Divine Disorder Segment #4, Joe
Baraby
Church: Next we have Joe Baraby,
Senior Microscopic Analyst for
McCrone Institute, if I can get
this to turn off. Thank you.
Alright. Thank you, Mr. Baraby.
There you go.
Baraby: Good morning. It’s a real
pleasure to be here and it was a
real honor to assist in this
investigation. It was an extremely
interesting case that began in ( ?
) of 2009, and I finally delivered
my report, which was really long
about a year later.
Our main project on this, let’s
see here, let me introduce my
company a little bit first. We are
the McCrone Group and we are in
Westmont, Illinois and it was
started by Dr. Walter C. McCrone,
who is actually quite noted in the
paint analysis field. He examined
the Shroud of Turin in the 1970’s
and also the Vineland Map and those
are still quite controversial
cases. Some years later, the
company was purchased by Donald
Brooks and moved to Westmont,
Illinois where we still are at, and
we have three different companies.
I work with McCrone Associates. We
also have an educational branch
called the Hooke College of Applied
Sciences, and we also have McCrone
Microscopes & Accessories, which
sells instrumentation. McCrone
Associates is the analytical branch
of the company and we have lots of
interesting instrumentation. The
corps of that is what I would say
is the light microscope. You saw
the picture of Dr. McCrone working
with the light microscope and all
of the scientists have light
microscopes and it remains a very
important part of what we do.
The forensic inquiry that we were
involved with was defined very
nicely by Alex Van Hook and also by
Agent Denton. We worked with, it
was very structured, we had five
known authentic pieces that were
purchased by our first speaker, Mr.
Whitehead. We had five suspected
pieces and we also had five works
that we examined and photographed,
but we did not do a physical
analysis on. But the original five
of Mr. Whitehead’s and the
suspected ones, we did full
analysis plus visual analysis on
these as well. We photographed them
and did some of that work.
When I say visual analysis, we
should be a little bit careful. I
am not an art historian. We also
looked at signatures, but I am not
a forensic document examiner, so
take these portions with a grain of
salt, but what we did was
photograph them each, front and
back, took close up photographs of
signatures of interest and other
areas of interest. Usually the
eyes, I found were extremely
interesting. We sampled each of the
materials, roughly about ten
samples per painting and analyzed
them using some of the
instrumentation that we have, and
we ended up by comparing and
contrasting the various kinds of
data that these analyses generated.
In an investigation of this sort,
now Clementine had a very long
working creative life, so it was
important, if you’re going to be
comparing, it’s important to
compare like to like. So, the
prosecutors chose very wisely in
that they chose all from one time
period. In the field of forensic
document examination, if you’re
comparing right, it all should be
as close to contemporaneous as
possible with one another. So all
of these were centered around this
period of around 1970, plus or
minus five years, and that’s one
of the ways that they are able to
show that is because her signature
evolved considerably over the
years. Don’t forget too, she was
a illiterate, so when you use the
word signature, you have to take
that with a little bit of a grain
of salt and that actually plays in
later on we will see.
This is us working, and one of the
reasons I like this picture is that
it emphasizes the fact that there
is no analysis of this sort that is
done by one person. It’s all
teamwork. At McCrone Associates,
one of the things that’s
wonderful about working in a
laboratory like that is I have
colleagues with whom I can
collaborate on projects and
that’s really important and
everybody here, you can see we’re
working art and we’re working as
a team.
Besides those fifteen paintings
that we originally discussed, we
were also provided with an artist
palette. I did not actually sample
that myself but that was actually
sampled and documented by Jason
Church, and we also received those
many confiscated paints and I’ll
talk a little bit about those later
as well.
Let’s talk briefly about the
analytical methods that we employ.
As I mentioned each of the analysts
at McCrone has a polarizing light
microscope, which is this
instrument here and also a stereo
microscope here. In the picture of
me working, of the team working,
here in Natchitoches, you saw a
different kind of stereo microscope
but they’re all working the same
way. ( ? ) for lower
magnifications, and we primarily
use them for initial inspections
and for sampling and for sample
preparation. But this is a
photograph through the microscope
and it gives you a little bit of an
idea of what kind of information
the light microscope provides. The
fact that we have all of these
bright materials, bright shining
things in here tells us that these
particles have more than one
refractive index and that gives us
some really good information about
them that correlates with the
chemical information.
