Various places on The Night Watch show old retouches. Retouches are additions of non-original paint that have been applied by a conservator over areas of paint loss with the aim of reducing their disturbing visual effect. The most recent retouches were applied during the treatment of 1975-76 and cover old damages, like the hole in the drum, but also the knife cuts – which were the reason behind that treatment – in the legs of Frans Banninck Cocq, Willem van Ruytenburch and in the dog.

Discolored over time

If you now look closely at the painting in the museum gallery, these retouches stand out because they have discolored over time and also, they look glossier than the surrounding, original paint. But you can see the retouches even better in the ultra-high resolution image of The Night Watch. By zooming in on the photo in the area above the dog you can clearly see how the opaque brown and black retouches covering the knife cuts, distinguish themselves from the surrounding cracked and often abraded, original paint (fig. 1).

Figures

While the treatment of the knife cuts was an important aspect of the 1975-76 conservation, other damaged areas, for example as a result of abrasion, were also addressed. Here the focus was on the figures. Abrasion in the architecture or in the foreground was barely retouched. This was a result of the prevailing restoration ethics for minimal retouching, but was probably also a result of the high time pressure under which the restorer Luitsen Kuiper worked.

Restored glory

It was important to finish the treatment of the painting as soon as possible to be able to show to the public that the damages of the shocking knife attack of September 14, 1975 were mended, and to present the painting in all its restored glory. Zooming in on the face of the so-called red musketeer Jan van der Heede shows how a number of rather broad, darkened rose-red retouches covering the abraded areas in the shadows (Figs 3, 4). Inadvertently, this now creates a flesh tone that is much too red.