The Salvage Job - Part 1

This video is brought to you by Squarespace. From websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics, Squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business. Whenever a painting arrives from a faraway land, having been shipped to the studio, there's always a tremendous amount of excitement. While I may have seen photos of this painting, seeing it in person is always a real treat. And opening up the box is just like your birthday. A big present waiting for you. However, in this case, the present is a project. One where I'm going to have to employ all of my techniques, all of my expertise, to solve a problem. But that, for me, is the present. The problem. The opportunity to solve what may not have been able to be solved before. To fix something that has been bothering a client. To restore this painting to its former glory. And this painting certainly needs it. And of course there's so much I want to know about this painting. And maybe the person best suited to tell us about it is the client themselves. The portrait is of Anna Eliza Flint Moore. She was born in 1825 and she died in 1881. The painting is just beautifully done. I love the brushwork of the artist. I do know that his name is Grove Sheldon Gilbert. And he lived from 1805 to 1885. He was a self-taught portrait painter. He studied medicine and then he ended up becoming an artist. He taught school and he painted portraits while he was there as well. I purchased this painting back in August of last year. It already had a bit of a tear. And unfortunately when it was shipped, that tear had spread. I feel like once this thing's mended together, it'll just be a beautiful piece. I want it to be a statement piece in the house that I'm building. I want to kind of save it, so to speak. You know, when I saw it, it just broke my heart that it was, you know, in the condition that it was in. Oh, hey. So, you know, while we're talking about things that are heartbreaking because of their condition, we can't avoid the elephant in the room. And that's your website. It could be so much better if you just use Squarespace. You see, Squarespace is built on a modular platform that allows you to add and remove, change and customize just about every part of the website with a click of a button. That means if you want to change the colors or add a gallery or add an e-commerce solution, you can do it. It's easy. No code required. And so whether you're going to use one of their readily available templates for your website or customize one from the ground up, or you're going to start off with a simple landing page and then evolve it into a comprehensive website to sell your products, Squarespace is capable. And if by chance you lose the manual after you've taken it apart, Squarespace has thought of that too, with online tutorials, guides and a robust forum to help you along the way. So head over to Squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash Baumgartner to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Before this painting can be put back together or made whole as it were, it needs to be disassembled because any good repair is predicated on taking the object apart, understanding its bits and pieces, and then figuring out how to put it back together. For this painting, I'm going to remove it from the frame, not a terribly difficult prospect given that there are only four nails holding it all together, and they come out relatively easily. Once separated, I can lift the painting out of the frame, being mindful to support the brittle canvas, because while the tears are massively impressive, they can always get worse if proper care isn't taken. And I'd like to avoid any further damage while the painting is in my care. The next step is to separate this canvas from the stretcher support. And while I would normally do that by rotating the painting around, giving me good access to each edge, for this painting, because of the fragility of the canvas, I'm going to be doing it face down, allowing the table to support the canvas. It's a little bit more tedious this way and slightly more difficult, but ultimately the safety of the painting is paramount. During the last conservation attempt, a strip lining was added, and the original tacking edge was lost. Luckily though, tacks were used to fasten the canvas to the support, so I'll pull each and every one of these out. And while this support is not original to the painting, we're going to save it. I can lift up this support, well, almost lift it up, because there's always one tack that's hiding there, waiting to make my day just a little bit more complicated. But with this stubborn tack removed, I can lift this support out and put it aside for cleaning and reuse later on. The next step is to remove these patches and strip lining from the original canvas. So I'll select my favorite scalpel handle, the one I refuse to let anybody else in the studio use, and I'll install a new sterile blade. And we use sterile blades not for the painting's safety, but ours, just in case they slip and we end up on the wrong side of that blade. The adhesive, a rabbit skin glue, has deteriorated over time as it is wont to do, and removing these patches is fairly simple. Sliding the blade underneath forces enough tension on the