A British museum has two Ukrainian refugee professionals restore two paintings

A British museum, the Huguenot Museum (Huguenot Museum) in Rochester , Kent , is offering an important opportunity to two Ukrainian female refugees: to pursue their profession, that of restorers, in England.

Ahneta Shaskova and Valeriia Kravchenko, who both trained as restorers at the Kiev Academy of Art and Architecture, had to leave Ukraine at the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022. Another Ukrainian professional, Katya Belaia-Selzer, also a restorer, helped them and 15 other refugee restorers find accommodation in the United Kingdom. Thus, together with the Huguenot Museum and its patrons, Katya organized the intervention on two portraits in the collection that Ahneta and Valeriia were able to work on.

There is an interesting parallel between the events of the Huguenots and those of the Ukrainians. In 1685 the king of France prevented Protestants from living as French citizens. They were forbidden to leave France and were forced to convert to the Roman Catholic faith. Catholic soldiers also occupied the homes of Protestant families to pressure them to comply with these new legal requirements. Over 200,000 Protestants left France and about 50,000 settled in the British Isles. They were Britain’s first refugees. More than three hundred years later, the Russians, in 2022, invaded Ukraine, with no respect for civilians. So women and children fled across the Polish border and beyond, and over 170,000 Ukrainians were welcomed into British homes by August 2022.

When the Huguenot Museum came out of anti-Covid restrictions and reopened to the public last summer, the opportunity was taken to draw parallels between Huguenots and Ukrainian refugees: thus, in August 2022 the institute applied for funding to preserve two portraits of Huguenot refugees, David Hubert (1660-1745) and Jean Jacob (1708-1787) and Jean’s wife, Anne Courtauld (1708-1793). These are the works being worked on by Ahneta Shaskova and Valeriia Kravchenko.

Hubert was a watchmaker from Rouen, and Jean Jacob was a goldsmith from Metz. Both settled in London’s West End, Jacob near St. Martin in the Fields and Hubert in The Strand. In 1747 David Hubert founded a school for Huguenot orphans and Jacob joined the school committee. The two restorers joined Katya Belaia in her studio in Olney, Buckinghamshire. Katya, who was born in Ukraine and trained at the institute founded by the famous Huguenot Courtauld family, previously worked in Rochester, where she formed an association of Ukrainian restorers in 2014. And, as mentioned, in the past year Katya organized the residency of 15 Ukrainian colleagues in Britain. “The Huguenot Museum,” she declares, “offered an incredible opportunity for two Ukrainian refugee, professional restorers: to continue to practice their craft and find dignity and meaning despite the frightening events currently unfolding in their homeland.”

The conservation of these Huguenot portraits was funded by Britain-based Idlewild and Leche Trusts with contributions from the Faith Project, Bishop Auckland and a direct descendant of John Jacob’s family.

The portrait of Jean Jacob was on a very fragile canvas and the varnish was already beginning to flake off. So the timing of the restoration was perfect. Visually both portraits were dark and cloudy due to layers of old paint, dirt, and past restorations. Both portraits were selectively cleaned in the past, meaning that some lighter areas such as faces and collars were cleaned more than darker areas such as hair, clothing, and background. This is because lighter paint areas typically contain lead white, which makes the paint film very strong, while darker paints-black, brown, red-are notoriously sensitive to cleaners and were often avoided. This was probably a good thing since today we have a much better understanding of pigment chemistry and technology for cleaning artworks. As for the two portraits, the faces and hands almost floated in space with the costumes becoming indistinct. Removing the layers of dirt, varnish, and old restorations would make a significant visual improvement, bring back depth of color and detail in the subjects’ dress, and allow for an appreciation of the artist’s technique.

Once the portraits arrived at the studio, extensive testing began to see how to safely remove all layers of dirt and varnish. Each area of paint has a different chemistry and needed a different approach. As expected, it was found that some pigments such as blues and browns are very sensitive, so caution was needed: what worked on one area would not be suitable for another. “Once we were confident to proceed with the cleaning,” Katya Belaia declares, “we were amazed at what we were revealing: the original paint that had been hidden for years was coming out beautifully and was in excellent condition. Canvas, you know, is a very reactive material that shrinks and expands because of the moisture in the air. So over the years the canvas became looser and looser, and the frame was stretched wider and wider until it was completely misaligned and its joints were sticking out and tearing the canvas. This had to be solved in a more imaginative way to break this cycle. What we did was carefully peel off the canvas where the support joints were causing problems and insert minimal strips of balsa wood to even out the joints. We then carefully resewed the canvas and put the pegs back in their original positions so as to interfere as little as possible with the painting. We wanted to preserve as much of the original painting structure as possible so that our work would be unobtrusive. Finally, we repainted the paintings with conservation-grade varnish, which we know will stand the test of time and will not yellow, along with minimal retouching of old misses and repairs so as not to detract from the original.”

The frames were very fragile-the gilding was glued in so that they could proudly house the newly preserved portraits. After cleaning, Katya noted, “you could finally see all the details of the dress-the buttons, the lace, the quality of the fabric-as well as all the little artistic changes in the composition, which is extremely exciting. It’s like seeing the artist at work.” Credit to two refugee restorers.

A British museum has two Ukrainian refugee professionals restore two paintings

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