Dipping a bud of cotton affixed to a thin reed into a plastic bottle of solvent, M Narayanan Namboodiri uses it to gently dab at a corner of a vintage painting of a woman playing a tampura. Almost tenderly, he twirls it again and again on her cream and gold garment. Discarding the cotton, he replaces it with another ball of cotton and repeats the procedure. At the third try, the cream changes to off-white and Namboodiri’s face breaks into a smile. “That is the right solvent. Restoring a painting takes time, patience, expertise and experience,” he says.
The expert art restorer has been at work at Kuthiramalika Palace in the city for the past six months, restoring priceless paintings in the museum. Showing a resplendent painting of Uthram Thirunal Marthanda Varma, ruler of erstwhile Travancore, at his makeshift workplace on the palace grounds, he says the colours of the work had changed because of photo-chemical reactions and, as a result, the work of art had acquired a jaded look. Since the restoration, the dull green, cream and greenish gold of the work have given way to the original colours of emerald green, gold and white, making it look fresh and rich.
Art restorer M Narayanan Nampoothiri at Kuthiramalika Palace in Thiruvananthapuram
“As students of conservation at the National Museum in New Delhi, we were repeatedly told that our work was not to create but to restore and conserve a work that had been entrusted to us,” says the artist. He explains that a restorer’s work is not to paint over the original piece but to restore the painting to make it look as close as possible to the artist’s initial work.
“In the case of antique paintings, sometimes, we come across botched-up efforts by previous artisans or technicians who might have tried to refresh the colours or paint in their own idea of a face or background. Then, as much as possible, we try to undo the alterations and layers of paint to reveal the real work,” he elaborates.
Over the last three decades, Namboodiri, a former technical restorer at Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata, in charge of restoration of oil paintings, has worked in several museums of eastern India to restore invaluable works of art that had been damaged or worn out due to mishandling and climatic conditions.
Among the many works he has restored, one that he likes to highlight is a Raja Ravi Varma painting housed at the Victoria Museum. But one of the most difficult ones, he says, was a work of ‘Lord Curzon visiting Burdwan’ at the Burdwan University Museum, West Bengal, as it had torn into two pieces. He recalls that it took almost five years for him and his team to restore it. Many paintings in Raj Bhavan, Kolkata and Tripura, were also projects handled by his team.
- Narayanan Namboodiri has held more than 12 solo painting exhibitions in different places in India.
- Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi was one of his batch-mates during his art restoration course in Delhi. He remembers her as a highly skilled art restorer who used to give tips to other students.
- Restoration is divided into two: preventive restoration and curative restoration.
In India, humidity, sunlight, spotlights and heat affect chemicals in paints and bring about changes, he says. Another major factor is ignorance about paintings. Namboodiri says people must be made aware of paintings and why and how they should be handled with care. He makes it a point to hold lecture-demonstrations whenever he gets an opportunity to enlighten art buffs. However, the septuagenarian adds that the paucity of art restorers and the fine skills needed in their line of work have come as a major impediment in preserving our art heritage.
“In fact, 10 years before I retired from service, I got a call from Pooyam Thirunal Gouri Parvathi Bayi’s office. I was told that she had read about my work somewhere and wanted to know if I could work on the art collection at Kuthiramalika and Kowdiar Palace. But then I was working as a government employee in Kolkata and could not be in Thiruvananthapuram to take up the assignment,” he recalls.
After his retirement in 2012 , he returned to Kerala and settled at Edapally in Kochi. Once again, there was an enquiry from Gouri Parvathi Bayi and this time around, Namboothiri was more than willing to take up the challenging task.
“I was drawn to art even as a child growing up in a small village in Palakkad. To hone my innate skills, I went to Maharaja Sayaji Rao University in Vadodara and completed a five-year diploma in fine arts. My evolution as a restoration expert in oils began at the National Museum where I joined for a 10-month training course in exhibit preparation,” he says.
Looking around the serene grounds of the palace, he says his mission now is to conserve and restore the art works in the Kuthiramalika Palace to ensure that the paintings are preserved for another generation of art lovers. He also spent time in Kowdiar Palace to work on the art collection there. “These paintings have all outlived their creators. Now, my work is to ensure that they are preserved in all their glory to charm viewers for another 100 years at least,” he says.