adhesive that it simply releases. This is a symptom of old adhesive, but also, there just isn't enough adhesive on here. Whoever put this patch on set up a failure scenario by not using enough adhesive. But ultimately, this is good for me and the painting, because it means these patches come off easily, I don't have to use a ton of elbow grease, or harsh solvents, or chemicals, or water, or anything really. Once they're lifted, I can peel them right off. And I'm hoping the same is true for this tacking edge. And upon initial examination, it appears to be true. Not enough glue, and a glue that's failed over time. So I can simply roll back this strip of canvas. It doesn't take a lot of force, and that's good, because if I have to use a ton of force, there's a higher chance that the canvas will tear, or that something bad will happen. So with one edge down, I'll proceed to the next. And with a little bit more confidence, I can peel them right off. I'm always a little bit more cautious on the first one, until I know how the adhesive is going to react, and what the best approach is. But once I've tested it out on one or two sides, then the next few go much easier. That's the benefit of having a little bit of experience, and a little bit of knowledge. Of course, with the canvas removed, we have now revealed all of that leftover adhesive, which also needs to be removed. There are many ways that I can remove this adhesive. I could certainly use laponite or water to soften the adhesive up. But adding moisture to a canvas, while sometimes is necessary, it can also be risky. And so if I can avoid doing that, I will. And in this case, because the adhesive is so brittle, I can just scrape and drag the blade across, and the adhesive flakes right off, leaving the canvas underneath free of glue. Luckily, it's just on the tacking edges and the areas where the patches are that I need to remove this adhesive. If it were the entire back of the painting, it would take a lot more time, be a lot more frustrating, and I would be a lot less pleased with this piece. When I come to the patches, it's the same thing. Scraping off all of the old adhesive, and then digging out and removing the inlay, because it too needs to go. A quick vacuum to get rid of all of the adhesive residue from the back of the canvas, and the table keeps everything nice and clean for the next process. In order to move this painting, I need to provide it some support, because it's no longer attached to anything. So a piece of acid-free foam core underneath the painting will provide support for me when I transfer it to the back of the studio, to the hot table, where we're going to execute the first of many treatments. I prepared the hot table earlier with a piece of acid-free blotter paper, a nylon release layer, and cotton webbing surrounding the two. Once the painting is transferred over, I can slide it off of the boards, and onto that nylon release layer, which is critically important, because without it, the old adhesive could be reactivated by the moisture in the canvas when the painting is heated up, and it could stick to that blotter paper and be messy. The release layer prevents that. Once the painting is in position, I can put the PET film on top, I can tape it down, create an airtight envelope, and then I can start extracting the air to create downward force with the vacuum table on the painting, which, coupled with heat and ambient moisture, will allow me to relax and soften up this canvas and get rid of some of these waves and distortions. Once the treatment is done, I can turn off the vacuum table and remove the painting from this envelope, and I can see that it's fairly flat, which is exactly what I wanted. That's what this hot table treatment allows me to do, remove all of those planar distortions, and keep the canvas flat. I'll then bring the canvas over to the other table, and I will then press it over a couple of days. This is critically necessary, because while we didn't add any moisture to this painting, there is ambient moisture in the canvas, because there's ambient moisture in the environment, and if we don't keep this painting under weight, it's going to start curling and lifting and distort again, which would negate the entire treatment that I just did. So a little bit of felt on the surface to protect the paint layer, not terribly important for this painting, because there is almost no impasto, but still, as a precaution, we take it anyways. A couple of sheets of drywall, and then a big cinder block to provide some passive downward force. A few days later, I'll come and remove the painting from this weight, and then I will transfer it over to the table in front of the studio, where I will begin with the next step in the structural repairs. Upon first glance, it looks like the painting has not distorted, so the weight has been successful. Now over time, the canvas shrunk slightly from this tear, and that created a gap. I can pull these pieces of canvas together to close that gap, which is precisely what I will do when I repair it, but the problem is that when I pull this together to close this gap, we get distortion elsewhere. So we solve one problem, and we create another problem. If the painting is to remain flat, the gap is open. If the gap is closed, the painting