Pcitum.art

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Nineteenth century oil on canvas of a pond with frogs.

 

Portrait circa 1850s.

 

1830s portrait of a woman

 

The portrait completed.

Cleaning about to begin.

The painting had a tear through her left cheek and the repair had become dry and stained.

1830s portrait of a woman

 Just minor work needed...

1860s cleric portrait

1860s cleric portrait before and after.

 

Jan Van Couver

 Jan Van Couver. 1836-1909. Hermanus Koekkoek, Jr.

Torn and dirty oil on canvas C: 1890s. Nasty stretched tears with several rips.

Cleaning in progress.

Gilt frame cleaned and with few missing pieces replaced.

Cleaned and restored.

Caronia. The millionaire's ship.

Caronia. The millionaires' ship and Green Goddess. Paint flaking and detaching from canvas.

The finished work. The original frame has some labelling so was worth restoring - not that it gave a wealth of information.

Caronia web page.

Arthur William Head painting.

Arthur William Head, 1861–1930.

This painting was sold at Bonhams in 2001 - and hasn't been treated very well since the gavel fell..

It's an attractive work now it's clean. Beneath Chinese lantern stems sits a Meissen nodding china-man. He's chuckling at a statuette of 'Scaramuz and Columbine with a bird cage, from the "commedia dell'arte",embracing and gazing into each other's eyes, flanked by a tree, porcelain, polychromed and gilt, the base encrusted with leaves and with gilt edge, height: 18 cm. Meissen,  model by Johann Joachim Kändler 1740.'

The vase is Phoenix Ware, Thomas Forester (Thomas & Sons).

Byron Webb

This painting had been stood on its edge in a damp place for some time. The canvas had disintegrated and the paint flaking and bleached. I conditioned the painting for a week before strip lining the damaged portion. Then just filled the holes and painted the 'lost' areas.

I had an old frame, which I hadn't the heart to throw out and it fitted the painting in size and period perfectly. What wasn't perfect was its condition. It lacked most of its moulding. Still the painting was in terrible condition and the frame awful, a marriage made in heaven.

Taking casts of the intact moulding

...and modelling in plasticine missing elements...

Byron Webb 1831–1867. Stag in Moonlight.

Gerrit Dou

After Gerrit Dou 7 April 1613 - 9 February 1675, also known as Gerard. Oil paintings on tin C: 1850.

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New England. Puritan.

Puritan C: 1900.

Late 19th century equine painting with Irish wolfhound

Terrible condition. Paint was powdery and flaking, the canvas torn, and the plaster frame had moulding missing, was covered in a tar grease with embedded soot and pet hair.

The paint's binder had collapsed and rubbing the image resulted in pigment stain crumbling away. The whole canvas was covered in tiny blisters where the paint was detaching from the support.
A challenge! How to clean it the painting without removing the image or permanently embedding  the grime.

The finished painting - without varnish.

Lautenschlager

Marie Lautenschlager 1859 - 1941 Germany.

To the reverse another painting. Shame i'm not able to split the canvas and have a 'bog off'.

Signature.

Completed.

Roybet

Ferdinand Victor Leon Roybet 1840 – 1920. Plaster frames damaged in sections and with gilt paint. Tears in several places with one large L shaped rip and over-cleaned losing detail and colour.

18th century naive portrait.

Small 18th century naive portrait. The original frame had lost all its moulding, but the unpainted area on the corners looked to me like oak leaves, so a walk to local oak tree and voila ... Back of canvas with board removed showing date marks - revealed now painting is on stretchers.

It's a painting of a composer holding a quill pen and lost in thought as he sits at his piano.

Stamp marks :

Canvas was taxed in the 18th century. As a consequence of legislation in 1784, a 'frame mark', associated with the duty payable on linen, was applied by the Excise to the back of canvases. It can provide useful information both as to the width and the length of the roll from which the canvas was cut. The mark took the form of a frame containing numbers and letters in compartments. Hence on Lemuel Abbott’s portrait of Viscount Bridport, 1785, the canvas width is given as 75 hundredths of a yard, i.e. 27 ins, the canvas length as 17 yards and the year indistinct, while on George Morland’s Inside of a Stable, exhibited in 1791 (Tate), the canvas width is given as 165 hundredths of a yard, i.e. 59.4 ins, the canvas length as 265 (apparently 26 ½ yards) and the year as 1790.

Detail from reverse of Lemuel Abbott’s Viscount Bridport, 1785 (National Portrait Gallery). 75, in the compartment at right, give the canvas roll width in hundredths of a yard, thus 27 ins (68.6 cm). To the left, 17 is the roll length in yards, thus 17 yards (15.55 metres). Further left, 2224 is a progressive control number. The illegible small numerals, turned sideways at extreme right, give the year duty was levied. At left, the mark is partly covered by the wooden stretcher. Above, the other way up, is the stamp of the canvas supplier, James Poole.

Further reading.