Narrator: Painting conservator Michael Duffy.
Conservator, Michael Duffy: The Rose Marble Table from 1916 depicts this simple table against the background of a garden, and we can see the way Matisse painted the still life elements against the table. If you look closely, you can see traces of charcoal and black paint underneath the basket.
And Matisse actually left part of the priming layer showing, and then built up the structure of the basket against that. Also, in the three apples to the left of the basket, you can see the priming layer makes a little border around the apples. And you can also see how the paint was applied very fluidly, the brushwork mixing directly on the canvas.
What was interesting is when we took a very discolored synthetic varnish off the surface, it revealed Matisse's true palette during this time period. We were really shocked how bright and pink it was compared to how it looked before treatment. These synthetic varnishes were put on long after Matisse had the paintings, so they weren't anything that were original to his technique.
So it's quite a gratifying treatment since we don't always see these kinds of color shifts when we're removing varnishes.