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Title: William Suhr papers
Date (inclusive): 1846-2003 (bulk
1927-1982)
Number: 870697
Creator/Collector:
Suhr, William,
1896-1984
Physical Description:
70 Linear Feet
Repository:
The Getty Research Institute
Special Collections
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles 90049-1688
reference@getty.edu
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/askref
(310) 440-7390
Abstract: An American paintings conservator
trained in Berlin, William Suhr worked under Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner at the Detroit
Institute of Arts beginning in 1927, and was the conservator of the Frick Collection from
1935 to 1977. He also maintained private clients including individuals and major American
museums in Cleveland, New York, Detroit, San Francisco, Chicago, and St. Louis. After World
War II he worked closely with clients active in the New York art market, particularly the
dealer Rosenberg and Stiebel. The bulk of the collection is comprised of photographs of
paintings treated by Suhr, along with his treatment notes. The collection also contains
business papers, including correspondence, articles about Suhr, personal papers, and
documentation of Suhr's own artwork.
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Language: Collection material is in
English .
William Suhr was born in Kreutzberg, Germany on March 31, 1896. His parents were U.S.
citizens; his paternal grandfather had emmigrated to the United States from Germany in 1850.
During his twenties Suhr's father went to Vienna seeking treatment for incipient deafness
and to pursue his acting career. When he became completely deaf he gave up acting and stayed
on in Germany. As a youth, Suhr acted in the same theatrical company as his mother. When he
showed artistic promise as a teenager, he was apprenticed to a stonemason for three years.
He then studied painting at the Royal Art Academy in Berlin. It was in Berlin, at the age of
20, that he met the art historian Max Deri, who introduced him to the restoration of
painting. At that time there were no schools for restoration; it was a family business and
methods were kept secret. Deri gave Suhr a panel to restore along with some advice on how to
do it. Soon Suhr was very active as a restorer in Berlin, where the art historian Wilhelm
Reinhold Valentiner noticed him in the early 1920's. Valentiner became Director of the
Detroit Institute of Arts in 1924. In 1927 Suhr accepted his offer of the job of restorer of
paintings. The letter with this offer is in the archive.
During the Great Depression, the Detroit Institute of Arts closed temporarily. During this
time the staff was dispersed and Walter Heil, Curator of European Art, took the position of
Director of the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco in 1933. His association
with Heil took Suhr to San Francisco, which he liked very much. In addition to his
restoration work on panel paintings in San Francisco, Suhr worked on the Brangwyn murals at
the Veterans' Auditorium. In 1936 he also taught a summer course at Mills College titled The
Technique, Restoration and Preservation of Paintings, where he met and befriended the artist
Lyonel Feininger.
By the early 1930's Suhr's expertise in the technique of canvas and panel transfers was
sought internationally. This was an especially important treatment in the time before it was
possible to stabilize temperature and humidity in buildings. In 1933 Suhr established his
studio in New York. In 1935, Mortimer Clapp, director of the Frick Collection, asked Suhr to
become the permanent conservator. He also conserved paintings for art institutions in
Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, New York, Saint Louis, San Francisco, and Toledo,
and for private collectors and for the art trade. In 1939, Suhr was a conservation
consultant for "Masterpieces of Art," shown at the New York World's Fair. Later in his
carreer he worked extensively on 18th century American paintings for the Kennedy Galleries
in New York.
Suhr came to painting conservation at a pivotal time, when there were great paintings on
the market and before museums had their own trained conservationists. Some of the notable
paintings that Suhr worked on in the course of his career include
St. George
by Mantegna (Galleria dell'Accademia), which Suhr saved from severe blistering during the
exhibition
Masterpieces of Italian Art lent by the Royal Italian Government November
18, 1939 to January 9, 1940
, at the Art Institute of Chicago, and which he
considered one of the great restorations of his career;
St. Jerome in his
Study
, now attributed to the Jan van Eyck workshop (Detroit Institute of Arts),
which was reattributed to Jan van Eyck when Suhr found that the portions thought to be by a
second artist (Petrus Christus) had been overpainted;
The Polish Rider by
Rembrandt (Frick Collection), of which the bottom four inches that had been destroyed by
fire and clumsily repainted were repainted by Suhr, bringing the horse's hooves back into
perspective; and the
Annunciation Triptych (or
Merode
Altarpiece
) by Robert Campin (Cloisters Museum), which is perhaps the most
important painting that Suhr worked on. Particularly noted for his work on Rembrandt
paintings, Suhr was said to have held more Rembrandts in his hands than anyone since
Rembrandt.
As Suhr states in "The Restoration of the Merode Altarpiece," published in The Metropolitan
Museum of Art Bulletin, his work was guided by the belief that "[r]estorations should
preserve the original and attenuate losses in a manner that will permit the observer's eye
to pass over gaps in the paint film without distress."
Suhr was a traveler and mountain climber. He traveled in Europe, North Africa, and North
America. He and his wife, Henriette Suhr, created an extensive garden on thirteen acres at
their home, Rocky Hills, in Mt. Kisco, New York, which will be open to the public in the
future. He was also a painter, working mostly in watercolor, in the course of his travels.
Biographical writings about Suhr can be found in the archive.
Open for use by qualified researchers.
Contact
Library Rights and
Reproductions
.
William Suhr papers, 1846-2003, bulk 1928-1982, Research Library, The Getty Research
Institute, Accession no. 870697.
