Artists’ lay figure, private

This unusual object was used by the British artist Alan Beeton and features in four paintings he created in the 1920s.  The head is papier maché and the body is made of an articulated wood ‘skeleton’ covered with padding and an outer layer of cotton stockinette.  After many years of use followed by storage in an outbuilding the figure needed conservation to enable it to be safely displayed in the exhibition ‘Silent Partners: Artist and Mannequin from Function to Fetish’ (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 2014).  The head was conserved by another conservation specialist; the body came to Textile Conservation Limited for treatment.  It was heavily soiled with dust, had a broken left knee joint and broken and missing finger joints and the stockinette had numerous tears, holes and missing areas.  The figure was thoroughly surface cleaned and then in collaboration with a medical model maker Alison was able to repair and reinstate the missing and broken joints using new materials.  Losses in the stockinette layers were infilled and stabilised using pieces of new studio dyed stockinette and stitching.  When exhibited in 2014 the figure was posed as in Beeton’s painting entitled Composing.  A pose similar to the one in his Reposing painting was used when the figure was shown in a related exhibition in 2015 at the Musée Bourdelle, Paris.