After five years of research, Operation Night Watch moved on to varnish removal. On 12 November 2024, eight conservators in a glass room began removing the varnish of 1975–76. First a cloth with solvent, held briefly against the surface. The varnish dissolves and is drawn into the fabric. Remnants of older varnish are removed under the microscope with cotton swabs. The painting may look matt for a while. That is not a new picture. It is an interim stage without a glossy layer.
Varnish saturates colour and keeps out dust. Over the years it turns yellow. Anyone who then ‘makes Rembrandt darker’ is reading the history of the film, not of the paint. Overpainting would add new pictorial decisions. Here the aim is to dissolve that later skin without taking the original brushwork with it. Cotton fibres from older treatments sometimes sit in the craquelure; these are removed separately. Research came first: the same method on other canvases, tests on this canvas. Restoration documents what disappears. It is not reversible down to the last fibre.
Looking at this project means looking at a surface that had a different tone for decades. Matt areas next to ones still varnished: that is the lesson of a documented stage, not a puzzle about how the gallery happens to look today.
