Aventures de trois dames tsin au pays des fan-koueï : restauration d 'une peinture à  l'huile sur coton fragilisé

The following research is the result of a one year study at the ‘Institut National du Patrimoine’ in Paris. It is focused on the painting ‘Garden, three ladies’ created between 1840 and 1844 by the Cantonese painter Youqua. The text is structured in three parts: The historical part describes the painting’s creation and its technical characteristics. Being painted in oil on cotton canvas, a technique only recently introduced in China, the painting shows many alterations due to the lack of technical know-how. Therefore, after describing the painting and its cultural background, we advance towards the history of oil painting in China. This dates back to Canton and the China Trade, a context where this technique developed almost exclusively for two hundred years; whereas, in the rest of China, water-painting technique was largely preferred. We also follow the painting’s journey from Canton to Paris and later to a storeroom of a museum in La Rochelle. Since one of the major problems of the painting is due to an extremely fragile cotton canvas, we try to determine the main characteristics of this fibre in comparison with other common vegetal fibres used for paintings on canvas such as flax and hemp. We also try to evaluate the most appropriate consolidation with synthetic resins; therefore tests have been carried out on Plexisol P 550®, Aquazol 500® and Akeogard AT 35®, to determine their mechanical resistance and aging properties. In the third part, we concentrate on the conservation treatment of Garden, three ladies. Since the painting has suffered a serious accident, 1/5th of the canvas is torn. So fore, a big part of the conservation program focused on inlays and thread-to-thread-mending as well as on a very delicate lining. Another important issue was the establishment of a retouching program including the fillings as well as the drying cracks of the paint layer.