I Bought this Painting Without Seeing It...

I knew absolutely nothing about this painting when I bought it. No detailed provenance, no exhibition history, not even an artist name that I recognised. All I had was the two slightly blurred photographs that the auction house provided, and not even one of the back. The more I studied the photograph the more I find myself coming back to it though. The light on the water, the atmosphere in the sky, the sails on the boats. The big draw though for me was the Dutch flag on the boat. This was the hook. There was a quality here that seemed impossible to ignore. So when the auction day came along I couldn't resist and I battled another bidder to win it. Today we're going to uncover the story behind this Dutch marine painting, investigate the artist Gerardus Hendrix and hopefully find out whether my instincts were right. So this is the painting that I bid on and today we're going to clean the painting and restore it and hopefully find a little bit more about the artist and the picture. So this is the first time that I've seen it and you can see already there's quite a little bit of crackler across that paint surface. There's some losses to the frame. There are stretcher marks on the canvas. There appears to be a discoloured varnish or surface dirt and grime. The frame is lovely though. I really like the frame. Yes there's a few bits missing here and there but fundamentally it's sound. But this is what drew me. That flag, that Dutch flag hanging off the back of that boat. And then just the quality of the paint in that sky as well. There's such a great atmosphere. So let's start looking at this picture. Let's put it under UV and see if we can find any hidden restoration work. So the UV light is going to show if there's any past retouchings which will show up darker. It'll show any areas of damage. But for the most part the painting does look pretty good. So there's a few odd touches here and there, especially in the water area. There's the odd mark here you can see at the top. A few splashes. But the signature looks good and there it is, G Hendrix. So that's all we've got to go on so far with this painting. And as I said there was only two photographs of this painting on the auction site so I didn't get a chance to look at the back. I always like to look at the back of a painting because it can tell you what kind of history it's had. And with this one, as soon as I turn it over I can see that it has been relined at some point. So you can see here that the canvas looks relatively new. It doesn't necessarily look like it's 180 years old. This is a party painting though. As you can see it's had a elubrious past. But yeah it's been lined. The frames had some recent work done. These blocks, it usually has blocks on the back there, they've come off. We've got a couple of markings on the back to these numbers. But yeah the frame's been restored. It's been strengthened. But I still think it's probably the original frame. It's just had a bit of work done to it. But I need to find out what kind of lining it's had. Is it a wax lining? Is it a glue lining? I'm going to have to do some tests on that. And this, that is the first time I've seen a purple party feather in the back of a painting. So that's a first for me. Right, what we need to do is get the painting out and have a look at the front. So this painting is going to have a full clean. I'm going to look at remedying that crackler as well. So we will probably be using the heated table as well and try and flatten out as much of those cracks as we can. I think this painting's probably been in its current situation for maybe 40 to 50 years maybe. Maybe in the 70s or early 80s it's had some work done. That's probably when it was lined and placed back into this frame. So with the painting out we can have a proper look up close and then just confirm that it has been lined. We can see that it's been cut off the tacking edges and I want to do a couple of little tests first. Now fingers crossed this painting does clean. I've not done any tests prior to this and it's always exciting to see what happens when you do your tests. So the first thing I'm going to test for is smoke damage, candle smoke, nicotine staining, tobacco smoke and straight away you can see that we've got a hit there and it is very discoloured, very yellowed as well. And the solution I've used there isn't particularly strong, it's a fairly weak solution but you can see how much that lifts almost on initial contact. So that's really encouraging. We're going to get a result on the clean which is nice. There you can see that kind of smoky yellow colour on my swab. I'm just going to do another test further down just to make sure that this mixture solution doesn't lift any paint and I'm pretty confident that it's just taking off that surface smoke and dirt accumulations. But I'm not going to clean it yet. I want to stabilise this painting first and that's the next process. Okay guys I need to assess now what's going on with this painting. It's got some kind of lining on. I don't know whether it's a wax re-line or glue lining but I'm going to have to do some tests now to assess if we can remove it. I really want to address that crackler across the painting. It may well be that I can just put it on the table and it will flatten out itself or I may need to re-line it myself as well so... or I may need to re-line it again. So I need to do some tests now just to find out where we are with this picture. Now the residue on the back of the painting, it's quite hard, it's not super soft so my hunch is that this is most probably a wax resin lining. If that's the case I can use a little bit of heat on one of the tacking edges and remove