is no longer flat. And we have this little bulge right here that we have to contend with, because we can't just leave it be. So the first step is taking some acrylic tape and simply taping the painting back together. I know it sounds terribly complicated and very futuristic, but sometimes the simplest approach works. So much like a butterfly suture will hold skin together across a cut, these little pieces of tape do the exact same thing. We're holding the canvas together and keeping it in alignment, keeping the registration proper, so that it doesn't distort any further. I'm going to lay these pieces of tape across the entire painting until I come to the edge where we have that extra canvas and that little bump. I'll go right up to the edge, but I don't want to try to tape down this last little bit. And then, with the aid of some boards, I'm going to flip the painting again and put it face down on the table. I want access to the back of the painting so that I can press out these little distortions. Again, you can see just how problematic this would be. If I merely tried to press this, I would probably create a crease and that would damage the face of the painting. I'm going to take a piece of cotton blotter paper, which is just cotton fibers compressed into a sheet of paper, and dampen it with some distilled water. I want this damp, but not soaking wet. And then I'll lay it on top of the distorted canvas and apply some light pressure with some shot bags. I want lighter pressure here because I don't want to immediately try to flatten this. That would result in a crease, which could damage the paint layer. But these shot bags aren't heavy enough to do that. Over a period of about two or three hours, they will exert enough downward pressure that they'll slowly transfer some of that moisture into the canvas, which will make the canvas pliable, and then the weight will start to flatten it. After a few hours, I can remove the bags, remove the blotter paper, and replace it with a new piece of dry blotter paper. And then I can put the heavy steel weights on them. This will draw out any residual moisture from the canvas and keep it flat. The next day, I'll come back, I'll remove the weights and the blotter paper, and we can see that the distortion is all removed, precisely what we wanted. Again, using a piece of acid-free foam core slipped underneath the painting, I'll transfer it over to the back half of the studio where the structural work will continue. Because this painting had such massive tears, there's really no way to repair these locally. Even if it was just one tear, it's too big, and the risk to the canvas of future problems is too great. So it definitely needs a lining. But here, I'm going to do an interleaved lining. And after heating up the adhesive and thinning it out to the consistency that I want and mixing it up, I'll then roll it onto the back of the painting. And what I'm trying to do here is make sure that I get a very even coat of adhesive across the entire back for a couple of reasons. One, I don't want a starved glue joint. I want to make sure I have really good contact between this and the interleaved layer. But I also want to use this as an opportunity to help saturate up this really brittle canvas. This adhesive will add a little bit of structural fidelity to the canvas weave itself. Once the painting has been rolled, the film will also receive a coating of the adhesive on both sides. Once that's dried, I'll cut the interleaf down to size, and then I'll start assembling the painting for its structural repair. I'll always run my hands across the surface of anything that I'm mounting because I want to make sure that there are no little bits of debris that are still there, particularly in between the canvas and this piece of PET film, because those could transfer to the front of the painting. Now, the PET film has been cut shy of the overall dimensions of the painting by just a little bit. And that's because the PET film isn't all that flexible, and if it was too large, I wouldn't be able to stretch this around the stretcher. Now, this painting had an inscription on the back, and it's critically important that we save this inscription. But how do we do that when we're going to be putting a lining on the painting? Well, we create windows. So I'm using a ruler to mark out two rectangles, which will be the windows that allow us to see the inscription on the back. Once I've marked these out, I'll take some standard blue painter's tape, and I'll lay it down, creating a rectangle. This is not terribly complicated, but this is actually a pretty critical step in this process. Once these windows are made, I'll take a solvent, and I'll remove the adhesive from this side of the PET film, because we don't need it there. We're not going to be bonding anything to this section of the PET film, and we want a clear window. Next, I'll take the adhesive film and remove one side of the release layer. This has release layers on both sides, this paper and a clear release layer, and I will bond it down to the lining canvas. This is done with an iron, and I want to make sure that it's nice and flat and free of wrinkles and distortions. Once everything is cool, I will take the painting and flip it over and lay it down onto the lining canvas