Facelift For 'The Four Doctors'

Johns Hopkins University

Dr. William Osler has never looked better. Dr. William H. Welch's skin has a healthy new glow.

Yes, these famous physicians, key figures in the founding of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the School of Medicine, are long dead. But their likenesses, along with two other foundational Hopkins doctors, William S. Halsted and Howard A. Kelly, live on in a massive oil painting by celebrated American artist John Singer Sargent. Titled The Four Doctors, the work was completed in 1906 and has hung in the West Reading Room at the Welch Medical Library since 1929.

This year the painting went through a complete conservation process, which included removing years of surface grime and multiple layers of aging varnish.

"Their skin tones used to be this sort of brownish dark color, so you see now they're flesh-toned again," says Andrew Harrison, material cultural archivist at Johns Hopkins' Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives. "And the cleaning brought out the background. You can really see more details now." Depicted behind the academic robe-clad quartet—left to right, Welch, Halstead standing at the rear, and then Osler and Kelly—are a giant Venetian globe and the image of another painting, a mounted horseman by Greek artist El Greco.

The conservation work was led by Arthur Page, principal and chief conservator of Page Conservation Inc. in Washington, D.C. The cost for the conservation was donated by J. Mario Molina, chair and founder of the Osler Medical Residency Program Board, a member of the Johns Hopkins Health System board of trustees, and a longtime supporter of the archives.

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Video credit: Renee Fischer / Johns Hopkins University

Page first came to Baltimore 25 years ago to perform restoration work on the painting. This latest effort, a five-week process that concluded in late February, was much more involved. "Restoration means you make a painting look good, and that's part of what we do during conservation," Page says. "We also scientifically examine the materials on the canvas—the solubilities, the chemistry, how to best get the things off, and what to put on it so that doesn't get tougher and more insoluble over time." It's important, he adds, for everything they do to be reversible for the conservationists who might work on the painting in the future.

Page and his team discovered multiple instances where the artwork had been touched up with new paint, including, for reasons unknown, painting over nearly an inch of Kelly's fingers. All this unoriginal overpainting was removed so that The Four Doctors now looks as close as possible to its 1906 appearance.

Because of the painting's size—nearly 11 feet tall and more than 9 feet wide—Page couldn't bring it to his restoration lab, as he does with more manageable-sized works. The giant canvas wouldn't even fit through the library door. (The painting was likely brought into the library, perhaps through a window, while the building was still under construction.) Working on site required construction of a special pressurized enclosure around the painting. This allowed the conservationists to use solvents and apply new varnish without having vapors escape into the room. The painting's gilt frame also needed some repair work.

The foursome shares the room with the Hopkins' other Sargent, his 1904 depiction of Mary Elizabeth Garrett, which hangs over the room's fireplace. She was the Baltimore philanthropist who donated more than $300,000 to help the medical school address a funding shortfall that threatened its opening. Garrett also commissioned and paid for The Four Doctors, so it's fitting that they are together.

Harrison says it has become something of a myth that the painting depicts the four doctors who founded the School of Medicine. "They were four of the founding doctors," he says. "They also just happened to be friends of Mary Elizabeth Garrett."

On May 14 at 6:30 p.m., the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association will host a free, hour-long virtual discussion of The Four Doctors and its conservation, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the process.