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa870697
Acquired from Henriette Suhr.
The conservation photographs, treatment reports and negatives were acquired in 1987.
Further papers were acquired in 1990 and 2005. Several persons processed this collection
over the years. Copy negatives have been made to preserve the information on deteriorating
original negatives. Research photographs (which the collection contained in addition to
photographs documenting Suhr's conservation) were interfiled into the Paintings Core
Collection of the Photo Study Collection. Some conservation photographs that had been
interfiled into the Paintings Core Collection were re-integrated into the archival
collection in 2005-2006 by Jan Bender. Final processing of the collection was completed by
Martha Steele and Jan Bender in 2005-2006.
The finding aid was reviewed by members of the Anti-Racist Description Working Group in
2021 and the following revisions were made: A note about the painting "Family group with
negro servant" was expanded to include the painting's title,
Family
Group in a Landscape.
; and the word "dwarf" was changed to Jester.
Research photographs of paintings from the William Suhr papers are conserved in the
Paintings Core Collection of the Photo Study Collection of the Getty Research Institute.
Suhr's treatment reports for paintings restored for the Frick Collection are held by the
Frick Collection.
An oral biography of William Suhr is conserved in the Foundation of the American Institute
for Conservation (FAIC) Archive, housed at the Winterthur Museum (see also box C1 for a copy
of the audio tape and box 123, folder 4-5 for a transcript of this interview).
William Suhr letters 1927-1959, located at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian
Institution.
Barnes, Albert C.,
The art in painting (1925), transferred to the
Getty Research Library.
Scope and Content of Collection
This collection provides comprehensive documentation of Suhr's achievements and activities
as a painting conservator. The first series, conservation photographs and treatment notes,
documents Suhr's work from 1927, when he came to the United States as conservator for the
Detroit Institute of Arts, to the end of his career when he closed his New York studio in
1977. The materials consist of photographs taken of the paintings, often before and after
treatment, and treatment notes written by Suhr. Negatives for much of the photography are
also part of this series.
There is ample further documention of Suhr's restoration activity in the correspondence
files in the business papers series. In addition, account ledgers, goods received receipts,
date books, photograph logs and Suhr's address book all provide further insight into Suhr's
studio practices. The extensive Kennedy Gallery memorandi document Suhr's work for an
important gallery of American painting. Photographs of Suhr's studios and professional
associates provide further documentation of his career. And the printed materials series
provides a record of published articles about Suhr and his work.
Personal papers provide information about Suhr's family, his efforts to formalize his
immigration status in the United States, and his activities during World War II. Having
grown up in Germany, the child of American parents, Suhr understood the extreme dangers of
the time and wrote letters to United States government officials to inform them about what
was happening in Germany during the war. He also tried to help several Germans immigrate to
the United States. This series also documents some of Suhr's travels. A final series
documents Suhr's activity as a painter and designer with inventories, photographs and
transparencies.
The conservation photographs and treatment notes are fairly comprehensive. The other
portions of the collection are representative but not complete.
Suhr can be seen and heard in a public relations film made for the Detroit Institute of
Arts and a tape-recorded interview conducted in 1977.
Arranged in four series:
Series I. Conservation photographs and negatives, treatment notes and
clippings, 1927-1977;
Series II. Business and professional papers, 1915-2003;
Series III. Personal
papers, 1846-1995;
Series IV. Art Work, 1929-1984.
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn,
1606-1669
Thyssen-Bornemisza, Heinrich,
Baron
Turner, J. M. W. (Joseph Mallord William),
1775-1851
Rivera, Diego, 1886-1957
Dalí, Salvador, 1904-1989
Eyck, Jan van, 1390-1440
Campin, Robert, -1444
Heinemann, Rudolf J.
James, Edward, 1907-1984
Mondschein, A. F.
Rosenberg &
Stiebel
New York World's Fair (Location of meeting:
New York, N.Y.). Date of meeting or treaty signing: (1939-1940 :.)
Art Institute of Chicago (Masterpieces of Italian art)
Committee to Defend America by
Aiding the Allies
Detroit Institute of Arts
Frick Collection
Painting -- Conservation and restoration -- United States
Art restorers -- United States
Art -- Private collections
Merode altarpiece Rockets and blue lights Polish Rider Saint Jerome in his study Juno
Motion pictures (visual works)
Negatives -- United States -- 20th century
Gelatin silver prints -- United States -- 20th century
Color slides -- United States -- 20th century
Audiotapes -- 20th century
Transparencies
Metropolitan Museum of Art (New
York, N.Y.)
Cleveland Museum of
Art
Valentiner, Wilhelm Reinhold,
1880-1958
Richardson, E. P. (Edgar
Preston), 1902-1985
Rockefeller, John D., Jr. (John
Davison), 1874-1960
Barnes Foundation
Stoner, Joyce
Hill
Detroit Institute of
Arts
Frick Collection
Heinemann, Rudolf
J.
Suhr, William,
1896-1984
James, Edward,
1907-1984
Stout, George L.
(George Leslie)
Mondschein, A. F.
Thyssen-Bornemisza, Heinrich,
Baron
Toledo Museum of Art
Feininger, Lyonel,
1871-1956
Forbes, Edward
W. (Edward Waldo), 1873-1969
Gerson, H.
(Horst)
Gettens,
Rutherford J. (Rutherford John)
Kennedy Galleries
M.H. de Young Memorial
Museum
Munhall, Edgar