For almost 40 years, Alfred J. Jakstas, the longtime chief conservator at the Art Institute of Chicago, hunched over rare masterpieces and paintings considered merely noteworthy. He squinted at them through goggles and gently dabbed cotton swabs and fine brushes into cracks in the paint.
And over the years he–slowly–replaced an elderly maid and the severed head of Holofernes in the 17th Century Ficherelli painting “Judith,” uncovered a father in Picasso’s “Mother and Child” and examined a young woman’s portrait attributed to Thomas Gainsborough only to find an older woman’s face hidden beneath a later touch-up. The discovery revealed the painting to be a real Gainsborough.
An intense, serious man who combined a love of art with a scientific mind, Mr. Jakstas, 83, died Tuesday, March 28, in Peoria, Ariz., of colon cancer.
A native of South Boston, Mr. Jakstas originally intended to become a doctor, an aspiration crushed by a bout of tuberculosis. Told he would be unable to meet the physical rigor of the medical profession, and influenced by luminary Harvard University art professors, Mr. Jakstas instead became absorbed in the art world.
But even as he exercised his creativity, he still possessed a keenly analytical mind, teaching undergraduate physics classes at Harvard and later in life tutoring students with their Latin homework.
The combination of creativity and scientific curiosity made him well-suited for his profession, a demanding vocation in which paint near missing chips and cracks is analyzed for its chemical content and color, matched with fresh paint and then painstakingly dotted into the holes. While blemishes are still visible, they become less objectionable.
“He could spend hours doing it,” said his daughter Julianne Griffin. “He would just sit there and get into the painting. And he loved that. This was his life.”
“It is work for serious people,” said Timothy Lennon, one of three conservators of paintings at the Art Institute, who worked under Mr. Jakstas in the 1970s. “He was a very serious person.”
Mr. Jakstas graduated from Harvard in 1938, trained at the university’s Fogg Art Museum and worked as a conservator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston from 1943 until 1961. For the next 20 years, he worked in Chicago, doing private conservation work at home in addition to his work at the Art Institute. He retired in 1981 and later moved to Arizona.
Mr. Jakstas filled his home with works painted by himself, his daughters and grandchildren, Griffin said, but he considered the works at the museums to be his as well.
“You come into a place like this and you’re uplifted because you’re looking at beautiful pieces beautifully presented,” Mr. Jakstas said in a 1976 interview with the Tribune. “What more can you ask of life?”
Other survivors include his wife, Valerie; another daughter, Janet Kulesh; and two grandchildren.
A memorial service is being planned.