some of the wax and that's that's the tell. If the heat doesn't really do anything it might be another kind of glue, it might be another kind of mixture but just from the the look of it and the feel of it and the age of the painting that's where I'm going to go with that's my best guess. So I'm warming up the heated spatula to about 60-70 degrees. I'm using some melonex to protect the spatula from the resin mixture and I'm just going to apply some gentle heat and then straight away you can see that I'm getting a little bit of lift there. The wax is melting and it's adhering itself to the melonex so that's a good sign. If it is a wax resin lining I can use heat, I can use the vacuum table and the best case scenario is I can reactivate that lining. If the lining's not failed or not failing, which it isn't in this instance, we've just got a lot of crackler, then rather than try and remove the painting from this support I think it might be the best for the painting if we put it on the table and reactivate what's already there. So you can see there the heat will remove that wax residue from the fabric. So I think that's the plan but before I can do that I need to get it off the stretcher and try and flatten it out as much as possible. There's probably four staples on the reverse holding down the the tacking edge and it looks like they've used that resin mixture to attach it to the stretcher as well so some of it peels quite easily, some of it needs a little bit of persuasion. So just using my favourite little spatula tool I can gently loosen this from the edges and then once that's off the top edge I can go all the way around and remove the rest of those staples too. And this was another first for the channel. I wasn't quite sure what it was but it's a, I don't know what the word would be, a petrified elastic band or mummified elastic band. Anyway it was quite brittle and that is the first time in 20 odd years that I've found that behind a canvas. So this one's got some nice surprises for us this week. So with all the staples removed I can take this stretcher out to one side and the next thing I want to do is flatten out those edges. So yes the vacuum table is going to do most of the work on this painting but before I can get it on the painting, on the table rather, and get a nice flat sealed vacuum I just want to relax those edges. There isn't an awful lot of dirt on the back of this picture so it's been somewhere relatively clean for the last 30 or so years apart from its party lifestyle. So another piece of melonex, the heated spatula again probably around 60-70 degrees and I'm just going to suggest to those edges that they lay flat for me using the heat, a little bit of pressure on this large attacking iron. So with the studio lights off and a raking light coming from the windows you can see the extent of that crackler across the paint surface. You can see where it's rested on those stretcher bars and that's what I'm hoping to remedy more than anything else. So the lining table will hopefully through a process of heat and vacuum reactivate this wax resin lining that's on there. As I said I don't want to remove this, I want to reactivate it because it's not failing and it is notoriously difficult to remove a wax residue from a painting. So in this instance putting it on the vacuum table, applying some heat, applying some pressure should hopefully flatten out all that crackler and significantly reduce it. So to do this I set my table up with my exhaust pipe and my ever reliable Speedy Vac pump. And you can see here as the pump kicks in these upholstery tape highways suck all the air out between the layers, the different layers that we've got, and this will sit for about an hour to heat up and flatten out. So with an hour or so past it's time to turn the vacuum pump off and see how it has turned out. And straight away I can see that that mixture has reactivated. From the back it already looks a lot flatter, it looks a lot more uniform. And from the front I can already see that those visible stretcher marks and those areas of crackler and cupping are flattened. And here in this almost similar raking-like condition you can see it's much more reduced. Yes there's still elements there but it is so much better than it was before, especially those big deep ridge lines. Yes they're still there but they're a lot flatter than they were to begin with, so I'm quite happy with that process. So the stretcher's had some modifications. I think it's had some rots at some point, there's woodworm holes, there's areas that look like it might have been damp, and it's got these little strips on the edge where they've replaced the missing parts of the stretcher. So it's in pretty good condition, it's been restored, I'm going to continue to use it. But before I do that I want to remove some of that residue mixture off the stretcher, so I'm just using a little bit of white spirits just to loosen that mixture off the back and tidy up the stretcher bars. It's almost like they're getting a wax polish at the same time. One thing that is missing is the keys. So I've got some fresh keys and I'm just going to stain these so they look a little bit more in keeping with the age of the picture. So to do this I'm using just a dark oak wood dye and I'm going to liberally apply this so it soaks into each one of those. I used to have a big batch of keys ready to go of my supplies but over the years these have run out so I do need to replenish my stocks so I don't have to do this every time. I'm going to take these gloves off. I hate wearing these gloves, so glad to get them off. Now the next stage with this painting is going to be the cleaning, but before we do that let me tell you what I found out