Pompeii painting

 John Martin's Pompeii painting finally restored after 1928 Tate flood damage Victorian painter's wild and lurid masterpiece of apocalyptic art goes on display for first time in a century
A painting considered beyond repair after being submerged in filthy floodwater when the Thames breached its banks in 1928 will be seen in something approaching its wild and lurid former glory on Tuesday when it goes on public display for the first time in a century.
After 18 months of difficult restoration, John Martin's Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum forms part of the biggest ever exhibition devoted to the apocalyptic 19th century painter.
The show's curator, Martin Myrone, said the work had been somewhat overlooked and dismissed by writers and its restoration meant "we can now see it as a really central picture in Martin's output and an extraordinarily vivid and exciting work".
After getting soaked in the Tate's worst ever flood, the work had been considered a writeoff. Not only was it flaking and dirty, it was in two parts, with a large part of the canvas, showing the volcano, missing completely.
But there was some good news when tissue was pulled away from the painting in 2010, recalled Tate's head of conservation, Patricia Smithen. "Amazingly, the surface was really intact and the figures in the foreground particularly were in really great condition. Shockingly so. It was at that point we started asking if we could undertake a restoration."

John Martin's painting before restoration. Photograph: Tate Photography

After discussions with curators, art historians and conservators it was decided to reconstruct the work in its entirety, which meant painting in the missing section.
If you look very closely at the painting you can see which is Martin's brushwork and which is the work of restorer Sarah Maisey. "I've tried to tone down a lot of the detail," she said. "I wanted the overall impact of Martin's work to have been retained but ultimately wanted people to be able to appreciate what was left of John Martin's work."

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Maisey admitted that restoring the work of Martin had been a responsibility. "As a conservator you don't normally have to paint large sections, you do small filling in of losses, so this was something quite different. I think he'd be happy. His work was about impact."
The restoration is reversible should future generations think it wrong, but for now it goes on display at the biggest Martin show ever. A smaller version of the exhibition has already been seen in Newcastle and Sheffield and this Tate show has 40 extra works including loans from the Louvre and San Francisco.
The show represents a remarkable comeback for a Northumberland artist who has lurched in and out of fashion. At the height of his celebrity, around 8 million people are said to have to have seen his triptych of Last Judgment paintings, which travelled up and down the country. At Tate Britain, a 10-minute son et lumière theatre show has been created to show the three works.
"He has had an extraordinary rollercoaster ride really as far as his reputation has been concerned," said Myrone. "He was phenomenally popular in his own day. His popularity with a mass public did mean a lot of critics were quite snooty about him – he did suffer from an art world snobbishness."
By the turn of the century Martin's reputation was in freefall and it was not until the 1940s that there was a reawakening of interest. "There's a sense that he's perhaps a slightly marginal and eccentric figure … what we want to do with this exhibition is put him back in the story and show him as a figure who was fascinating and complex and produced some of the most spectacular pictures in the history of art, full stop."