Museums of Fine Arts crowdfund Gauguin restoration

The Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels is launching a crowdfunding campaign today to finance the restoration of “The Portrait of Suzanne Bambridge” by Paul Gauguin. It is the first time the institution has turned to the public to fund the restoration of an artwork.

Gauguin painted “Suzanne Bambridge” – one of his very few full frontal portraits – during a stay in Tahiti in 1891. Little is known about the subject of the painting except that she was the daughter of a British father and a mother of Tahitian-Irish origin and was married to a local political leader.

Shortly after Bambridge’s death, the oil painting (detail pictured) was purchased in 1912 by a private collector in France and was then sold to the Fine Arts Museums in 1923. It makes up part of the museums’ Fin-de-Siècle collection.

The painting is one of the institution’s prize pieces, and the restoration is desperately needed, according to a statement. Previous restorations and overpainting prior to 1923 did more harm than good, and the painting was also damaged in transport from Tahiti to France.

The museum is hoping to get €22,500 through crowdfunding, which will then be matched by the Leuven-based Baillet Latour fund, providing €45,000 to pay for the restoration.

The Royal Museums of Fine Arts is a group of museums that includes the Old Masters and Modern collections on Rue de la Régence, the Fin-de-Siècle and Magritte museums next door and the Meunier and Wiertz museums in Ixelles.