Extreme Water Damage made this painting look like a Blizzard...watch it disappear

At first glance this looks like a blank canvas with nothing to show, but look closer and you can see remnants of a painting hidden. This painting, once a dramatic snowstorm scene, has been overtaken by a storm of its own. A veil of bloomed white varnish and water damage has hidden it completely. Today we're going to dive beneath the blizzard and reveal what time and moisture tried to erase. So unfortunately my client's property has suffered some extreme damp and heat and this has damaged a whole host of his paintings and this is one of them that has been damaged. It's by John Christian Maggs. It's on canvas. It's quite a small painting. You can see how the moisture has affected all those tacks there and that rust is penetrating. It does look like this may be a lining fabric or a dummy liner on the canvas so we'll have to explore and find out what's happening underneath. But when it arrived I thought it was just a blank painting. I had to do a bit of a double take. Now when a painting is exposed to damp in such extreme conditions it does cause the varnish to bloom. Most varnishes, whether made of natural resins like dammar or mastic or modern synthetic, are slightly porous on a microscopic level. So when exposed to high humidity or damp environments water molecules can become trapped inside the varnish film. Now this water scatters light rather than letting it pass directly through and it creates a milky or opaque appearance similar to the way frosted glass looks. Now prolonged exposure to dampness can also soften or plasticize this varnish especially if it's made from natural resins and in some cases these can begin to crystallize at the surface as moisture disrupts their molecular bonds. Now that's the science of it. What I need to do is remove that varnish but first I'm going to just put it under UV light. You can see this is a little test I've done for the client when they were present to show that I can remove this varnish and reveal the painting underneath. We can see elements of the composition but with no real clarity at all. We can just about make out some lone figures. We've got some crazed varnish there that's bloomed. That's another little test I've done in the sky and then we've got this angular tree in the bottom corner. So I know there's a varnish on here. I'm going to use my solvents to find out which strength I need to remove it. So my first one's a little bit weak so I've strengthened the mixture. Now this next mixture is quite strong and it removes the varnish quite rapidly so I'm going to tone that down as well because I'm going through a bloomed varnish here and I need to be confident that I'm not going to remove any of that paint surface. So my third mixture is somewhere in between. It's still removing the varnish but it's not as aggressive as the second and then when I've got my mixture happy or I'm happy with it I can show you that it quite easily removes that bloomed varnish and leaves the paint layer intact. So this is a funny one. Usually you get to see at least a little bit of what the painting is going to look like under a discoloured varnish or dirt but with this one no image and we've got no idea of composition but I'm excited. I'm just going to have to be really careful where I think the signature may be so that's something out what these gentlemen are doing. One of them's got some boots on. He's got little marks on the back of his boots. They look like they're holding two rifles to me. Now are they planning to attack something? Are they just out hunting? I'm not entirely sure but now we can see through this blizzard we've got two horses appearing and what appears to be a coach hand helping them through some deep snow. This is just fabulous to see this varnish removing and the image revealing underneath. So we've got this fabulous stagecoach being pulled through some very deep snow. They're all hunkered down on the back with their coats on against the weather. We've got this man here who appears to be leading a donkey and a cart in the other direction head down his jacket capturing that snow. You can imagine how cold and how wet it must be out there for them. Now we've got these reed beds. You can see the reeds bending in the in the wind and that snow is sleeting and shooting across the painting. The trees in the background are bending in the wind as well. It looks like a very stark cold day. I do love the snow though and I can imagine the silence in this scene. When the snow comes down everything gets that eerie silence and quiet and I just love it. And them snowflakes look really heavy and wet. Fabulous. Now in this bottom corner is where I'm expecting to see a signature but all I've got is these remnants. Now I don't know if that's a J in the bottom corner. I don't know if there's a bit of an M there in the middle and an A and I don't know if there's a little bit of a date there. Let me know what you think but if there was a signature this is where it would have been but I'm thinking it's long gone. I hope you enjoyed that clean as much as I did. It was fabulous. It reminded me of one of those magic images when you were a kid and you put water on it and the image revealed. Just absolutely magical. These kind of cleans are few and far between but when they do come they are really pleasurable. So let me show you what I found out about the artist. John Charles Maggs, known for his dynamic coaching scenes and snowy landscapes, was born in 1819 in Bath, England. Maggs captured the romance and bustle of Victorian travel in vivid detail. His father was a furniture japaner and an amateur artist and this influence clearly impacted Maggs who later collaborated with his daughter in his Bath art studio. Maggs excelled in snowy environments. He suggests biting cold, thick coats, steaming horses and red bright coaches stark against white roads. Maggs wasn't solitary. His daughter helped in the Bath art studio and his father and uncle were also practicing artists too. So this can sometimes confuse things when we are looking for attribution. Now I've had a look at the signatures online for Maggs and I found a couple of examples. They are very lightly painted and just on the surface so I do think that even though our painting was signed this has been lost somewhere in the past or it's a very small remnant left. Maggs painted into his mid-70s and he died in 1896 in Bath leaving a legacy of nearly 80 vivid travel scenes. Now he didn't get any royal patronage but his works belong to collectors worldwide and regularly appear at auctions and galleries. So unfortunately with no obvious signature we would have to go with after or studio of for our little painting. Now I'm on with the frame. It's had a couple of knocks along its life. I'm not sure whether this happened when the water damage happened or not but we have got a few little bits here so I'm going to address those with a