those viragos, he’d tell me, comets detached from the firmament, deviant and sharply veering, long-haired vagabond stars, hissing through the universe on their solitary paths, a tear in the social fabric, threats to the status quo. Yet once war broke out, Ted said, their battle, eclipsed by larger events, became no more than one of many lit matches in the stratosphere.
By then he had entered so far into the past, a brittle figure collapsed into his armchair travelling through decades when he scarcely had the strength to cross the room, that all I could do was let myself be pulled along with him, even when I’d heard the stories countless times and wasn’t sure what to make of them, feeling more excitement than dismay. My affections had skipped two generations; I was never close to anyone in my family and he was the only relative whose stories ever really enthralled me.
In his head he was always turning them over, a mental exercise during which he rarely stumbled on a fact or figure. Winters when I’d visit we would sit by the radiator, and every hour or so he would place a coin in the palm of my hand to feed into his meter, as if the retrieval of his memories depended on it. He would tell me of the night in early May 1910 when Prime Minister Asquith, aboard his yacht the
Enchantress
, received news that King Edward VII had passed away. Saddened by these tidings, Asquith went out on deck and gazed into the darkened sky. At that moment, Halley’s Comet came blazing overhead like a lit sword. There was our prime minister, alone with this punctual omen in the night sky, while in those years, back home, other fires were being kindled.
Comets and suffragettes. Ted always equated the two. He feared the approach of these comets that drew nearer, their brightness increasing, the light of their nucleus ever more vivid, great curvatures of tails stretching across the heavens, a sudden advance in size and splendour. One glimpse, one omen, that’s all it took: decades later, the events of those years still had him in their grip.
Ted had been pacing in my thoughts that afternoon when the art restorer entered the room with her students. Along with my great-grandfather, it would be this woman who, in Room 65 of the Sainsbury Wing, shed light on an obscure aspect of the museum.
Mid-fifties, attractive, with straight chestnut hair, she stopped in front of a small van Eyck, an intriguing portrait of a man in a red turban, possibly the artist himself, a painting I had always liked despite knowing little about it. The students fanned out like apprentice surgeons at a dissection and pinned their eyes on the subject.
From my chair, I watched and listened.
‘Paintings too are vulnerable to the ravages of time,’ the restorer began. ‘They crack and they flake, their colours change, things fade or darken. Any work you see today will have looked rather different when it was created. And if you look closely—not too closely—you will note that just about every painting in this Gallery contains a vast network of cracks.
‘And these cracks,’ she went on, ‘are what we call craquelure.’
She spelled out the word. A dozen hands took note.
‘Inherent craquelure, the release of stress, occurs with age. As you know, most of the tension in a painting is located in its four corners. Accidental craquelure, such as spiral cracks and spider cracks, is the result of external impact.’
The hands continued to scribble.
‘Look at this van Eyck. Your attention is probably first drawn to the red turban, to the magisterial way in which each fold has been painted. From there, you move on to the face. It is more cracked than wrinkled, you can see—the paint’s age shows even more than the man’s.
‘This type of grid craquelure is created when primary cracks, which follow the direction of the brushstroke, and secondary cracks run in right angles to one another. Aging cracks often follow the lines established by drying cracks.
By then he had entered so far into the past, a brittle figure collapsed into his armchair travelling through decades when he scarcely had the strength to cross the room, that all I could do was let myself be pulled along with him, even when I’d heard the stories countless times and wasn’t sure what to make of them, feeling more excitement than dismay. My affections had skipped two generations; I was never close to anyone in my family and he was the only relative whose stories ever really enthralled me.
In his head he was always turning them over, a mental exercise during which he rarely stumbled on a fact or figure. Winters when I’d visit we would sit by the radiator, and every hour or so he would place a coin in the palm of my hand to feed into his meter, as if the retrieval of his memories depended on it. He would tell me of the night in early May 1910 when Prime Minister Asquith, aboard his yacht the
Enchantress
, received news that King Edward VII had passed away. Saddened by these tidings, Asquith went out on deck and gazed into the darkened sky. At that moment, Halley’s Comet came blazing overhead like a lit sword. There was our prime minister, alone with this punctual omen in the night sky, while in those years, back home, other fires were being kindled.
Comets and suffragettes. Ted always equated the two. He feared the approach of these comets that drew nearer, their brightness increasing, the light of their nucleus ever more vivid, great curvatures of tails stretching across the heavens, a sudden advance in size and splendour. One glimpse, one omen, that’s all it took: decades later, the events of those years still had him in their grip.
Ted had been pacing in my thoughts that afternoon when the art restorer entered the room with her students. Along with my great-grandfather, it would be this woman who, in Room 65 of the Sainsbury Wing, shed light on an obscure aspect of the museum.
Mid-fifties, attractive, with straight chestnut hair, she stopped in front of a small van Eyck, an intriguing portrait of a man in a red turban, possibly the artist himself, a painting I had always liked despite knowing little about it. The students fanned out like apprentice surgeons at a dissection and pinned their eyes on the subject.
From my chair, I watched and listened.
‘Paintings too are vulnerable to the ravages of time,’ the restorer began. ‘They crack and they flake, their colours change, things fade or darken. Any work you see today will have looked rather different when it was created. And if you look closely—not too closely—you will note that just about every painting in this Gallery contains a vast network of cracks.
‘And these cracks,’ she went on, ‘are what we call craquelure.’
She spelled out the word. A dozen hands took note.
‘Inherent craquelure, the release of stress, occurs with age. As you know, most of the tension in a painting is located in its four corners. Accidental craquelure, such as spiral cracks and spider cracks, is the result of external impact.’
The hands continued to scribble.
‘Look at this van Eyck. Your attention is probably first drawn to the red turban, to the magisterial way in which each fold has been painted. From there, you move on to the face. It is more cracked than wrinkled, you can see—the paint’s age shows even more than the man’s.
‘This type of grid craquelure is created when primary cracks, which follow the direction of the brushstroke, and secondary cracks run in right angles to one another. Aging cracks often follow the lines established by drying cracks.
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