Greeting visitors to Will Rogers Coliseum for nearly 80 years came at a price for the iconic art piece of Will Rogers and Soapsuds, which has hung in the foyer since 1947.<\/p>\n
Exposure to the elements over nine decades left visible wear on the renowned work by Seymour Stone. After all, it sits in an arena designed for horse events \u2014 though, yes, they\u2019ve hosted everything from war bond rallies to hockey games, boxing, and Billy Graham \u2014 and built to honor the rugged individualism of the West embodied by Will Rogers. That can be dirty.<\/p>\n
Then there were the Marlboros \u2014 tens of thousands of Marlboros from those days when one could smoke inside buildings and just about everybody did. It was like a San Francisco morning in there, the smog refusing to lift.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t think I have ever seen a painting so dusty,\u201d says Cristiana Acerbi Ginatta, who got to know\u00a0Will Rogers and Soapsuds\u00a0unlike anyone since\u00a0Stone last put down his brushes.<\/p>\n
Ginatta is an art conservator working with Dallas-based\u00a0Crozier Fine Arts<\/a>\u00a0who was charged with restoring the environmental portrait commissioned in 1940 by Amon Carter. The work was part of the renovation of Will Rogers Coliseum in advance of the\u00a0Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n The painting is over 15 feet high and almost 12 feet wide, and its vibrant golden skies and beautiful colors again pop just like the day it was unveiled by Dwight Eisenhower, future president of the United States.<\/p>\n The restoration was largely underwritten by a grant from, appropriately enough, the Amon G. Carter Foundation. In addition to the painting, Amon Carter also commissioned the sculpture of Will and Soapsuds, which sits outside the Will Rogers Memorial Center on Lancaster Avenue.<\/p>\n The painting was taken down in August and reinstalled in December.<\/p>\n Matt Brockman, communications director for the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo, says\u00a0he began paying closer attention to the portrait about a decade ago and grew concerned about its condition, noting that time and humidity can take a toll even indoors. He raised the issue with then\u2013president and general manager Brad Barnes and later consulted Scott Winterrowd, director of the Sid Richardson Museum.<\/p>\n \u201cWith this renovation project at the concourse, we had an opportunity,\u201d says Brockman.<\/p>\n Because the work had never been varnished, Ginatta says every step had to proceed slowly to avoid damaging the exposed oil paint beneath the grime. The work was done at an art handler\u2019s facility in Richland Hills.<\/p>\n \u201cI was hoping to have more time\u201d with the painting, says Ginatta, who has a master\u2019s in painting conservation through the Palazzo Spinelli in Florence, Italy. She also served internships at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. She also worked with Helen Houp, of Dallas, who worked as conservator at the Kimbell Art Museum.<\/p>\n Ginatta left Italy in the early 2000s and moved to Dallas. She has worked between Dallas and Fort Worth. In fact, when I got in touch with Ginatta this week, she was doing work at the Modern Art Museum.<\/p>\n She also is a member of the Texas Art Collectors organization and CASETA \u2014 Center for the Advancement of Early Texas Art \u2014 to master the history of her subjects. \u201cI really enjoyed learning about Texas art, and that also gave me a better understanding of the culture and the community,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cIn this case,\u201d she says, \u201cI did a little research on the artist, the connection with Mr. Carter, and the horse, Soapsuds, Will Rogers\u2019 favorite horse.\u201d<\/p>\n Did you know, for example, that after Rogers\u2019 death in 1935, Soapsuds was purchased by Clark Gable? I didn\u2019t either.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not exactly sure why New York artist Seymour Stone \u2014 a Belarusian born in czarist Russia in 1877 \u2014 became Amon Carter\u2019s favorite portraitist, but he did. In addition to Carter\u2019s portrait that hangs in The Fort Worth Club, Stone also did portraits of Amon Carter Jr. and Ruth Carter Stevenson.<\/p>\n Carter also commissioned him to do portraits of Texas-born war leaders, including Eisenhower, Adm. Chester Nimitz, and Gen. Ira Eaker. Carter had those donated to the Texas Memorial Museum, as well as a bronze bust of John Nance Garner, the Texas-born former vice president under FDR, sculpted by Electra Waggoner. Waggoner was the sculptor of\u00a0Riding Into the Sunset, depicting Will Rogers and Soapsuds, which, in addition to Fort Worth, also sits on the campus of Texas Tech University, outside the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, and beside Rogers\u2019 tomb in Claremore, Oklahoma.<\/p>\n That really must have been quite a day \u2014 Nov. 4, 1947.<\/p>\n