Church frescoes revealed after decades under brown paint

ORNATE frescoes hidden behind a wash of brown paint for more than 25 years have been uncovered during the restoration of one Glasgow’s most important Catholic churches.

In the late 1970s, cash-strapped and facing the possibility of closure, administrators at St Aloysius’ Church covered over beautiful frescoes in an act that would horrify conservationists today.

Now the grim coating and a layer of wallpaper have been removed to restore the city centre church in Garnethill to its original glory, revealing two of the original frescoes.

And Glasgow artist Nichol Wheatley has also recreated four paintings of the evangelists on the impressive dome, using the single surviving black and white picture of the original design from 1927.

A stunning mosaic of the Last Supper, towering 80ft over the altar, has also been cleaned and new lighting installed to bring the church back to life.

Wheatley and his team were hampered by knowing nothing of the identity of the artists who created the original 1927 decoration. The only fact known about those who covered over the design a decade later with new canvas frescoes is that they worked from a studio in Belgium.

Wheatley, of Perfect Circle Art, and his two assistants, had to become artistic detectives to recreate the original art nouveau-influenced design in the Jesuit church, which was built in 1908 by Belgian architect Charles Menart.

"A great deal of time, effort and money was spent on what is probably the most beautiful Catholic church in Glasgow," said Wheatley. "It has amazing stained glass windows of the Jesuit saints and you can’t underrate it. I’ve never seen a scheme quite like it.

"It was pretty difficult because the one picture we had from 1927 was completely indistinct. Even when we used the computer to zoom in, we only got about 70%, so we had to think how this guy would do it in the context of the scheme.

"We could not find out anything about the artist at all. He could have been from Austria, he could have been from Holland or Italy, or even from Glasgow, because Glasgow had its own muralling studio at the time.

"It has been an amazing job, like an Ian Rankin version of the art world, trying to find out who did this painting. We have these two amazing schemes that were completely painted over."

Wheatley’s great grandfather would have known the artist, because he worked as a joiner on the 1927 project.

"I was under a bit of pressure to get this right," he admitted. Wheatley and his assistants spent eight weeks on scaffolding 80ft off the ground painting the figures of Mathew, Mark, Luke and John as an angel, lion, ox and eagle on the corners of the dome.

It was decided not to scrape off the brown paint on the dome to reveal the earlier schemes, because it would have damaged them.

But a layer of wallpaper on two arches was peeled back to recover two 10ft by 10ft canvasses of Jesuit founder St Ignatius Loyola and St John Ogilvie before the Madonna and child.

St Aloysius priest Fr John Twist said: "We were surprised that they were in quite good condition and not needing restored or touched up and we think they are quite satisfactory.

"No one really knows why the paintings were covered up. My guess is that in the 1970s this was a very run-down area and a lot of things were getting demolished. Maybe the congregation were not so sure of their future and decided to cut their losses and put on some brown paint because it would have been too much to restore."