All of the samples that I examined,
we looked at through the polarizing
light microscope and all of them
were also examined with this
instrument, a scanning electron
microscope with energy dispersive
x-ray spectrometry, which ( ?)
which is a big word for basically
saying it provides us with
elemental information. What are the
elements that make up the sample.
This one, for example, has calcium
and phosphorus and is a signature
for bone black. We also used
Fourier transform infrared
spectroscopy or FTIR, very commonly
used instrumentation and it
provides information about organic
materials which of course, if
you’re doing elemental analysis
that’s not going to give you much
information. But this gives you a
spectral signature and this allowed
us to identify, for example, that
all of the paintings that we
examined, both the Clementine
Hunter’s and the questioned ones,
they were all oil paintings. So
again, we were dealing with apples
and apples and not a mixture of
different kinds of materials.
We also used Raman spectrometry,
which is a complimentary method to
infrared spectroscopy and also
provides some very good analyses.
For example, here’s the ( ? ) in
green taken from this painting.
This is the hospital, which was the
very first painting that I examined
and I sort of fell in love with
Clementine Hunter’s work in
examining this painting. It has
this strange, sort of almost out in
the, a hospital in the middle of
nowhere, out in space almost, it
seems. But what really got me was
looking at these under the
microscope, there’s some really
fine, fine work in the eyes and if
you’re interested in comparing
and contrasting the forgeries from
the originals, get close up with a
magnifying glass or even better a
stereo microscope and the
difference between the Toye’s
work and Clementine’s work itself
is really extraordinary. In order
to create that eye and this is a
scale, a one millimeter scale down
here, so we’re talking very, very
small. She created the eye by doing
one dab of white, one dab of black,
and touched it up with a little bit
of red. This is extraordinary work.
She’s a folk artist but the
command that she had over her
materials is extraordinary.
Her signatures, on the other hand,
are awkward at best. In the field
on handwriting analysis, one of the
terms that you constantly see in
their reports are line quality. In
other words, they’re talking
about the smoothness of the lines
and with writing, the whole object
is to have in your brain the model
of what you’re doing so that when
you create your signature, you just
do it automatically. This is not
written automatically. We have a
form underneath in pencil and if
you look carefully, okay there is
created here, here, here, there’s
actually a line up here that was
started but the actual line going
down here is actually a little bit
lower, is drawn, not written. So
there’s a different mental
program that created, that was used
in creating the signature. Whereas,
her painting is very fluid, her
signatures are almost universally
quite awkward.
This was the first of the
questioned paintings, the Wedding
Day that I encountered and after
having looked at five paintings
close up, for this one to be
brought out, completely
unscientifically, I have to say I
was physically repulsed by this
painting. It was an extraordinary
reaction that was spontaneous and
perhaps not very scientific but I
felt as if I was in the presence of
something very bad, very evil.
Looking at this close up, the
cracks were filled with dirt, the
paint itself is almost transparent,
and the eyes were created with lots
of jerky little movements. Let’s
go back for a second. Let’s take
a look at Clementine Hunter’s
work. Her paint here is all opaque.
We have a very smooth background
here. The impasto is well
controlled. The background here is
quite variegated. You’ll see
that, here’s another one. This is
Uncle Tom’s eye, very
transparent. The fact that the
background, instead of being smooth
is full of variegation really comes
through with this highly
transparent paint.
This is the signature from the
Wedding Day and you can see its
motion, motion, motion, motion.
This is a signature. This is
easily, quickly written. No
hesitation. This one too. Look at
the background here. Instead of it
being a smooth Clementine Hunter
background, this looks like it was
done with a paint roller. I can’t
imagine any paint brush that would
create that other than a roller.
The materials that we analyzed we
put into these different forms and
into tables to basically compare
the materials and one of the things
that was fascinating was the whites
and the blacks are always the
paints that you pay the most
attention to and the ground
materials because these are the
artists’ normal way of working.
