The career of actor Siegfried “Sig” Arno started in his native Germany in the 1910s and eventually spanned more than 100 film and theater roles across Europe and the United States. In addition to his work as a performer, Arno was also a painter — and one of his portraits recently came to the Ford Center for conservation.
The piece depicts his wife Kitty, who was an actor herself. To capture her likeness, Arno applied oil paints onto canvas in thin, fluid layers using sweeping brushwork. He portrayed Kitty wearing a filmy garment with her arms crossed. Bright red accents, including her lipstick and nail polish, pop against the predominantly blue-green palette.
Sig Arno painted Kitty’s portrait in the early 20th century. The actor and artist signed the work in the bottom right corner using ochre-colored paint, as seen in this before-treatment image.
Arno later gifted the portrait to friends, who passed it down within their family to members now living in Nebraska. The current owners brought it to the Paintings Lab over a handful of concerns about its condition.
Sig Arno in 1965, in photographs owned by family friends.
Scattered paint losses and a network of sharp cracks indicated the paint layer was vulnerable and at risk of further loss. There was also a bulge in the canvas near the right edge, and the overall varnish had yellowed and darkened with age.
In the before-treatment image above, small losses of paint are visible around Kitty’s head. An impact of some kind had also caused a horizontal disturbance in the paint, about two inches long and crumbling.
A bulge in the canvas can be seen in a before-treatment image taken in raking light, or light from an extreme angle that shows the texture of the surface.
To conserve the painting, we first consolidated losses and sharp cracks using an adhesive. The most severely lifting cracks were further stabilized with gentle heat and pressure to relax them back into place. The bulge was progressively flattened using local humidification cycles.
The next step was to replace the discolored varnish. We carefully cleaned dirt and grime from the surface, removed the old coating, and applied a new, stable varnish that’ll protect the original paint well into the future.
These during-treatment images show the progression of the varnish removal. Above, Paintings Conservator Melissa Gardner clears old varnish from the top right corner of the painting using solvents chosen through testing.
The varnish has been removed from all but the bottom left portion of the portrait.
With the original paint structurally sound and protected, we filled and retouched the losses using gesso and conservation paints. A final varnish layer was applied to protect both Arno’s work and the retouching.
One component of the painting that didn’t receive treatment was a small rectangular piece of canvas that had been used to patch a tear in the bottom left corner. The patch was clearly cut from one of the turnover edges and Arno’s brushstrokes extended over it seamlessly, indicating the repair was likely made by the artist himself before he started painting.
The patch was applied to the back of the canvas to repair a tear about four inches long. In the image above, the patch is visible at the bottom right edge of the painting; the area from which it was cut is visible along the bottom turnover edge.
With treatment complete, the painting is now clean, stable, and reframed.
Returned to the descendants of Arno’s friends, this tribute to Kitty, with its vibrant reds and cool blues freed from decades of yellowed varnish, is ready to take center stage once again.
