The auction house labelled this oil on canvas as a Victorian genre painting. The back of the painting showed several repair patches. When I removed the painting from its frame, I found the picture was lined in the Victorian period, and since that early restoration the painting had suffered more injuries.
Anyway, the original, unlined, canvas had sustained a major trauma. It had a tear from the basket to the cobbler's foot. Nevertheless, someone must have thought a lot of this painting to have gone to so much trouble.
I can only think this was when the heavy-handed over-painting occurred - with a job lot of lead white the artist added dashing highlights and gave the cobbler a cyclist's helmet! The image below is after initial cleaning, and what I thought was a fireplace, emerged from the grime, as a box-bed.
