An Epic painting restoration and conservation. Restoring a 19th Century Painting

The painting I bring you today is an interior scene painted by Petrus Kramer. This is a painting that is profoundly dirty by smoke and grease. The varnish is old and with the age it became totally brown. This happens because of the action of the UV light and because this varnish is a natural resin without any UV light protection it is natural that becomes brown and this happens with age. It is easy to notice the distortion in the stretching frame and this happens because of the changes of the relative humidity in the place where this painting was hanged. That also contracts and expands the canvas and this painting will need a new stretching frame because as we can see the borders of the actual canvas are totally pulling the old stretching frame we can also notice a heavy crackle in the paint layer and this can happen again because of the contraction and expanding of the canvas can be related with the size of the pigment that is or can be also a different oil to make the paint. Sometimes artists would also use different oils than linseed oil to make their own paint. When we observe the back of the painting we can see very well the net of fissures caused by the crack. There are several holes and tears that were treated in the past but will need to be changed in my restoration. I use the UV light to be sure where the previous restorations are so I can expect where paint comes off when I'm cleaning or removing the varnish. After doing this structural exam and taking several notes about the state of this painting I can start the restoration process. I start by applying the facing on the paint using for that Japanese paper that not only is very resistant but also is very flexible and in conjunction with an adhesive that can be for example rice starch or fish protein light glue also known as gelatin. I apply the adhesive using the union jack flag pattern and this also offers me some more stability when I'm doing this action. After you watch the whole video if you would like to know more about painting and art you may like to see the suggestions I leave you below in the description of this video. After the adhesive has dried I can cut the excess of Japanese paper so it doesn't interfere with my following process which is disassembling the canvas from the stretching frame. Normally due to the age those nails are always so very stubborn on coming out and I must confess that sometimes I do suffer a bit doing it. Even when sometimes I do have to use several kind of tools it really is hard to achieve that. Finally after some big efforts I release the canvas from the stretching frame. As always there is a lot of dirt accumulation on the back of the painting and in this situation I will clean it with the vacuum cleaner. I noticed that is also a strip lining that was applied in the past and this one also needs to be removed. With the help of a scalpel I try to remove the beginning after because the adhesive already failed long time ago I can just pull with my hand and it comes off. All this glue residue needs to come out and this is where my scalpel is very effective again. After cleaning the back of the painting with some light solvent I can start removing the patches from the back of the painting. First I do apply some light solvent on the patch this will help to release the canvas from it. Under this patch there is a big hole that in the past was filled with some kind of filling but I'm going to apply another technique so I have to remove this filling and again for that my scalpel is also a very good help. It is also necessary to remove any glue residue that may stay attached to the canvas. To close this hole I'm using a technique called bridging that consists in applying small threads of canvas glued with a reversible adhesive in a perpendicular way to the hole. I live in Antwerp Belgium and Belgium has a city called Wachingen where there are very famous canvas manufacturers that are very famous worldwide by their quality and that is a fact. To let it dry I apply a piece of millinex, a piece of felt and a heavy weight and it stays like this for several hours. Before this hole was filled with some kind of old filling that was also failing. Now I'm going to apply a piece of canvas that I cut with the shape of this hole. This canvas is part of a old linen that I had to remove from another painting but because it's old but in very good condition and with a similar weight to the weight of the canvas I'm working on it is very convenient for this situation. Here I do first apply also the bridging technique in two points and after I do apply a piece of Japanese paper that will maintain everything in place. Here I also apply a millinex, a layer of felt and a heavy weight. And what you just watched makes part of the conservation process of the painting where I do make an analysis of the structure of the painting normally of the stretching frame that we just saw that it's very not in good conditions so it became not flat at all. So I will need to apply a new one and what I did to sterilize the painting I did face the paint in order to protect the layer the paint layer and I did clean all the back so now it's very clear the little fissures because of the small cracks on the painting. I made the consolidation on several tears and the holes that the canvas has so now it's ready and what I'm going to do now is to apply some heat and some moist in order to flat these areas these edge areas okay because after I'm going to apply an adhesive directly here on the canvas this adhesive will go through the canvas and will go in the fissures on the crack so when I do the new linen it will make the cracks a little bit softer we are going to be able to watch that result and that's what you're gonna watch next okay so I just apply some moist here do it like this and I apply the heat we have the result I can now apply the adhesive this adhesive is reversible I have to warm it up till 65 degrees and then I can apply it it will have to dry so the solvent can evaporate and only the adhesive remains on the canvas I apply it on the back of the painting and also on the new canvas that I'm going to apply I prepared the table with some paper and malinax to protect the painting from gluing or sticking to the table I place a piece of wood that in this stage is important so I can make pressure to glue the canvas and the painting in the right alignment I can lay down the new canvas and over it I can lay down the painting and when it is correctly aligned using the hot iron I can glue the corners so the painting and the new canvas stay together I can turn the working frame lay down another layer of malinax and I can start applying the heat and the pressure and with a piece of wood I make sure to press well the new canvas to the back of the painting the next step is the removing of the facing for that I use some neutral water that I brush over the paper and with a spatula I can start to removing it this painting is so dirty that this brownish color that you can see on the paper it is grime that was already transferred to the paper several flaws in the painting are now clearly visible there are a lot of small points where the paint did came off in order to access better to the varnish I need to remove the grime I use this wax that has several cleaning agents that act very well as cleaners applying this circular mechanical movement makes the dirt become free turning it easier to be collected with the cotton ball Petrus Kramer was an artist painter born in 1801 in Antwerp and dying in 1888 normally he would paint historical generous scenes and he did travel to Germany, Italy and France to study the old masters but it is in Paris where he perfects his technique now that all the grime is removed I can access better to the varnish and using a cotton swab and a solvent I can clean the painting from this yellow varnish and after some rolls I can start see the varnish starting to glue to the cotton when the painting is free from the old varnish I can start applying the filling so all the paint layer stays at the same level there are a lot of places that need to be corrected the tear the hole the area around the painting all need to take this filling and in these small places where the paint did flake and was lost I apply some gesso with a very small brush this will provide a ground layer for the to feel when the same level is achieved but in this situation I also can use a not so soft sponge it also works really well on the removing of the excess then with a small swab I take out any excess around the edges like I said in the beginning of this video the original frame was totally distorced and considering the age it is normal so I got a new stretching frame the painting can now be stretched and I apply nails also in the back I am careful how the finishing of the canvas is done it is normal that conservators pay special attention to the keys it is important to be sure that in the future they don't fall in the wrong place in the painting that can cause an accident I apply now the isolation varnish this is a synthetic resin varnish that in this stage has two main actions first isolates the original painting from my future retouching the second is that this varnish brings a saturation to the colors turning them similar as when I apply the final varnish this also helps me when I'm doing the retouching to find the closest color as possible to the original one I already said in past videos that when comes to the part of the retouching I always do first some exercises of concentration and today I start for some of the small flaws I do this so I can gain balance to the more this is another different synthetic varnish made with another kind of resin to this one I also add some tinovin in order to have some UV light protection this medium glossy varnish will just bring out all the beauty in this painting allowing this painting to be admired with much more vibrant colors and this journey begins with this painting in a not good condition very dirty yellow old varnish and several other issues but after attention and care the vibrance of this beautiful painting is back thank you for watching the video and I meet you on the next one