 If you're a little funny with the statue in front of me, I didn't think of moving it, but I've always liked her, so Venus is fine there. Welcome, everyone, and thank you. My name is Philip Robertson, and I'm gonna tell you a little bit of a story about how I came to discover this painting and the collection of the Woodart Gallery, and also how we got to this point of conserving the painting in and of itself. So behind me is the before of the Worthington Whitridge, and it's really exciting for me to see so many friends and supporters here tonight at the Woodart Gallery. We're here for many reasons, the Montpelier Art Walk, support for the gallery, and the soon-to-be-revealed painting behind me. But for me personally, this is something that I've been thinking about for over 20 years, the conservation of the painting, Old Home by the Sea by Worthington Whitridge. I had the great fortune to be asked to be executive director of the Woodart Gallery in 1997, and over the next two years, set to work on a long-overdue assessment and conservation effort of the collection. I received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Studies to hire conservators to write condition reports for all of the oil paintings. We also performed basic care to the frames and canvases as well as creating archival housings for the diaries and sketchbooks of Mr. Wood. There were also a couple of dozen damaged paintings, many of them without frames, as was the Whitridge. As a long-time enthusiast of 19th century American painting, the thought of having a Hudson River School painting by Worthington Whitridge in the collection that I could not put on exhibit was heartbreaking. As the painting complements the work of Thomas Waterman Wood and other important painters we have in the collection, like J.G. Brown and Asher B. Durand, to name just a few. Whitridge was a contemporary of Thomas Waterman Wood, both men were president of the National Academy of Design and successful artists in the New York City art world at the end of the 19th century. But we would not be here today talking about art and painting that was not for Thomas Waterman Wood, with a wonderful self-portrait there. Because Mr. Wood created the Wood Art Gallery, leaving this great collection of art to the city of Montpelier. T.W. Wood was born in 1823 and grew up right here in Montpelier. Mostly self-taught, Wood became a successful portrait painter. In time he turned towards genre painting and what he is most famous for, the sympathetic portrayal of African American subjects. Rising to the very top of the academic art world at the time, he never lost sight of his hometown, returning to Montpelier every summer of his life. That love for Montpelier in Vermont is why we are here today. Towards the end of his life, he started to assemble a collection of art to leave as a gift to the city. It began as a collection of his own work, but he expanded it to include paintings of his contemporary like Bruce Crane and the soon to be revealed Whitridge behind me. And the gallery was founded in 1895 and is the oldest art gallery in the state. Over the years, the gallery became the beneficiary of 90 paintings from the WPA on loan from the federal government. This expansion of the collection that began in the 1930s from Wood's original gift was part of Wood's original vision to create a place in Vermont that would include the work of many artists and not just the work of a single person. That is what makes this place so special. It is a museum focused on the work of T.W. Wood but it is also a gallery and a place to see contemporary Vermont artists like Elliot Berg and Athena Petra Siopoulos. We are fortunate to have such wonderful support from our membership, the trustees of the gallery and the many people that have made this possible. This building, the beautiful galleries around us and the new elevator. It is the support from all of you that makes it such a vibrant institution to be a part of. But let us get to why we're all here, the painting behind me. Worthington Wittridge painted the old home by the sea towards the end of his career in 1900, a decade before he passed away. When I first looked at it in 1997, the seven white holes behind you that you can see and the mock-up behind me work just as you can see them. I estimated that it was patched sometime in the 1930s or 40s by the material on the front and back of the canvas and it lingered as is until this past February. With the generous support of the Margaret J. George Fund for the Art as well as Judith Stoddard King, we took the painting to the Williamstown Art Conservation Center in Massachusetts and they performed what I see as a minor miracle. The conservation of a painting and the start of what I hope is the beginning of many more projects to come. So is everybody ready? Before I open up to questions, I want to thank the trustees that are here tonight as this is a real group effort. I want to thank John Landy for driving down with me to Williamstown with the painting. It was a real. That's right, there was that rock. But in addition to the trustees and everyone involved, the staff, it's the support from the community that keeps this gallery vibrant. We are gearing up for our 125th anniversary next year. There