about the artist. To understand this painting we first need to understand the Dutch obsession with the sea. For centuries the Netherlands built its wealth through trade, fishing and shipping. By the 17th century Dutch artists were producing some of the finest marine paintings in Europe, celebrating the ships, waterways and working harbours that shaped everyday life. Artists such as Willem van der Velde and Ludolf Bachhausen transformed maritime painting into a respected genre, capturing not only the power of the sea but also the quiet beauty of life upon it. By the 19th century when Gerardus Hendrix was working that tradition was still very much alive. Rather than painting dramatic shipwrecks and naval battles, Hendrix specialised in calmer scenes like this one, river estuaries, fishing boats and working vessels moving through tranquil waters beneath those expansive skies. Although little is known about his life, records show that Hendrix was born in Amsterdam in 1804 and later settled in Rotterdam where he worked from around 1843 until his death in 1859. He painted river scenes, marine subjects and winter landscapes, often focusing on the waterways around Rotterdam and the great Dutch estuaries. Looking at this painting it's easy to see the influence of earlier Dutch marine masters, particularly the atmospheric harbour scenes of the 17th century. At the same time Hendrix was painting during an age when artists across Europe were becoming increasingly fascinated by light, weather and atmosphere. Someone like Turner would look closely at Dutch marine paintings, studying the skies, reflections and sense of space before developing his own revolutionary style. Today works by Gerardus Hendrix appear regularly at auction and can be found in museum collections in both the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, including works held by the Rijksmuseum and the National Trust for Scotland. Having one of his paintings here in the studio today and looking at this quiet scene on the Scheldt, it's easy to understand why collectors continue to be drawn to paintings like these. They capture a world that feels calm and timeless and in this instance unmistakably Dutch. And when I look at this painting now and I see those windmills in the background, those calm waters, that Dutch flag just hanging off the back of that boat, I do think it is a classic scene. And when you've got all that history behind it and why it is important, you can understand why this type of painting is revered by many collectors. And to be able to clean it and see the results like this is just, it's just fabulous. So this has obviously been somewhere where there's been a virulent pipe smoker or cigarette smoker and that surface layer has been yellowed over time. I always get asked what does it smell like at this stage and the word is acrid. So the solution I use has got a strong smell anyway, but then when the cleaning starts the studio gets filled with this kind of acrid, almost, it's not like a burnt smell but it just, it just fills your lungs a little bit. So I'm always quite well ventilated in there but it is always nice to see the results and see that change. Now in here you'll see the crackler holding certain elements of that discoloured solution and that's the varnish layer kind of seeping underneath little cracks and that will remove when we do a second pass. But the reflections that the artist has got is just fabulous. You see the boat on the left-hand side, you can see those colour tones reflecting in the water, the reflections of the people in that little boat. You can almost feel the stillness. And the other thing worth noting is that expansiveness of landscape, the sky. There's room for those clouds to come in and we've had Dutch paintings through the studio before like Roysdale and similar artists to that and they always celebrate the sky and the clouds. You get a feeling of that movement of that weather. But the detail in these boats is just fabulous. I love the sails, I love the way they look like they're all stitched together and patched. I can almost feel the weight or hear them below a little bit. And then the detail in the boats, how they sit in the water, perhaps you can help identify them. They have these stabilising parts on the side as well and I know there'll be an expert out there that can tell me exactly what kind of boats these are or what trade they would have been doing. But this is one of those cleans that comes into the studio and you appreciate. It's not particularly difficult, there's one level so far, it's responding well and the difference is just fabulous. So it's always, still now 20 odd years down the line, it's always magical to remove any dirt or any discoloured varnish and see those colours come through. As I'm cleaning though, I'm seeing through another layer and I do think there's another discoloured varnish on here. Now this varnish was probably applied at the same time that it was lined, so again maybe 30-40 years ago, maybe a little bit longer. It is slightly discoloured because I'd expect some of those blue tones and those cloud tones to come through a little bit brighter. So once this first pass clean's been done, we will then look at removing the varnish level as well. But I just love that reflection, look at the reflection of that boat there, you've got that kind of sandy, salmon-y coloured stripe and reflected it back into the water. It's just beautiful and the little highlights on the bow as well. And then the distance that he's got with these boats further down the estuary and the paint surface there is very Turner-esque, the way he's built up those layers. If we go in a little bit closer I can show you those, but the way he's applied his