Current Visiting Professionals at CCI

Claire Titus

Claire Titus, a conservator from the New Brunswick Museum, is undertaking a 6-week mid-career professional internship with CCI conservator Sherry Guild to study a full-scale mural cartoon created by Saint John artist Miller Gore Brittain in 1941–1942. With the support of CCI scientific services, they will examine the cartoon, assess its condition, develop treatment methodologies, and discuss storage and display options.

The cartoon is one of eleven that Brittain created as intermediary drawings for the Saint John Tuberculosis Hospital Mural, an ambitious project that was initiated in the late 1930s. However, the mural painting was never undertaken and the cartoons, rather than being used as a means to an end, became artworks in their own right. They currently belong to the provincial collection of the New Brunswick Museum, and are considered a national treasure by art historians and curators. 

The 2.5-square-metre cartoons depict the causes, effects, treatment, and cure of tuberculosis and call attention to the realities and needs of society: confronting poverty as a cause of ill health and suggesting housing reform as a means to stave off the menace of tuberculosis. They are highly developed drawings through which Brittain worked out the composition and figural details of his subjects with line drawing and the layering of black, white, and red conté. The series may depict a modern social realist subject, but the technique is part of a mural painting tradition dating back to the Italian Renaissance. Cartoons (from the Italian cartone) are the last step before the mural execution. In this tradition, cartoons are perforated along the design contours to permit chalk or charcoal dust to be “pounced” and deposited in tiny dots on the wall surface, transferring design elements on a one-to-one scale for painting. Cartoons are ephemeral and often destroyed in the mural execution process. To have a full set of cartoon drawings for any mural project is rare.

As early as the 1960s, the size of the cartoons and the fragility of the paper on which they are drawn limited their accessibility to scholars and to the public through photographs or exhibition. Despite great interest in them, the scale of the required treatment thwarted all conservation attempts — until now. The work carried out during Claire’s internship will provide the necessary information to draft a conservation treatment protocol for the entire series. With a protocol in hand, the New Brunswick Museum will be able to develop a plan to obtain the necessary resources and then schedule the conservation treatments. Thus, with the support of CCI, the New Brunswick Museum is taking a concrete step toward the conservation and improved accessibility of all eleven of Brittain’s cartoons from the Saint John Tuberculosis Hospital Mural.