and align it properly. I want to make sure that it's in its correct position, because if it moves, this will be a problem later on. In order to prevent that movement and keep the registration intact, I'll take some more painter's tape, and I will effectively just tape this painting down. I'm creating a hinge on one side and two little flaps on the other. Across these little flaps, I will draw a line, and this is going to be used for keeping the registration later on. Next, I will flip the painting over and then begin feeling for the tape that I laid down on the PET film. Even though the tape is thin, I can feel it through the canvas, and once I find it, I'll use my straightedge to transfer the inner edge of that tape rectangle to the back of this canvas with a pencil. I'll then slide a piece of board in between the canvas and the interleaf, and I will cut through the lining canvas with my blade. I'm going to leave the canvas in place and tape it in the corners. I'll then cut the hinges, and I'll flip the painting over. I'm taking care to make sure that nothing shifts, because if it does, well, all the alignment will be off and I'll have to start over. I'll remove the board, and then I'll peel off the other side of the release layer from the film adhesive. I'm making sure to leave the release layer on the areas of the windows. I don't want exposed adhesive there. You can see the windows cut out. I'll then remove the tape from the PET film, leaving that window that we removed the adhesive from, and then I can put everything back together and transfer it over to the hot table where I will mount all of this together. This is where having the hinge is really critically important. It makes sure that everything stays in alignment, and if there's any doubt, I'll use the little lines that I created just to double check. Then I can remove all of this blue painter's tape, as it's done its job admirably, but now I have no use for it, and then I can transfer the painting over to the hot table. Before I began working on assembling this painting for its lining, I started heating up the hot table, so by now it's up to temperature, and I can transfer the painting over. I'm going to flip the painting over here and remove these little pieces of blue painter's tape that are holding the canvas in place. I don't want to remove these canvas windows, because if I do, the rectangles will transfer to the face of the painting. So again, using a board, I'm going to flip it over, keeping everything in its place. And then I'll wrap some cotton webbing around the painting, create an airtight envelope, add the through-bag connectors, and extract all of the air, creating downward pressure. And I'll use a piece of felt, because the table is hot, to get the air out and make sure everything is nice and flat. Then I can turn off the heat and let the painting cool. Once the painting has cooled, I can remove it from the envelope and bring it over to the front, where I can now begin taking off all of these little butterfly sutures. They did their job, but now they have to go. The marks that they're leaving and the residue is all on the surface of the varnish, which is why I didn't clean the painting first. All of this will disappear when I do clean it, and in this case, the varnish acts as a sacrificial protective layer, so sometimes I can use old work to my benefit. But now, all of that old work has to go away, and it's time to clean the painting. When I received the painting, I made some tests, and I determined what ratio of solvents would be appropriate for removing this varnish layer. Now that I have that solvent mixed in a jar, I can begin removing all of this old varnish. And old varnish it is. It is heavily, heavily discolored. But what I'm also finding is a lot of overpaint. You can see right here that it looks like there was some paint loss that was simply filled in with overpaint, using paint as a fill-in medium to repair the painting. The solvent does a good job of removing most of it, but I'll have to make several passes, because overpaint is a little bit stubborn at times. But the color change is remarkable, and it only gets better from here. It seems that the entire background was simply overpainted with a darker color, and then a very, very heavy layer of old varnish oxidized and darkened over time. And what lies beneath is a background that's significantly brighter and, well, just radically different. And as I get to the lower section of the painting, I find even more overpaint and, yes, even more hidden damage. Again, it appears as if a very heavy layer of oil paint was used to simply fill in the missing paint and blend it all together. Not a technique that we would ever employ here, or that really anybody should ever employ. This is just kind of bad work. The overpaint continues across the rest of the background, and removing it is both very frustrating, because it should never have been there in the first place, but also incredibly rewarding, because I'm seeing a totally different painting emerge from this dark mass of color. And that, in and of itself, is really exciting. As I continue on to cleaning her clothing and her face, well, the change proved to be just as dramatic, even if there's no massive overpaint. The varnish is so discolored that what