Jennifer Fotheringham, Art Restorer: Uncovering art and revealing history with surgical precision
When Saint Mary’s Cathedral Basilica was originally built around 1820, it was a much less elaborate building than the one you see today. Like almost all of the town’s buildings, it was constructed of wood. Over many years, the Basilica was re-built, expanded and altered to keep up with the growing Catholic community in the busy port town of Halifax. The wood structure was replaced by stone with a Gothic Revival façade and spire beginning in the late 1800s. Around the same time, an apse and vaulted ceilings were added, and many interior surfaces were elaborately decorated with paintings and stenciled patterns.
Among these surfaces were five panels, located in the apse behind the altar. The panels were painted with murals that depict Mary of the Assumption in the centre, with two angels to her left, and two angels to her right. The paintings themselves were beautiful, finely-layered oil paintings which were executed with technical skill and artistic finesse.
Sometime around 1950, for reasons that remain unverified, these panels (along with many of the painted wall decorations and patterns throughout the Basilica) were covered with white paint. There is some speculation that it was done as a cost-saving measure in the austere post-WWII years, when maintaining the artwork and the layers of gilding would have been time-consuming and expensive.
Before: The painted white panels inside Saint Mary’s Basilica.
Sometime around 1950, for reasons that remain unverified, these panels (along with many of the painted wall decorations and patterns throughout the Basilica) were covered with white paint.
Enter Jennifer Fotheringham and Judy Dietz. Jennifer is a Fine Art Conservator who had worked on many projects with and for the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia since she returned to Canada with her young family from London where she taught art conservation. Jennifer was brought in by Judy Dietz, a former associate curator with AGNS to investigate what was under the white paint on the panels behind the altar.
What Jennifer found beneath two layers of paint, were beautiful frescoes with a surprising amount of detail and shading, particularly in the robes and flesh tones of each painting. Her restoration work began by determining the best way to remove the paint in order to reveal the paintings beneath. “Chemical solvents just didn’t work, the paint was old, two layers, and solvents were disrupting the artwork beneath the white. So it had to be removed mechanically.“ Among the mechanical tools Jennifer used were surgical scalpels that allowed her to painstakingly remove the paint one tiny section at a time.
Restoration under way: Scaffolding set up inside Saint Mary’s Basilica during restoration efforts.
According to Jennifer, removing the white paint was 40% of the job. The other 60% was the cleaning of the original paintings to remove more than 100 years of dirt, soot and pollution, and then restoring the parts of the paintings that have been lost. Her goal, when finished, was for the panels to look completely uncovered, but not at all brand new. Originally painted more than 100 years ago with a limited palette of earth-toned ochres, muted pinks and cerulean blue, the final uncovered frescoes, are somewhat subdued with muted tones, punctuated by gold leaf details.
Jennifer also discovered shards of glass in some of the paintings. They are broken bits of the Basilica’s original stained-glass windows which were destroyed in the Halifax Explosion of 1917.
The paintings are believed to have been created by a Quebec painter, François-Édouard Meloche, a skilled decorative painter whose work adorns churches in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island, Vermont and Nova Scotia. From a newsletter dated 1898 found in the Archdiocese archives, the following reference: “Under the skilled direction of the artist Mr. Meloche, of Montreal who executed the most important portions of the ornamental painting… the whole interior has been given an aspect of mellow richness, that makes St. Mary’s one of the handsomest churches in Canada.”
When you hear Jennifer talk about the restoration work she has done at Saint Mary’s, there is no mistaking her enthusiasm for the work. “Every single step, I’ve learned so much. I’m going to be sad when it ends and miss coming here. This is special, you don’t always have a job like this.”