paint, it's built it up, so you've almost got texture in there. And I have seen similar methods of build-up, if you like, in some of Turner's monumental landscape paintings. And there's the last of the smoke, nicotine staining from the sky. And now I'm going to use a different solvent solution to remove the varnish. Now, yes, it's a lot cleaner than it was, but I do know that we can go a little bit further. And this is, again, a fairly weak solution, it's a fairly thin layer of varnish, but you'll just see a subtle difference as I work my way around now. So again, what's that, 30 to 40 percent brighter? So it's not totally discoloured, but when you look at the swab you can see the difference and you can see what is removing. So I think this painting was probably relined to remedy that craquelure. I've not found any rips or tears or any obvious damage. The small areas of retouching that will have been done when it was cleaned in the past. But I think the main issue has been that craquelure in the paint layer. There's some small little elements in these lighter tones that will need to be put back in. The brown tones are always the softest. Again, you can really see that, the reflection, the work in the water there, it's so very clever. I'm just being careful to skirt around that signature as well in the bottom corner. I don't want to go too close to it, I don't want to run the risk of removing that, so I'll just pass over that gently. And the same with this rigging, the rope work in the boats, it's very lightly painted. I've got a very thin varnish layer, so I've got a weak solution that's just going to remove the varnish and leave those very thin paint strokes in place. They're already a little bit weakened from where it's been cleaned in the past, but I just want to do enough to remove that varnish and reveal those details. We can see the colours of the people on the boat now, he's got kind of a mauve jacket and she seems to have like a golden yellow blouse or jacket of sorts. And the green elements in this boat have really started to come through now. I've got a couple of seagulls, there's a suggestion of some seagulls there as well, the main detail has been lost over time. But these two, and possibly an element of a third still remains there, and that seems to be a bit of a signature of his paintings, he has these three seagulls kind of mid-level of the canvas. And this little section here is what I was talking about earlier, the way he's built up that paint texture. It's a tiny little area, but again, very nicely done, just suggesting what's happening on the coastline or the riverbanks or the estuary sides there, some little buildings. And then from this angle you can see that that expanse of sky is filling the majority of that composition. But yeah, such a difference and already looking so much better for being cleaned. So that's the full clean done there, I've done a bit of a second pass just to tidy up a few areas that needed some attention, but it just looks so fabulous now. The colours are just so subtle, lovely details in there, it's just a wonderful painting. So I'm just gonna let that settle for a while now, make sure it's staying nice and flat, and then we'll start looking at getting the stretcher back together and re-stretching the canvas. So before I reattach the canvas I just want to make sure that the stretcher is actually square. So just measuring corner to corner and hopefully getting the same measurement will tell me that it is so. Then once I've got it square and I'm happy with it, I just gently fold over those edges to make sure that the painting is going to sit nice and evenly onto the stretcher. But with this painting it was originally folded over quite a lot on the top edge, and I just want to save a little bit of that if I can. So once I've found the edge of the painting that I want to attach to the stretcher, I'm going to just extend it a little bit from the inside. So I'm going to slightly key out maybe a couple of mil just to save that top edge of the painting. So just gently tapping it, you'll see those gaps opening a little bit, and once I'm happy that again that it's square and I've extended it a little bit, I'm just going to put some wedges in there, hold its shape, and then I can actually attach the painting back onto it. Sometimes it just needs another little bit of adjustment if they're not quite the same measurements. So again I'm probably saving, you can see here that top five mil that had been folded over, it's not going to make too much difference, it's probably going to be lost in the rebate edge, but just by having the chance to do that I thought I might as well. So I've got my tacks out ready to go, I'm just going to gently attach this on each individual edge just to keep it in place so it doesn't move, and then I'm just going to place in the keys so that the canvas doesn't move around. So I'm just putting these in roughly at the moment just to hold that shape. Once the canvas has been tacked all the way around I'll put them in and make sure they're nice and secure so they don't fall out over time. With all the edges tacked in now and in place I'm going to use the animal bone glue to secure the rest of the tacking edge. If you remember at the start these were just held down by the wax resin lining mixture, I'm going to just use this animal glue, it's fully reversible so if someone in the future wants to remove this just a little bit of heat and water will be an easy process for them. But the glue gives a really good support to that canvas onto the stretcher as well so if those tacks do fail over time the glue will hold it in place and as I said it is all fully reversible and traditional as well. I do really enjoy