Today, the word “mural” is most often associated with street art, but a recent home repair project introduced decorative painter Diane Williams to the hidden history of murals painted in the homes of well-to-do Richmonders by itinerant painters during the 19th century.
Art to Di For's Diane Williams
Williams, a member of the International Decorative Artisans League, has been earning a living as a decorative painter for more than 20 years. Her portfolio includes painstakingly stenciled walls that look like wallpaper, faux-marble electrical outlet covers and hand-painted canvas floor cloths. She says her most unusual project to date is the recent restoration of a hidden ceiling mural in a historic Grove Avenue row house.
The owner of the home brought Williams in to restore a 19th-century mural uncovered on her dining room ceiling after a water leak in a bathroom above caused the ceiling to disintegrate. When contractors came in to make the necessary repairs, they began stripping away more than 100 years’ worth of plaster, lath, paint and wallpaper, and the long-forgotten mural was revealed. The homeowner immediately called in Williams to save the peculiar find. Williams brought in Lori Wilson of Wilson Decorative Solutions in New York, who is trained in historic painting, for assistance.
There were many areas that had been covered with new drywall. There was discoloration caused by water and smoke damage from the fireplace. Williams had to match the paint and re-create the original design like a forensics expert.
“It was a water-based paint that was put on the ceiling," Williams says. "We think it was distemper. If you washed too hard, you would wash it away, so we had to be quite careful in preparing it and washing away a lot of the drywall repair. We spent two days just washing it very gently with soft sponges to reveal a lot of the mural that was still there.”
The mural depicts a “kind of a hunt scene,” she adds. “There were stags … and a grouping of dead fish hanging from a string. … It also had sprays of flowers. It was really interesting.” It took the two painters five days to complete the project, using ladders, a bakers scaffold and neck braces to relieve the strain of painting on a ceiling 12 feet above the floor.
The project “was so challenging and so much fun,” Williams recalls. “Rumor has it that there were two itinerant painters who traveled around Richmond and painted many of the ceilings of these upper-class homes in 1895. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are many, many more hidden murals.” Williams says she was told that a curator at Maymont has some knowledge of the painters, but who they were or which houses they may have worked in remains a mystery.
