AIC's 47th Annual Meeting

Edwin Austin Abbey (1852-1911) was an American painter and a prominent illustrator who was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania but moved to England in his early thirties. His works include murals for the Boston Public Library and the Pennsylvania State Capitol Building in Harrisburg. He also received the royal commission to paint the coronation of King Edward VII of England. The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) collection holds over 600 oil paintings by Abbey. Many are unvarnished or selectively varnished preparatory studies for larger compositions and over half exhibit surface efflorescence. The presence and formation of efflorescence vary within the collection: on some paintings, efflorescence appears in amorphous, apparently random patches while, on other works, it correlates to form, color, or varnishes selectively applied by the artist. This research, initiated to inform conservation treatments in preparation for an upcoming exhibition, aims to identify the morphology and composition of the efflorescence while examining its relationship to both the locally applied varnishes and the materials within the stratigraphy of several paintings executed as part of Abbey’s preparation for his Harrisburg commission. Efflorescence, ground layer, and paint samples from several of Abbey’s oil-on-canvas studies were analyzed with visible and ultraviolet light microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), field emission scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersive spectroscopy (FE-SEM/EDS), gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS), portable x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (pXRF), and macro x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (MA-XRF). For example, FE-SEM analysis of surface samples removed from Abbey’s The Spirit of Light (226.7 x 64.5 cm) revealed that the efflorescence appears as plate-like structures (1-2 microns wide and less than 1 micron thick) on the surface of the painting, and EDS showed that the efflorescence is composed primarily of carbon and zinc. FTIR analysis of these samples suggested that the efflorescence was composed of zinc soaps while GC/MS confirmed that the efflorescence contains metal carboxylates and free fatty acids (azelate, palmitate, and stearate). EDS analysis of a cross-section indicated the presence of a double ground containing layers of calcium carbonate and zinc sulfide/barium sulfate. MA-XRF element maps of the entire work were also obtained to see if the location of the efflorescence correlates with particular pigments. Our results for this painting and three studies for the large mural The Passage of the Hours will be presented along with possible explanations for the formation of efflorescence.