Obituary: Joyce Plesters

Joyce Plesters spent the whole of her working life, from 1949 to her retirement in 1987, in the Scientific Department of the National Gallery. If to some this is suggestive of the ivory tower or cloistered seclusion, it is also a demonstration that a talent allowed to grow and flourish in a relatively stress-free environment, free from oppressive management structures, can maximise the benefits for all.

Her work on the technical examination of paintings was seminal and its effect was felt throughout the world of art history and paintings conservation.

Joyce Plesters was 22 when she was appointed by Ian Rawlins, the then Scientific Adviser, and A.E. Werner, the Research Chemist, to join them as an assistant in their very small department. She had studied basic science at Royal Holloway College, London University, but had no specialised qualifications for the job since none existed at that time. She helped Rawlins with the X-radiography of the paintings - something he had started in the 1930s - but more importantly she embarked on her main theme, the examination of small paint samples by chemical microscopy.

One of the aims of this research was to assist the restorers of the newly created Conservation Department to address problems in their work which could not always be solved with the naked eye alone; distinguishing between the original paint, the artist's own repaint and later restoration, for example. This was done both by the identification of individual pigments and, most importantly, by the study of cross-sections of minute paint fragments embedded in a transparent synthetic resin block.

For many years her only apparatus was an 1895 Leitz microscope, but her extraordinary aptitude for this sort of work was promptly recognised and it soon became clear that the study of the technical aspects of paintings was emerging as a subject in its own right, and one which art historians could in future disregard only at their peril. By the time of her retirement she had further helpers and the best equipment, including an electron microscope, while parallel activities in the Scientific Department had also greatly expanded.

It is a commonplace of certain art journalism to represent conservators and scientists in this field as white-coated soulless technicians blind to the beauties of the works benetah their scalpels. This would be a vile slander if it were not so obvious a caricature. It cannot be too much emphasised that Joyce Plesters loved the paintings. Her daily familiarity with them over decades and her minute study of the methods of the old masters could only serve to increase her delight at what they accomplished with the limited materials at their disposal.

In the 1950s and early 1960s almost no other institutions in Britain, and few in the United States and on the Continent undertook this sort of work. Thus her help was often sought and analyses of varied kinds were undertaken for other museums and galleries. Increasingly invitations came from abroad for advice on individual projects or in setting up centres for similar work. In those more liberal days such absences were not thought incompatible with responsibilities closer to home.

In 1966 and 1967 she helped to set up laboratories in both Venice and Florence for the microchemical study of paintings, following the floods there and the urgent conservation problems which resulted. She retained her connection with Venice for many years and it was probably Venetian painting of the 16th century which was her main love. The restoration of the church of the Madonna dell'Orto, financed by the Venice in Peril fund, together with its enormous paintings by Tintoretto, probably helped to form her particular attachment to and study of that artist which continued into the years of her retirement.

In 1959 Joyce Plesters married Norman Brommelle, who had been a restorer at the National Gallery and later became Keeper of the Conservation Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Norman also became Secretary-General of the International Institute of Conservation, so together they were a weighty presence in the conservation world. Norman could be rather touchy and sooner or later had fallings- out with many colleagues but Joyce never allowed this to affect her own relations with them.

Uninterested in administration and promotions she despised those whose activities seemed only to be stepping stones on the career ladder. Extremely feminine, in her younger days she seemed to me much to resemble an often reproduced portrait sketch of Jane Austen, and like Austen too her wry good humour and sense of fun were much appreciated by her many friends. She was a wonderful cook and hostess and her reward came, perhaps, with the after-dinner conversation, from which professional gossip was not absent.

Among her fund of stories she would sometimes recall with amusement an early abortive job interview with the Zoological Society, at which a kindly board member had cautioned her not to expect to handling the larger mammals right away. Smaller mammals, in the form of cats and dogs, were always a part of her home.

In 1987 she retired and removed with her husband to an Umbrian farmhouse, on a hillside outside the small village of Morra, which they had partly "done up" during summer holidays. It had a large piece of land attached which was to be terraced, landscaped and planted in the years to follow, activities to which they were no strangers having furnished no fewer than three houses and gardens previously.

Sadly Norman died suddenly in late 1989 but Joyce resolved to stay on: she had no relatives in England and Italy was now her home. For six years - it should have been many more - she continued with the improvements, fortified by the help of many neighbours, both Italian and immigrant, and her house was a magnet for old friends and colleagues when they were in Italy.

John Mills

Rosa Joyce Plesters, conservation scientist: born Studley, Warwickshire 13 April 1927; married 1959 Norman Brommelle (died 1989); died Citta di Castello, Italy 21 August 1996.