remains will certainly be exciting. The inlays of missing canvas where the holes were. But I have a solution, and it all depends upon a new tool. Creality's Falcon A1 10-watt laser cutter. Someone over at Creality must have seen me cutting out dozens of little inlays with scissors and thought there's a better way, so they sent me one of the Falcon A1 laser cutters. And now, I'm going to find out just how easy it is. First, I'll take some photographs of the inlay areas with some rulers in frame for scale. Then I'll bring them into the computer, and I'll create some shapes based on these voids. I'll clean up the shapes, and once I'm satisfied with these, I'll save them and bring them into another piece of software for further editing. This is still a new process to me, so I'm refining how to make this part faster and simpler. But altogether, this has only taken me about six minutes, give or take. Once I've got them into this software, I'll create some vector shapes and save those. And then, I'll bring it into Creality's Falcon Design Space, which is their software that allows me to control how the laser operates and moves. And with a few simple clicks, I'll save it to a thumb drive. And then, I can bring it on over to the laser, insert the thumb drive, choose the media of my liking, in this case, some canvas that's pre-primed, lay it onto the cutting bed, and let the laser work. And in a matter of, oh, about ten seconds, I'm all done. Canvas has been laser cut to precision, and I can check to see if it's going to work for my application. At the painting, I'll take the canvas and remove the pieces of laser cut inlay. And then, we can test to see just how accurate this will be. And if I can use this in the future. And accurate doesn't even begin to come close. These are perfect. There is simply no way that I would ever been able to cut these by hand with scissors after tracing and get this type of fit. Suffice it to say that using Creality's Falcon A1 10-watt laser cutter, I have a new workflow, and I'm excited to test it out in the future. Because even though this took me maybe 10 minutes to do, longer than cutting it out by hand for these two little pieces, when I have paintings with tons of inlays or really complicated large ones, this will not only be a time saver, but it will be significantly more accurate than doing it by hand. So with a little bit of glue applied to the back of the canvas and the inlay, I can press these into place. Once they've been pressed and dried, I can come back and see that they are absolutely perfect. So this is a huge win. And now I can start filling in all of these losses. And unfortunately for me, this still has to be done analog. Creality doesn't yet have a fill-in machine. Yet. So I'll go ahead and I'll fill in all of these losses, just making sure to get all the areas where the paint is missing because I want a nice smooth surface onto which I can apply the retouching. I don't want any textural differences to give away that there was repairs. Even if the color is matched perfectly, the texture can often betray that accuracy and you can still see all of the repair work. Once the fill-in is dry, I'll come back with some swabs and remove all of the excess. Again, I just want to fill in where there were losses. I don't want to cover up any of the original painting. I mean, imagine if I had just left all this fill-in on her eyes. I would have to repaint these eyes. But when I remove it, you can see just how little fill-in I really need. Just where the losses are. That's it. Then it's time to return this painting to its stretcher. This is a relatively new stretcher, and so it is fairly nice to work with. It's not the highest quality support, but it's certainly not the lowest quality support I've seen. I'm going to square it up with a bunch of nails in the corners. This makes sure that as I'm tacking, it doesn't distort and become out of square, which could be a problem for lots of reasons. Then I can fit the painting onto the support, align it how I like, and begin stretching it with steel tacks. Now my hammer, my father's hammer from 40 some odd years ago, has a magnetized head which allows me to pick up these steel tacks, set them, and then drive them in place. And this is actually fairly quick. Anybody who argues that staples, at least pneumatic staples, are better and faster is just missing the point. There are some things for which speed isn't the hallmark. Precision and care are. Once it's all stretched, I can begin removing all of the excess canvas from the lining. I'll cut the corners, and then I'll use the stretcher bar as a guide to cut off the extra canvas from the flaps. And with the canvas all trimmed, I can tidy it up. And this is something that's really important to me, because even though it's the back, and most clients don't pay that much attention to it, it's a way that I can communicate that care has been given to every aspect of this painting, not just the front, but all of the little details that matter going forward. Seeing these things makes me feel really good, and I want the client to feel the same way. So little things like tucking in the corners, tacking them so that they're nice and they don't fray, not only make sure that the canvas lasts longer, but it's a way the client can feel