Restore a Painting: do the minimal amount of work or make it look its best? (See the short video testimonial)
Virginia Panizzon, Art Conservator
Restoring
a vintage oil painting often involves options of treatments to choose
from. If you are not experienced in dealing with a painting conservator
and choosing art restoration services, you may very understandably
wonder what is the best thing for the painting.
The
financial value of the artwork may be a guide by which collectors and
curators make decisions for the conservation and preservation of their
artwork. However, value is not always only given by its monetary
reclaim. Historical value and personal or emotional value also give
people good reasons to preserve their heirlooms and collectibles.
Before removal of overpainting restoration in water
A
professional art conservator can be a valuable consultant for you to
make good decisions regarding your artwork. A good example would be in
trying to decide whether it is in the best interest of the artwork to
have everything possible done to restore the painting, like when a
painting has had a lot of previous restorations. For a number of
reasons, this may motivate only a partial restoration treatment.
Consider,
for instance that it is very important to address the preservation
problems before dealing with the aesthetic issues. For example, if a
client doesn’t want to spend much money but they want to preserve the
painting and if a painting is very dirty and flaking; we will forego the
cleaning but stabilize the flaking in the best interest of preserving
the artwork. Its easy to see how the stabilization of the unstable paint
is most important.
We
recently received a historical maritime painting with a lighthouse in
the distance from c.1895. It had extensive multiple previous
restorations. Several large rips and holes had been repaired (and were
still quite visible), a very poor quality cleaning had been done (maybe
more than once) unevenly removing a very discolored varnish. Extensive
over-abundant repainting (retouching) changed original features over
most of the painting.
Even
though it looked pretty rough, the general condition of the artwork was
stable. In other words, there was no flaking or other signs of falling
apart. The particular feature that really bothered the owner was the
dark repainting of the water in the foreground which eliminated the
water details and the owner said it looked to her like “the ship was
sailing on land.” Click here to see the short video testimonial
So,
in this case, our client’s primary concern was to clean the water in
the foreground and recuperate the details of the water. It was not
possible to clean the entire painting without removing all the previous
retouchings and exposing all the extensive damage and increasing the
budget dramatically. While doing a complete restoration was definitely
possible, it didn’t make sense to the owner given the financial value of
the painting.
After removal of repainting of the water (a previous restoration)
The
owner may have made a different decision if this had been her
grandfather’s ship or if her ancestor’s had immigrated on this ship. So,
you can see there are different motivations for decisions. As long as
the artwork is stable, the decision about the appearance is subjective.
The
photo below is the grandmother of the present owner. It was sent to a
well advertised Russian immigrant restorer who repainted the portrait.
Horrified, the only option was to try and recoup all of the original by
removing all of the oil paint repainting. So, in this case, the
motivation for a complete and proper painting conservation treatment was
justified by the owner independent of the financial value.
Left: Restoration by Russian restorer meant repainting with oil paint.
Right: After repainting removal and recovery of original 19th century portrait.
Professional
art conservation adheres to standards of practice and ethics that focus
on the original nature and integrity of the artwork and the business
practices with clients.
See a short video tour of Fine Art Conservation Laboratories:
Call
us to discuss your questions. Free evaluations at your home or business
and pick up and delivery in So. Cal, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City. Or we
can help you ship. Highest quality professional art conservation work,
standards of practice and ethic. Damaged art insurance claims.
Click here for other testimonials:
We work with disaster response companies and insurance companies.
Contact info
Scott M. Haskins, Virginia Panizzon, Oriana Montemurro, Art Conservators
805 564 3438 office
805 570 4140 mobile
oil painting restoration, painting conservation, art conservation, art restoration, restore a painting,
rip repair, clean a painting, family heirloom, collectible, Scott
Haskins, Oriana Montemurro, Virginia Panizzon, Fine Art Conservation
Laboratories
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