is a schedule of exhibits planned across Montpelier from June to October of 2020 and we need your support. Please talk to Margaret and Kate, our great staff, about how you can help by donating, taking a class or volunteering as part of our docent program. Before I open it up to questions, Margaret, did you want to say a few words? Yeah, I do. We are so happy that you guys are here to celebrate with us. We feel so lucky to be able to share this painting with the public after it's spent decades not being seen by anyone. And I just want to reiterate Phil's comment about the community making this place what it is. And that's been the thing that I've really seen in the last six months since working here is that it's all of you pitching in, coming in to volunteer and donating whatever you can. And it's really inspiring to me. So to further the inspiration, what we have a new tool to help us fundraise and help us be able to continue to frame artwork and get ready for the 125th anniversary. And it's right here behind me. It's a little, it's called a dip jar. And all you have to do is dip your credit card in. And it will make a really excited noise to thank you so much for supporting the Restoration of Historic Artwork. And for, it could be, you could think of it as excitement for a celebration for having this painting in our community available for free for everybody to come and enjoy. So I'd like to encourage you to participate in that this evening. And Phil, I want to thank you and the board so much. And I think we should really give the board a round of applause for the work that they've done in helping this to happen. Thank you so much. Can you reassure us that if you dip, it's not going to take $1,000 out? Yeah. Okay, just it. I tried it. I made the first donation with my card and I watched it online. And, and it, it takes the set amount. $25, $25. Thank you. So I'll be happy to answer any questions, but I want to just say a couple of things. This, the darkness of this reproduction is actually pretty close to how it looked before restoration at Williamstown. And John and others can attest to that. It was very dark. You could just barely see these details. There are seven white patches from the holes that were in the canvas that you can see in this reproduction. And there is no sign of them. Williamstown did a fantastic job. I also have to thank David Sheets and the State House because this painting by E.G. Hubbard, the landscape here was recently restored through the gracious help of the State House. It was at the State House when they had the mold infestation. And it was very dark and dingy as well. Many of these paintings in the early 30s and 40s were loaned out to bars. So many of them have smoke damage. And it's great in a way, it's great that it was in that mold issue because it came back looking like this. And it's both paintings are in pristine condition. And I'd be happy to answer any questions anybody has. So Phillip, I can add that having seen a painting in its patched mode, it literally looked like the painting had been attempted to be patched with speckling compound. That's how poorly done it was. And to go from what it was to what it is today and that they had the ability to make that go away is just absolutely astounding, phenomenal. Yes. So that was in the basement for 50 years. In our storage. We never keep anything in a basement. Okay. So you've got funds, of course. We've never had storage that's been in a floodplain except back when we were at the YMCA at the turn of the last century. But that was the second floor of the gallery, so. So since I saw it and did the conservation effort in 97 and 98, all of the damaged paintings, I had some grant money. I purchased a lot of materials and I created archival housing for all of the damaged paintings. And this painting, because we did not have a frame for it, it was in a wrapped in glassine and I created a foam core sandwich for all of the damaged works. And it lingered since 1998 until this past February when we took it down to, and John, we brought it down in that foam core sandwich I made in 98. And when you open up the cover and you feel like we have the individual, I can't remember her name, who was actually going to be doing the restoration, was absolutely thrilled to be able to work on this particular painting. She was almost doing handstands. She was really excited. I told her that I guessed by the look of the materials that the patches were from the 30s or 40s and she agreed. And she felt if they were from that time period, it was a great thing because it was not made with modern materials and it should be water soluble. And that was the case. So what they did is they did not remove any of the patches because that would have been a lot more work and potentially damaging to the piece because the structural integrity of the stretcher bars was good. And it really wasn't very slack in the frame so they didn't have to do much work. But what they did is they did a full surface cleaning and then those white patches that you see here which were water soluble were cleaned off and then they brought them in a little bit so that archival material could be used as filler and then the in-painting over the top could be done without any