside and found nothing there.
"I couldn't see the samples," DePhillips said, the air of that first mystery
that piqued his imagination evident in his voice all these years later.
"I called Steve and I said `There's nothing in them. I think someone screwed
up.' He laughed and said `Do you expect me to send you 11/2 pounds of paint from
a $3 million Van Gogh? Go get a microscope.'"
Many times amplified, DePhillips made out the "tiny, tiny amounts" of paint.
And so it was that he abandoned 25 years of analyzing the proteins of snails,
lobsters and squid - which he did buy by the pound - for the micro world of
microscopic paint chips from the world's great art treasures.
In his labs filled with specialized microscopes, DePhillips analyzes samples of
paint and other materials. His findings help identify the origin of the paint,
such as a region along the ancient Silk Route that ran from China to Spain using
camel caravans, and the time period when the materials were available. Between
the years 1000 and 1500, he said, some pigments for paint were more costly than
gold.
Until the 20th century, painters mostly mixed their own paint or had an
assistant who mixed it for them so the composition of their paints became an
artist's "signature." This information can be used to help authenticate or date
artwork, analyze a cross section of a painting or discern an artist's technique.
Knowing a technique, such as layering, can also contribute to authenticating a
painting and help conservators restore the paintings using the artist's style.
As DePhillips, now in his 42nd year at the private college in Hartford, shifted
the aim of his microscope from the sea world to the art world, he discovered a
new love.
Working with the Atheneum, the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center
for British Art, his interest in artists and their masterpieces grew. DePhillips
reflects on his honeymoon in France and Italy 45 years ago with his music-major,
art-loving wife.
"All she did was drag me to museums. I'm a scientist. That was out in left
field. Trudge. Trudge. Trudge. It did not ignite a spark."
Now science in art - that is altogether different.
"I gained an artistic respect for science that came from a scientific
application to art. Scientists deal with the same materials artists deal with."
The most common reason for analyzing the paint and the binding medium is to
guide the restoration of the great works.
On a recent summer morning, Kornhauser walked through the museum's halls
pointing to paintings that DePhillips tested for a variety of reasons,
explaining as he went the contribution that DePhillips has made to conservation
of the great works. He stopped at Marsden Hartley's work titled "Young Blades."
"This was painted on masonite [pegboard]. These paintings sometimes have
problems with flaking," Kornhauser said. "We didn't know how he prepared the
panel. We figured [Hartley] might have a secret."
"Masonite tends to be porous; the paint would be absorbed," DePhillips said.
"Professor DePhillips tested some drops along the edge and he found it to be
shellac," Kornhauser said.
"The shellac prepared the surface," DePhillips explained.
It's important to restorers to know this because water-based paints will not
stick to oil-based substances.
For restoration, the museum also wanted to know what kind of paint Hartley used
because he painted at a time when paint became commercially available.
"The question was, did he make his own paints? Did he use the same paints in his
early works as he used in his later works?" Kornhauser said.
Scientific studies can also help differentiate authentic artwork from the many
fraudulent reproductions circulating through the art world. And if a painting
travels to other museums and other countries for display, knowing the chemical
composition of a work of art can help curators guarantee that the painting they
get back from a loan is the same painting that went out, Kornhauser said.
Discussing his work in his office at Trinity, DePhillips plucks an X-ray from
his desk from that same Van Gogh self-portrait for which he first analyzed the
binding, the medium and the canvas. At least one scholar had questioned the
authenticity of the piece, and DePhillips' chemical analysis had concluded that
the materials used in the painting were consistent with those typically used by
Van Gogh.
Still, questions remained about the Van Gogh. DePhillips finally was vindicated
a year later when Patricia Garland, then associate conservator at the Atheneum,
by chance viewed the year-old X-ray of the painting upside down.
At that angle, she saw what everyone had missed by looking at the X-ray
right-side up: a distinct outline of a woman in a cape spinning on a wheel.
"It was a typical Van Gogh subject," DePhillips said of the sketch that was
discovered under the self-portrait. The discovery put to rest any doubt about
whether the master had painted the self-portrait.
It also boosted DePhillips' confidence in what he called "forensic chemistry"
for art.
While the work DePhillips does is purely scientific, the application of his
findings helps art historians understand more about the lives of the artists
such as how much money they had for art supplies, where they purchased their
materials and techniques they used.
"It makes the artist more human," Kornhauser said. "It puts a face on the
artist."
To illustrate the role chemical analysis can play in gaining a deeper
understanding of the artist, Kornhauser points to a portrait of Oliver Ellsworth
and Abigail Wolcott Ellsworth painted at their Windsor home by Ralph Earl in
1792. The painting of Oliver Ellsworth, who helped to write and ratify the
Constitution and later became the third chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court,
is considered one of Earl's greatest works.
Prior to DePhillips' analysis of materials used to prepare the canvas for paint,
Kornhauser said, "everyone thought Ralph Earl was self-taught." But the
preparation Earl followed to fill in the canvas to hide the weave - as revealed
by DePhillips - matches a technique described by author Robert Dossie. In his
book, "The Handmaid to the Arts" published in 1758, Dossie describes a technique
for covering the canvas with oil and then with a red lead.
"You find he [Earl] was following this how-to book," Kornhauser said.
The knowledge doesn't detract from Earl's talent, but it gives art historians a
richer understanding of the artist. "People have this romanticized view that you
paint naively - very primitively, that you wake up in the morning and you take
your paint brushes and paint. There was more formality," Kornhauser said.
Kornhauser and DePhillips also tested some of the paint on Abigail Ellsworth's
hands.
"We tried to find out why her hands were so sallow, to see if there were
`fugitive pigments' that changed color," Kornhauser said.
"We didn't get an answer to that," DePhillips added.
While answers are sometimes elusive or conclude that a painting cannot be
restored, both Kornhauser and DePhillips say the dimension that the scientific
discovery brings to their work has transformed not only the way they do their
job, but their very lives.
"He changed my life," Kornhauser said of DePhillips. "We have a partner now.
It's important to scholarship that we have this added dimension that Professor
DePhillips brings."
DePhillips is part of a growing field of scientists specializing in art
conservation and authentication.
"What's special about Henry is he is a chemist by profession but he has taken it
upon himself to learn about the kind of science we need to understand materials
artists use," said Garland, now senior conservator of paintings at the Yale
University Art Gallery. "He has a great interest in how science facilitates
art."
She said that level of interest in art is rare in a scientist but it makes it
easier for conservators to work with DePhillips.
Strolling through his lab at Trinity, DePhillips paused to reflect on his
passion for his work.
He teaches a course for non-science majors, trying to draw them into his field,
and though he is 67 and could retire any time, he said he loves his work too
much to leave it.
"It has transformed my life and it has transformed my wife's life," DePhillips
said. "Now I drag her to museums. This is something I'll be involved with for
the rest of my life."
Copyright 2004, Hartford Courant