Matting an Early Watercolor by Robert Eric Moore

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, my family lived on Cider Hill in York, Maine. Our farmhouse sat in the sun on one side of the road; the Moores' farmhouse nestled into a shaded hillside on the other. The ages of the children in the two households dovetailed nicely, and both sets of parents shared common interests.

As a hobby, my father built ship models. Bob Moore, an artist who loved the sea, admired a model my father had made of the schooner, the Gertrude L. Thebaud. The two men made a swap; Dad gave Bob the ship model, and Bob gave Dad a framed watercolor of a white house by a brook.

Even after my family eventually moved, my parents and the Moores kept in touch. Bob's watercolor painting-and an oil still-life painted by his wife Meg-traveled along with us as we moved from town to town.

The watercolor seems very simple and straightforward at first glance. But for such a small painting (with an image area of 5" by 7") there is a lot of play between hard and soft edges, and a variety of brush strokes.

Bob used a nice cold press paper for this painting. The paper had just enough texture to leave white flecks of untouched paper here and there.

My favorite part of the painting has always been the stroke of cobalt in the brook's grey water.

Ten years or so after we left York, we went to an opening of one of Bob's shows. One wall was hung with a series of seascapes. The colors appeared to be the same that he used for the brook. The seascapes' waves were amazing, not just for their color, but for the way they dissolved into white. The painting Bob had given my father approximately fifteen years earlier had beautiful brushwork with calligraphic touches here and there. But his abstract seascapes http://www.robertericmoore.com were a world beyond.

The Ogunquit Museum of American Art held an exhibition of Bob's watercolors in 2008 (Meg passed away in 2004, and Bob in 2006). Towards the back of the catalogue are reproductions of color sketches he'd made for one of his woodland paintings. He'd marked "N.T." (for" Neutral Tint," I assume) for some patches. Purist watercolorists usually mix their own grays from complementary colors. Bob seemed to limit his palette, so perhaps he used neutral tint because he wasn't happy with the grays he could make with his chosen pigments. Also, depending on the brand, neutral tint makes a variety of greens when mixed with yellow. Perhaps that may have been another reason it was part of his palette.

After over fifty years, the painting was showing signs of wear. The paper was buckling and the mat had yellowed in places. The painting definitely needed a new mat, but I wanted to keep the same frame that Bob had originally chosen.

When I took it out of its frame, I could see that the painting had been taped on all four edges with regular masking tape. The paper had yellowed all around the perimeter

In this close up, you can see how the color changed under the mat along the right edge.

The painting had been backed with regular cardboard so this side was discolored as well.

I cleaned the frame with a soft cloth and tested the wood with my fingernail. The wood was still solid, so there was no problem with keeping the same frame. I could see where Bob had hand cut the glass.

Using the discoloration along the edges to determine the size of the opening, I cut a new mat out of acid-free matboard.

The masking tape peeled off easily. I brushed off any of the dried adhesive residue that was loose. I used acid-free linen tape to attach the painting along the top edge of the mat opening. There will be less chance of the painting buckling again if it has three sides free.

I cut a second sheet of acid-free matboard for the back of the painting. Bob had used nails to keep the cardboard backing sheet in place. I have a great framer's tool that has a magnet to hold the framer's points in place as they are pushed into the wood. It's so much fun to play with that I put in way more framer's points than were necessary.

I know my matting job won't undo the aging. But hopefully by using acid-free materials, keeping the painting out of direct sunlight, and hanging it on an inside wall, this painting will last to give my Dad many more years of enjoyment.