Dipping a cotton bud affixed to a thin reed into a plastic bottle of solvent, M Narayanan Namboodiri uses it to gently dab at a nook of an antique portrait of a lady gambling tempura. Almost tenderly, he twirls it over and over on her cream and gold garment. Discarding the cotton, he replaces it with every other cotton ball and repeats the system. At 0.33 try, the cream modifications to off-white, and Namboodiri’s face breaks into a smile. “That is the right solvent. Restoring a portrait takes time, persistence, knowledge, and enjoyment,” he says.
The professional artwork restorer has worked at Kuthiramalika Palace in the city for the past six months, restoring valuable artwork within the museum. Showing a splendid portrayal of Uthram Thirunal Marthanda Varma, ruler of erstwhile Travancore, at his makeshift place of work on the palace grounds, he says the colors of the work had modified due to picture-chemical reactions and, as a result, the piece of artwork had received a tired look. Since the recovery, the work’s stupid green, cream, and greenish-gold have given way to the authentic colors of emerald inexperienced, gold, and white, making its appearance sparkling and wealthy.
“As conservation students at the National Museum in New Delhi, we have been repeatedly told that our paintings changed into now not to create but to repair and conserve a work entrusted to us,” says the artist. He explains that a restorer’s work isn’t to paint over the authentic piece; however, to restore the painting to make its appearance as near as possible to the artist’s preliminary paintings.
“In the case of antique artwork, we occasionally come upon botched-up efforts using preceding artisans or technicians who may have attempted to refresh the colors or paint in their idea of a face or background. Then, as a good deal as possible, we attempt to undo the changes and layers of paint to expose the real paintings,” he elaborates.
Over the last three decades, Namboodiri, a former technical restorer at Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata, in the rate of recovery of oil artwork, has worked in numerous museums of Japanese India to repair useful works of painting that have been broken or worn out due to mishandling and climatic situations.
He likes to spotlight a Raja Ravi Varma painting housed in the Victoria Museum among the various works he has restored. Many artworks in Raj Bhavan, Kolkata, and Tripura had also been initiatives handled via his group. But one of the toughest ones, he says, was a piece of ‘Lord Curzon touring Burdwan’ on the Burdwan University Museum, West Bengal, as it had torn into portions. He remembers that repairing it took him and his crew nearly five years.
In India, humidity, daylight, spotlights, and heat affect chemicals in paints and result in modifications, he says. Another major factor is the lack of know-how approximately artwork. Namboodiri says people should be privy to artwork and why and how it should be handled carefully. He makes it a factor to maintain lecture demonstrations each time he receives an opportunity to enlighten artwork buffs. However, the septuagenarian provides that the lack of art restorers and the pleasant competencies needed in their line of labor have come as a first-rate obstacle in keeping our artwork history.
“In reality, ten years before I retired from service, I was given a name from Pooyam Thirunal Gouri Parvathi Bayi’s office. I learned she had examined my work somewhere and wanted to recognize if I could see paintings on the artwork series at Kuthiramalika and Kowdiar Palace. But then I changed into operating as a central authority worker in Kolkata and couldn’t be in Thiruvananthapuram to take in the mission,” he recollects.
After his retirement in 2012, he again to Kerala and settled at Edapally in Kochi. Once again, there was an inquiry from Gouri Parvathi Bayi, and this time around, Namboothiri changed into more than willing to take in the hard challenge.
“I turned into drawn to the art while a baby was developing in a small village in Palakkad. I went to Maharaja Sayaji Rao University in Vadodara to hone my innate competencies and finished a 5-year diploma in nice arts. My evolution as a healing professional in oils started at the National Museum, where I joined for a 10-month education route in exhibit training,” he says.
Looking around the serene grounds of the palace, he says his task now is to preserve and repair the artwork works within the Kuthiramalika Palace to ensure that the artwork is held for any other technology of art fans. He additionally frolicked in Kowdiar Palace to work on the art collection there. “These paintings have all outlived their creators. Now, my work is to make sure that they’re preserved in all their glory to allure viewers for some other one hundred years at least,” he says.
