Abstract
LIKE many British ventures, the Scientific Department of the National Gallery started in a small way. Even to-day it has no pretences to size, but it has probably grown up sufficiently to fulfil its purpose and to help, as experience shows it does, by advice over a wide field. In 1934 the board of trustees decided that a physics laboratory should be set up to collaborate with the art-historical staff in providing objective data concerning the methods used by the great masters, and to study picture structure and questions of atmospheric environment. At first there was little contact with problems of conservation. That, as the sequel shows, was to come a full decade later.
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References
Rawlins, F. I. G., Nature, 151, 123 (1943).
Plenderleith, H. J., Nature, 160, 523 (1947).
Constable, W. G., Nature, 162, 166 (1948).
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RAWLINS, F., WERNER, A. The Scientific Department of the National Gallery. Nature 164, 601–603 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/164601a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/164601a0
