Institute: University of Amsterdam

Country: The Netherlands

Link: www.uva.nl

Ella Hendriks is full Professor in Conservation at the University of Amsterdam (Department of Arts & Culture) where she is Chair of the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage training programme. Her teaching focus is history, ethics and approaches in conservation and technical art history, from undergraduate to post-master level.

Trained as a conservator of easel paintings at the Hamilton Kerr Institute, Cambridge, UK., Hendriks has more than 30 years of experience working in Dutch museums; she was chief conservator at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem (1987-1999) and senior paintings conservator at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (1999-2016). Her doctoral thesis (2007) involved in-depth investigation of 97 Antwerp and Paris paintings by Van Gogh in the museum collection, reconstructing the artist’s working methods in the period 1885-1888, and tracing the early restoration history of the paintings that now form the core of the Van Gogh Museum collection.

Combining the results of archival research, technical examination of paintings and reconstruction experiments has helped to understand the profound impact that twentieth-century campaigns of wax-resin lining and varnishing treatment have had on the condition of the paintings today. See further: https://www.uva.nl/profiel/h/e/e.hendriks/e.hendriks.html#Profile

In July 2021 Hendriks recorded a lecture on ‘The legacy of Jan Cornelis Traas: wax-resin lining in Van Gogh paintings in the family collection’ especially for the masterclass. The lecture is available through this subpage on our website: Lecture 14: July 2021 – Ella Hendriks.

Corresponding literature is available through: Literature – History of wax-resin linings