signs of the previous damage and then a full fresh glaze was put over, probably a DeMar, modern DeMar glaze was put over the top just like the Hubbard painting as well. Do we know where it's located? Is it in Salem, Mass? We don't know exactly where it was but Whitridge did two versions of this painting. There's a much larger one that's earlier. I think it's from 1884, 85. This painting is from 1900, 10 years before his death. It feels to me like the Northern Massachusetts coastline as opposed to Maine and he did paint and travel through that area and I believe he had a home somewhere near Nahat but I'd have to get a book out and confirm that. In the MFA? I believe it's in the National Gallery. Phil, how many more pieces do you think that we would like to frame or restore? Do you want to talk about oil paintings or works on paper? I'd love to hear about all of them. Phil, Chris, this is coming. So there's about, I think, 16 paintings that I wrapped up in foam core boxes. There's another 12 plus paintings that we have in frames that are on our museum racks that have some level of damage. Some of them have tears. There's some that have water damage from when the storage was in the attic of the Kellogg Hubbard Library. We also have several hundred, a few hundred works on paper, all of Thomas Waterman Woods oil sketches that he used to compose his genre paintings are in our collection in flat files. Many of them that were exhibited at the early part of the gallery's history in the 30s to the 40s were glued to acidic gray board with yellow mucilage glue. I've had them looked at. They all would need to be individually loosened with the glue and the gray board and then restored from there. That's an enormous project. I think there's over a hundred of them that were glued to the gray board. So there's a lot of conservation projects. There's wild horses that doesn't have a frame, right? And there's some, well, the framing is a different issue than the conservation effort. We could always use, and there's a lot of frames that have some damage. Most of the frames you see around us are in really good shape. But if you look up at Shipbuilder and his wife up in the upper left corner, there's a patch up there that, you know, little things that could be done over time. And this one is in pretty good shape, actually. But it's the handful of oil paintings that would be lovely to see a project go on. Several of them are portraits, earlier portraits, as well, by Thomas Waterman Wood. Yes, did you have a question? I had a question about the Hubbard painting. How, two questions about it. One is how Wood Gallery acquired it, and then two is it have anything to do with the Hubbard Park in the same way. No, it doesn't. We don't know much about Mr. Hubbard. Wood, towards the end of his life, amassed a large grouping of his own paintings that he wanted to donate to the gallery when he founded it in 1895. He also made three trips to Europe to make master copies in the early 1890s, like the Rembrandt copy of Shipbuilder and his wife and the Rubens and the Turner Fighting Temerae. He made full-scale paintings for the gallery. So the original gift was given in 1895, and up until his death, he continued to donate paintings that he purchased and traded with his friends in the 10th Street Studios in New York City, such as the Crane and the Whitridge. Many of our best landscapes are hanging at the Statehouse. We have close to 40 paintings on loan to the Statehouse at any given time. And many of those paintings are coming back for the Centennial next year. But the other part of that question is that also after his death, and from 1903 to 1913, when the studio and Athenwood went into private hands, all of the contents of the studio, when there were three crates filled with his sketches, his drawings, sculptural objects, everything that was in his studio, including his berets and pallets and paintbrushes, was all given to the gallery in 1913. But throughout that time period from 1913 on, until when we became the recipient for the WPA artwork in the next room and the 90 paintings from the federal government, that spurred another period of giving. And many of the artists who were part of the WPA collection, who were living at the time nearby, Henry Schnakenberg, John Lilly, Stanford Stevens, these regionalist artists, social realists, if you will, these artists were thrilled to have their work in the collection of the Woodart Gallery from the federal government. And they then continued over, up until the 70s really, donating additional WPA-era paintings of their friends and from their own personal collections. The last major donation was by Stanford Stevens' wife, where we received over 25 watercolors. We have one Stanford Stevens that's part of the GSA Work Progress Administration Holdings, but he donated, his wife, after his death, donated another large collection of watercolors. And we still occasionally receive some Ron Slayton's work. Ron Slayton is a Montpelier artist who was also part of the WPA. We didn't receive a Slayton piece from the government, but we have many non-WPA pieces, a lot from the 70s and 80s by Ron Slayton. Any other questions? All right, thanks everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.