using these traditional techniques and keeping them alive. The canvas is tidied up, it's cleaned, it's looking a lot better. I'm just going to tidy up these little bits of the painting that I managed to save and as I said it's not an awful lot but I'd rather have it flat on the picture plane than folded around like it was previously. I'm pretty certain it's going to be hidden by the rebate when it goes back in the frame but just something that I wanted to do for this picture. During the process there has been a little bit of a loss so this fish glue, again nice and reversible, nice to use, dries relatively quickly, doesn't leave a nasty residue and this will allow me to place this back in. So just using my dental explorer and some tweezers just to gently ease that back into place. It's just a section that I won't need to fill so again worth saving. So with the painting now safe and secure back on the stretcher it's time to apply a barrier varnish. The barrier varnish will go on top of the original existing paint surface. This will allow me to retouch on top of the painting without my retouching fusing with original oil of the artist. So I'm going to do a finish coat of this all the way across the painting. It's going to protect everything that I've cleaned now. Then my retouchings will sit on top of this varnish layer so I'm not affecting the original painting in any way and then once I'm happy with my retouchings I'll be applying a top coat of varnish on top of there again. So again it's nice to get to this stage, you're saturating the colours again, you're seeing those glazes and the different layers of the painting come together and it's protecting it for the future as well. While that's drying it's time to give the frame some much needed TLC. Now I think this is the original frame. It's a compo frame so all the decorative elements have been moulded and cast and then applied. It's been gilded, it's got a bowl clay edge to it as well but it's probably got the same level of smoke, damage, nicotine staining as the picture. So I can't use the same solutions on the gilding because it will remove the gilding so I'm using this conservation soap and you dilute this in water or white spirit depending on the gilding that you are going to clean. This looks to be oil gilding. I've done a small test, it doesn't affect the surface and straight away you can see again that yellowy brown surface coming off the whole of the frame. I'm going to lightly clean this frame. I'm not looking to bring it to new condition, I'm just taking off any dirt and marks that are on there. This slip has been recoloured as well and texture has been added so I don't think the slip is gilded, I think it's probably been aged to match the actual gilding of the frame. So I'm going to go around the whole frame and remove all that smoke damage. It's nice to see those tones come through. There's nothing quite like aged gilding, it's really hard to recreate so on a frame like this it's enough just to clean it and bring back a little bit of that sparkle. Now there are a couple of areas missing, we've got a decorative corner element missing here that's chipped off, so to do that I'm going to take a mould from this one which is whole. So I'm using this two-part silicone mould making putty and you use equal measures, mix it together and you've got 10-15 minutes before it goes hard. It makes a really nice press mould so I'm just going to make sure that whole area is covered so that when I do my compo I get a really nice impression. There's other sections missing on the bottom rail as well and some on the decorative element of this rail here so this will take a mould of that section and I can cut the excess to match those missing pieces. So I'm going to leave that for about 20 minutes, it's going to go nice and hard and then once the mould's ready I'm going to fill it with this English compo. Now if you've been on my Patreon you'll see that I've got some frame restoration tutorials, so this is some English compo that I've actually bought because it's a little bit more convenient than always making your own. So I'm just gently warming that and once that's warmed and softened I'm going to use these as press moulds to replace those missing areas. That's been in a warm bain-marie of water probably for about 20 minutes, it was frozen, and this is some whitening or chalk powder I'm going to use like flour if you like so it doesn't stick everywhere. So a little bit on the bench, a little bit on my hands. The English compo is quite warm at this stage so I have to work fairly quickly. The more it cools down the harder it's going to get. So you've got like a window, a working window, you can see there it's quite malleable but it's also quite hot at this stage too. So once I've got a nice amount to work with I'll get some of that on my hands and then I'm going to work that together like a dough. It's almost like a bread dough except it moves a lot quicker whilst it's warm and I'm just going to use these moulds, press this in, get a really nice impression. It's such a good material to use and again it's fully traditional, it's been used for hundreds of years, you know how it's going to react and the nice thing about this is you've got a bit of flexibility with it, you've got a working window before it becomes rock hard. After about 15 minutes I can remove them from the moulds and they'll be ready to trim. If I left these overnight by the time I came back into the studio they'd be rock hard. So at this point they're still very flexible but not to the point where you're going to lose the impression. So you can see here the scalpel just cuts nicely through. I can trim these to size and get them to fit the frame exactly where