This is harder to follow, but this
to me was the essence of the report
that we submitted to Attorney Van
Hook and Agent Denton. This
contained the gist of the evidence
that Hunter CHN, the questioned
Hunter QCH, are truly different
artists and while there’s some
overlap in here of materials that
they had in common; for example
both artists used cadmium yellow,
the greatest difference is in the
whites, zinc white greater than
titanium white, and in the case of
the questioned, it was primarily
titanated lithopone, which is this
guy here. We found one of those in
Clementine Hunter’s but not too
many. One of the fascinating things
from a materials usage too is we
see here ultramarine blue in just
about all of the questioned pieces
and none in Clementine Hunters’.
Now if you analyze art, you see
ultramarine blue from when it was
invented, the synthetic form, once
it was invented in the early
1800’s, you see it everywhere
because it’s a wonderful pure
blue and it’s relatively
inexpensive, but Hunter didn’t
seem to use it or at least none of
the paintings that I examined had
any at all. Also bone black, she
used bone black completely. She
also used iron black but all of the
paintings in the questioned pieces
were carbon black. They’re both
good materials but very different.
The other material that we see here
in good supply is dolomite and
dolomite is a filler material.
Let’s take a look at that a
little bit more. Well here’s the
blue paint and this will show,
we’re switching gears a little
bit on blue paints, this is not
about ultramarine blue anymore, but
this is a cobalt violet that was in
one of the Clementine paintings.
You can see that this, this is what
I like to see. These are good
professional grade materials.
They’re all good stuff. In
Clementine, in the questioned
piece, there is no inorganic blue
material. It’s all, it’s almost
all the titanium, barium, zinc,
sulfur. It’s almost all filler
material and opacifier with some
organic material. It’s a much
less expensive material. The
blacks, as I mentioned are very
different. The QCH’s are all
basically [ ? ] black or carbon
black, whereas Clementine’s were
the calcium and phosphorus of bone
black. It became monotonous to see
in all of the five paintings that I
examined from the questioned this
kind of view that we saw earlier
combined with the elemental
distribution of calcium and
magnesium, carbon and oxygen,
magnesium carbonate or
dolomite, it became you see, you
see the bright field of materials.
Basically we’re dealing with very
low quality student grade
materials. I shouldn’t say low
quality but they were definitely
student grade materials, much
cheaper than professional quality
materials that Hunter seemed to be
using consistently.
I’m amazed Mr. Whitehead had
mentioned that she only used
materials that people brought her.
They were bringing her good stuff,
really good quality materials, and
she must have put in orders because
the consistency of her palette is
remarkable. We also looked at 231
paints that were seized by the FBI
and of those, 92 of those were
Windsor Newton oil paints and 86 of
them were of the Winton, which is a
student grade material. We did some
analyses and many of them did
contain magnesium, calcium
magnesium carbonate or dolomite.
We looked at a lot at the visual
characteristics as well and
compared those. This is a little,
we won’t go through all of this
but just awkward, poorly executed
signatures, fluid while
consistently well formed. What
we’re able to do a little bit of
too and which I think, I
recommended that actually that they
employ a forensic document examiner
to really examine and analyze these
signatures. I just noticed the one
thing myself, that if you look at
the width to length ratios in the
backward C’s, you’ve got
different proportions here.
You’ve got 1.1 to 1.4 whereas
they’re almost equal 1 to 1 in
the questioned. So if you look at
them, you see how the height here
to the length, is almost 1 to 1,
whereas it’s longer here and a
little higher here and if you look
at the way, at the symmetry of
these, this is all good analyzable
material.
We talked about the eyes. Here’s
an eye from one of Clementine’s
paintings, here’s an eye from one
of the questioned and again, when
you’re looking, when we step into
the gallery, there’s going to be
a big magnifying glass on one. Take
the time to look at that and being
a microscopist, I always carry a
magnifier with me so if anybody
wants to borrow a magnifier, tap me
on the shoulder in the gallery.
It really is beneficial to look at
these materials and see the
differences; it will give you some
good insights. In closing, I would,
the painting that really touched,
that I found the most moving, and
especially in retrospect when I was
able to examine these photographs
that we had made though the
microscope, this is one that I did
not do any chemical analysis on,
this was one of the Brittain
images, but the amount of emotion
that she was able to pour into
these two grieving angels, with
these again, the scale, this is one
millimeter scale down here, it’s
just amazing. With that, I thank
you for your attention.