like their painting has been taken care from the front to the back. The insulation of the keys, because this painting is interweaved, isn't critically necessary to force tension on the canvas. It's not going to move because of that PET thing, but it will keep the stretcher tight. And because I put the keys in, I'll bind them with some fishing line to make sure that they don't get lost in the future. And then, after a lot of waiting, I can peel off these windows, and we can see just what lies beneath. And there it is, the signature and inscription, left clear for the future owners to see. But I'm not completely done with this. There's one more thing I have to do. And no, it's not preparing the painting for retouching, although that is what I need to do now. And that begins by applying a synthetic resin to the surface. This is going to do a lot of things, but primarily it's going to make a really receptive surface for the retouching, and it's going to saturate the colors so that I can see what they'll look like. You can see the difference between the areas that I've applied this resin to and the areas I haven't. Look at the difference in the color. I want to retouch according to that more saturated, rich color, because that's what the painting is going to look like after I apply the final varnish, and I want my retouching to match that. And speaking of retouching, I'm going to start with an innocuous area in the background, one of these pieces of damage that I discovered that was completely overpainted. And the reason I start with one of these areas is just to give myself a little bit of leeway. This is not the most important area of the painting. Obviously, that's the face, but this is important. By starting here, I give myself a chance to get familiar with the color palette, to warm up, so to speak, to get a little wind in my sails, notch an early victory, feel confident about my retouching. And if this area doesn't go well, then maybe it's time to do something else in the studio. But if it does go well, and my color matching is on point, then I might move on to an area that's much more difficult, an area that's much more important, like the face. With all of the retouching complete, it's now time for the final varnish. And this does a couple of things. It protects the painting with a UV barrier, protects it from fingerprints and oils, dust and dirt, but it also allows me to add a final sheen. Because right now, the retouching is uneven. Some areas are a little bit shinier than others. There are areas that are matte, and it is distracting. Even though the color matches, you can see the sheen difference, and just like a textural difference, it betrays the quality of retouching. So by applying this final varnish, I can control the sheen. I can give it a unified, even surface that makes the retouching invisible, and it makes the painting look just really, really beautiful. And that's why we apply varnish. Not just to protect the painting, but to make it look as good as it possibly can. Now, I mentioned I wasn't done with the inscription, and though we can see it through the interleaf material, it's not terribly legible. So before I did the lining, I took a high-res photograph of the back of the painting, showing the inscription and all of the other markings. And then I printed it out in high quality on a piece of archival paper, and put that in a mylar sleeve. And now I'm simply screwing it to the back of the stretcher, where it will stay with the painting forever. And with that, my work is complete. The painting has been cleaned. All of the overpaint removed. The original background restored to the artist's vision. And of course, the massive tear running across and through her face, and specifically her eyes, has vanished. And now, we're left with a portrait that can captivate us with its gaze and expression. But of course, while I'm satisfied with this work, really, the final judgment comes down to the owner. And who better to decide if this was a success than them? Julian, good afternoon. I've just opened the Anna Eliza Flint Moore painting, and wow, she looks absolutely fantastic, man. You can't even tell that it was ever damaged. Absolutely stunning restoration. I really, really appreciate you doing this. That tear that went right across her face, which was so distracting and damaging to the painting, you can't, you're looking at it, you can't even tell that it was there. So I am absolutely floored and amazed at the attention to detail. I really love the touch on the back where you left that opening, where it had the writing, and you kind of protected that. That's a really wonderful, nice touch, because it preserves that provenance of the piece and helps identify the originality of it. I'm so pleased with it. It's hanging on my wall right now. Once I get my house built, she is going to be a focal point. I am very, very pleased. Under UV, it's pretty clear to see my retouching, all of those dark purple spots. That's new paint that I added. As we take a closer look to her face, we can see that in some areas, the retouching is so fine and so acute that it is almost non-existent. From something that was beautiful, but heartbreaking because of its condition, to fully conserved and beautiful once again, she's now a sight for sore eyes.