little bit of silicone putty mould making here. So this is the two parts and it takes about 20 minutes to go off. So I'm just going to take a mould of the missing sections and then I'm going to use this Milliput to replace the missing areas. Ordinarily I'd use some compound if I had some lying around but I haven't got any fresh at the moment and for just really small repairs like this Milliput is fine because you can mould it and you can shape it and carve it and it dries very very hard and you've got a good working time as well. So I'm just going to tidy this little bit of section up here that's missing and the brush with a little bit of water just smooths and feathers all those edges around as well so you get a really nice finish. And once the silicone's gone off which takes about I don't know 20 minutes I'm going to use another little piece of Milliput here that I've let go off slightly so it's not too soft. I'm just going to press that into the mould. Now I only really need a tiny bit this little bridging section so I don't need to leave that in there for any real length of time it's just about getting the impression and as you can see that's got a real nice look to it now. So again I just need this small section so I'm just going to roughly mark out with my scalpel where I need to cut and the Milliput at this stage is very very soft. It holds its shape but it's nice to work with. Not as nice as compound but it is still pretty nice to work with when it's like this. So I'm just going to trim that down make sure it's a good fit and once I'm happy with the size of it again I can just sculpt and mould and press that into place. So about again probably half an hour maybe or 45 minutes the Milliput's gone off and I'm just using my retouching pigments to match the patina of this frame which has got a really nice dark antique finish and then I'm going to use a little bit of this which is a water-based metal leaf paint and I'm just going to gently apply this tone it down and just match that existing patina and again with the other little bit too that I've done it doesn't take much to push that back and no one would ever know. So with the frame done the next thing I need to do is add my barrier varnish so I'm going to use a hydrocarbon varnish here which is going to be like an isolation layer so that any fresh paint or retouching that I put on this picture will be on my varnish and not on the original paint surface. So this is going to saturate those colours as well and just give me a little bit more idea of what's happening with this painting. So I go vertical and horizontal to make sure I don't miss anywhere. Those two little chaps are still waiting in the reeds I'm not sure what they're doing maybe you can drop me a comment and let me know what you think they're doing are they hunting are they tying up that stagecoach to rob it I'm not entirely sure they do look a little bit suspicious though. Now once that barrier varnish has dried I've got a couple of little areas of blisters here probably about 20 across and I'm just going to use the heated spatula just to push them down so just a little bit of gentle heat the heated spatula some melonex barrier I'm just going to gently lay them back down so as this has been wax relined in the past the wax will just soften the paint will soften and we'll get adhesion again so I just want to make sure that they're nice and flat and you can see here now that there's nothing protruding now maybe a stronger raking light would show that but that area is perfectly flat and that paint's secure. So I've just got a couple of small losses that I need to fill now this painting has had a wax reline and I think that's what saved it because the wax is really really water resistant and the amount of damp and moisture that painting was put under to cause that varnish to bloom I have a couple of other paintings from the same property and they have not fared well at all whereas this one even though the varnish has bloomed the paint surface is intact and that's because of the waterproof properties of that wax relining method. So I'm just going to touch in lightly some of these areas of missing paints these might be historical they could have been done when it was relined but I'm just looking at pushing back anything that's jumping out on the painting or detracts your eye and here's a top coat of varnish now so this is a different varnish it's a conservation grade artist varnish it's got a slight gloss finish to it and that's really going to saturate and bring all these colours through on this painting you can see it's got a real nice glossy finish to it there once that's dried again the tacks had all rusted on the top and it was bugging me so I'm removing the old tacks even though they're perfectly sound but who knows in 50, 100 years that rust might have corroded even further so I just wanted to replace those and put some new tacks in and again I wanted to preserve that writing on the back so I've left that intact too but I'm just going to tape up close to it just to tidy up and match how the painting arrived which was taped up all the way around the back attach my bloomfield art sticker for posterity and anyone can get in touch if they want to have any information about what I've done with that painting as well so here we are the painting is complete that bloomed varnish is removed and it looks a hell of a lot better than when it arrived at the studio so all that bloomed white varnish is removed we've got the original image underneath we've got some lovely colours coming through of those two gents in the marsh the stagecoach those horses the reed bed we've got that blizzard hitting the stagecoach you can really feel how cold it is all those guys are hunkered down this is how it arrived I thought it was a blank canvas and then as we've removed that varnish we've revealed the actual painting underneath it is no longer buried under a blizzard and here you can see them side by side and I think the client will be pleased that we've been able to save this painting well guys I hope you enjoyed that restoration it was fabulous to see that white snow storm just disappear and all the colours and composition come through I think the client will be pleased with it they thought it was unsavable I thought it just disappeared and was totally damaged but removing that varnish has just brought that picture back to life so I'm really pleased I hope you enjoyed it thank you to all my patrons thank you for supporting the channel it means so much for you to keep this thing going if you've not been over to patreon yet please head over there there's loads of exclusive videos and content on there paintings you won't see on youtube and tutorials and all sorts of stuff so it's friday the weather out there looks pretty good let's see if I can flip you beautiful I'm gonna call it a day hope you all have a wonderful weekend thanks for watching and I'll see you on the new one thanks guys