Art conservator Jonathan Sherman of Sea Cliff brings old paintings to life

Jonathan Sherman’s work is currently on display at the Hofstra University Museum of Art. But don’t look for his name — he didn’t create any of the paintings on exhibit.

Instead, Sherman restored a painting that is believed to be a self-portrait of the internationally acclaimed artist Yonia Fain, a Hofstra University faculty member who died in 2013. His work is being shown at the Hempstead museum through Dec. 16.

“It was in disrepair,” museum director Alexandra Giordano said of the painting. “There was grime and cracks on the surface. Jonathan cleaned it and managed the cracks.”

Sherman, 69, who lives and works in Sea Cliff, is part artist, part chemist and part craftsman, as he restores paintings and sculptures to their former glory. He is at the top of the list of conservators for many Long Island museums and prominent New York City galleries, and his work can be found at Radio City Music Hall, New Amsterdam Theatre and the Waldorf Astoria New York.

“We have paintings that come to us after living in barns for 80 years,” said Douglas Gold, a Bellmore resident and partner at the Lincoln Glenn Gallery in Manhattan. “We’ve had him do everything from patching tears to stretching canvases to cleaning paintings.”

For Giordano, there is no one else she will use: “He’s our restorer on call,” she said. “He’s the only person who works on our collection.”

Sherman, who grew up in Franklin Square, said his original dream was to be a painter.

“I painted seriously, showed, got reviews and sold. I developed a style that I pushed to the limit,” said Sherman, who described his paintings as “hard-edged” and realistic.

But he eventually realized the constraints of his chosen vocation — namely, he needed to make money. “As an artist, it’s a lot harder to make a living,” Sherman said. “Art conservation gave me a profession that I thought I could pursue and make a living.”

WIDE-RANGING EDUCATION

Sherman graduated in 1977 with a bachelor’s degree from Stony Brook University, he said, and received his MFA in art history from Queens College. He went on to earn an MFA specializing in art conservation from Dominican University in Illinois, training in Florence, Italy, at the Villa Schifanoia.

Sherman completed an internship in art conservation at the Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, Massachusetts, he said. And in 1982, he opened his own business, Sherman Art Conservation, in Glen Cove. He moved to Sea Cliff in 1990.

Sherman primarily restores paintings, although he will also work on sculptures. He said he has worked on a wide range of paintings, as the effects of time inevitably take their toll on the pieces: “Most paintings have been restored at one point or another,” he said.

Restoring artwork, with values ranging from $1,000 to more than $1 million, is a delicate job. Sherman said he is often tasked with bringing out the original brightness, repairing tears and otherwise making paintings as good as new.

At times, he said, “There are extensive issues, like lifting and flaking paint, tears in canvas or breaks in the support as well as old restorations you have to replace.”

When cleaning a painting, he said, “You can use a scalpel and remove surface coatings by scraping them off under magnification. You don’t want to damage the painting. You prefer to leave some dirt. If you don’t go to the actual paint, you know you’re safe.”

Sherman said a conservator has to “understand the anatomy of a painting,” including all the materials that were used and how they relate to each other.

Different solvents are used for different materials, he added, and a good art conservator requires knowledge of chemistry as well as artistry.

“There’s a lot of art history you have to know and understand,” Sherman said. “Sometimes paintings aren’t supposed to be varnished. Sometimes varnishes are meant to have a certain tone.”

When the paint has flaked off, Sherman said he imitates the original surface and matches colors. “Sometimes you don’t match it on the first try,” he said. “You get a base color, make it warmer or cooler and do different glazes. It takes a lot of skill and experience.”

BELASCO THEATRE

One of Sherman’s most ambitious projects was a yearlong restoration of the Belasco Theatre in Manhattan — “one of the most beautiful in New York,” he said.

The theater, which opened in 1907, features several murals by Everett Shinn, a member of the Ashcan School of painting, a group of early 20th-century artists who strove for realism in their work.

“The murals on the walls of the mezzanine had been painted over in the 1950s,” Sherman said. “The main goal of the restoration was to remove the overpaint to reveal the original murals.”

Sherman, who had helpers on the project, said some murals were moved to allow for the creation of a staircase. Sherman said he also created new murals, in the style of Shinn’s work, for some areas where the originals had been destroyed or lost.

And, he added, “Murals that were downstairs, by another artist, were removed and brought to my studio in Sea Cliff. They were restored and reinstalled in the newly configured downstairs lounge in the theater.”

Another of Sherman’s larger restorations took place in 2001, when he led a 20-person team in restoring the 108-foot-long, 44-foot-high painted fire curtain at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, he said. The restoration, which included cleaning the curtain and mending tears, took three months and was completed in time for the Miss America pageant.

“It was a big job,” Sherman recalled. “We had a scaffold set up with 13 levels enclosed in plastic. We mended tears by sewing."

Sherman said that in 2007, he restored a 16-foot-by-80-foot map of Long Island in the Wellington C. Mepham High School auditorium in North Bellmore. He has also restored artwork at The Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington; murals at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Uniondale and Old Westbury Gardens in Old Westbury; and numerous paintings at Sagamore Hill National Historic Site in Oyster Bay, including Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Rider portrait.

“It’s one of the most famous portraits of Roosevelt in the great room of Sagamore Hill,” he said. “It was exciting to work on such an important painting. I took off the old varnish and the colors really came out quite a bit.”

NASSAU COUNTY MURALS

Sherman also restored four murals at the Nassau County Theodore Roosevelt Executive and Legislative Building in Mineola, also known as the Old Nassau County Courthouse. His work included fixing flaking paint on a portrait of Roosevelt. Sherman said he relied on photographs from Sagamore Hill of the laying of the courthouse cornerstone, which was depicted in the painting, to determine how to restore it.

“That helped me recreate his face,” Sherman said. “It was interesting to see what the actual event looked like. The artist made it look fancier than it actually was.”

Sherman has also worked on sculptures, including those on the Hofstra University grounds, such as Land Sail II, a painted metal sculpture visible from Hempstead Turnpike.

“He worked on the sculpture, and it’s beautiful,” museum director Giordano said of the 2021 project, done with Hofstra student Kelly Elkowitz. “The sculpture was faded, almost completely washed out. He worked extensively on restoring that sculpture.”

In addition to rediscovering the beauty buried within paintings, Sherman has restored frames as well. “Sometimes you have missing pieces on old frames,” he said. “You replace the missing pieces and match the color or do gilding using gold leaf.”

While his career has taken a different path than what he envisioned as a young man, Sherman said he has nonetheless found a way to express himself through his work.

“Artists have the most difficult part of the creative process,” Sherman said. With art conservation, “I still get to be creative, finding the way to make the painting look the way they wanted.”