Unveiling of Restored Whittridge

The restoration of a masterful painting might be more thrilling to its owner than to the general public. But anyone who is curious about the painstaking process or the results — or, for that matter, enjoys Hudson River School artworks generally — will have a chance to indulge all three this Friday at the T.W. Wood Gallery in Montpelier. That’s when the public can view, for the first time in decades, an oil-on-canvas painting titled “Old Home by the Sea” by Worthington Whittredge (1820-1910). The American landscape painter was a friend and peer of Albert Bierstadt, whose grand painting “The Domes of the Yosemite,” in the collection of the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, was restored and returned to that venue last year. A donation from the Margaret J. George Fund for Art covered the cost of conservation work on Whittredge’s 1900 painting, which is in the Wood Gallery’s permanent collection.