Painting Restoration

Once in every ten years your paintings should be cleaned from dust and grime. The common practice of using soap and water is dangerous and should not be used at all costs. The water seeps through the minute cracks and penetrates into the canvas. The paint then starts to peel off after a few month’s time. Over 60% of all professional painting restoration is the outcome of some well meaning “art lover” scrubbing their old painting with soap and water.

For our cleaning and restoration process we use professional quality materials which are used in museums the world over.

Restoration Process

There are 7 steps in the restoration process. Your painting may need all of them or just a few.

1. The painting is examined under a long wave ultraviolet lamp for inspection of overpainting, and any previous repairs.
2. Cleaning of dirt, smoke and grime.
3. Removal of old varnish
4. Removal of repainting (Correction of any previous bad restoration)
5. Repairing holes, tears and damages to the canvas
6. Varnishing
7. Lining, if necessary. Lining is putting the old painting on a new canvas. (It is absolutely necessary when a painting is peeling, has more than one tear or repair, or has dried out so badly that it is cracking on its surface.)

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Cleaning an antique painting of old yellowed varnish.

This City Landscape painting had a huge tear. To restore the painting it was necessary to apply a new canvas to the back of the entire painting.

Oil panting on gilded surface – cleaning and restoring of missing parts.

Cleaning and varnishing

Repairing a big tear in the middle of the painting. The painting was cleaned, patched, filled and touched up to match surrounding areas.

Old painting was cleaned from mould and varnished

Old oil panting on metal. It was cleaned and varnished.

This is a portrait of a woman in a national Latvian costume. A woman came to us and told us this is a portrait of her mother from 1940. The painting was brought to us as a rolled up canvas. It was stored for 50 years in a closet. The paint was badly flaking. We relined the painting on a new canvas, repainted damaged areas, and stretched the painting on new canvas frame.

Restoring damaged areas, oil on canvas.

Relining and cleaning an old screen painting and fixing corners and holes.

Relining an old French painting and fixing two large holes.

This painting was cleaned of old varnish that had yellowed with age.

Fixing small holes and tears on the canvas.

Fixing a crack on a 19th century icon painted on a wooden panel.

Cleaning of dirt, smoke and grime.

Restoring and cleaning very old painting from 18th century.

Icon Restoration

We restored over 40 large Russian church icons. Here are a few before and after. They were originally made in tempera on wooden panels.

Two large church icons came with lots of damage. Missing gesso and missing a paint layer. These were restored in tempera using original techniques.

This icon was missing faces. The icon was cleaned and the faces were repainted.

The icon was missing gesso in corners and on the sides.