I need them to be. Again you can see the flexibility in each one of these. So I've offered this up to the frame, I know roughly the shape that I need. You can see it's got a bit of a bend to it too as well. So a few more little adjustments and I'll be ready to be glued back in. Any gaps like you can see on that top left corner will be filled with Milliput. And again you can just do lots of nice little adjustments there. So while they're going off and drying I want to fill the painting, this area that I've managed to reclaim. A very Dutch thing to do is to reclaim something. I'm thinking about all the land I've reclaimed from the sea there. But again yeah, using my conservation filler I'm going to excessively fill and then just use a little bit of water and a cotton swab to remove that excess. Once I've got it just in that cracked area I'm going to use my restoration pigments to retouch and match those coloured tones. Now it'll take a couple of passes to do that. All these resin pigments are fully reversible and again we're going on top of our barrier varnish so I'm not doing anything that's on that paint surface, anything that could fuse or damage that paint surface over time. So it takes a couple of attempts to match the colour. It'll take a couple of coats as well to build up and fully hide those filled areas. And it takes lots of mixing. These little hairline cracks I'm not using any filler, I'm just using the pigments and the resin to fill. And you can see that it is my favourite term and we're just pushing those cracks back so that when you look at viewing distance you're not seeing a dark black line across the surface of the painting. You'll just see maybe a slight ridge but at least it's not going to be black. These are the little areas on this boat that I think had been over cleaned in the past. It's a brown pigment, it's quite soft so I'm just going to build up some layers. I'm going to put a dark layer down first in the first pass and then the second one will match the tone. These pigments dry in about 20-30 seconds, they're very very fast drying so I kind of move around the painting building up different layers depending on which layer has dried first. But again just pushing those areas back. The painting is being retouched, that's drying. My compo pieces have been glued on and attached so now I'm going to use this two-part epoxy resin which is Milliput and I'm going to mix equal measures and start filling some of those gaps. Again I quite like using this material, it dries very hard, you've got a nice open window to sculpt and mould areas in. It's very strong so I'm just trying to match the pattern of that frame. It's got like a bit of a ridge there, like a flat ridge, there'll be a technical term for it that I don't know. And again just building up layers, moving around, filling those gaps. This takes a little bit longer to dry, you've probably got an hour or so on this, but at this stage it's just filling everything in so it looks more uniform and you get a nice blend between the new pieces and the old frame. Once they're dried I'll then use my restoration chips again to recolour those. The pigments dry very fast, I can build up different layers, I can match the tones underneath the gilding and then once that's dried I'm going to use a gilt cream just over the top of those selected areas. As I said this frame's a mixture of gilded areas, bowl areas and then recoloured areas like the slit. So I'm just going to use this to match those tones as a base layer and then once this has been covered I'll use my restoration pigments on top again just to age down and match that finish to the frame. It's got such a lovely patina to it, I don't want to go too hard and heavy, I want to just lift those areas and match the finish. So a number of different washes, different colours, different techniques, so I might stipple a little bit on top and then build up another layer as well. I'm always referencing other parts of the frame so I'll be looking at the other corners on the frame here and matching that look, so matching a worn distressed feel. I use various brushes, use my fingers, use some erasers, anything to try and get a distressed look, something that doesn't look obviously brushed on or applied, you want it to look worn. This is quite a fun thing to do as well, it's quite nice to try and match that and hide that restoration amongst the frame. The frame restoration has dried now, the painting's had a top coat of a dammar varnish applied which has just been drying and it's time now to offer it back up to the frame and start to fix it back in. The frame's had some past restoration work on the back, it's all stable, I don't really need to do anything else to it. All I'm going to do is fasten the painting in, make sure it's nice and secure. I'm also going to make sure the slip's secure. I'm going to leave the original nails in because they tell part of the story too, and then I'm just applying some framer's tape onto these wedges to hold them securely in place. This is just a little technique that I saw and picked up when I visited the Louvre restoration department last year. I just thought it was a really neat, nice way of attaching those wedges in. Once the wedges are in and in place I'm going to put a backing board on this painting. Now the painting has been wax relined in the past, we've reactivated that. I don't know exactly how long it's going to last in the future, I think it looks pretty stable, but by applying a backing board I'm going to create a little microclimate to the rear of the painting. It's almost like an air cushion, so if anything does happen to that lining in time, the air's not getting directly to it and it won't open up those big stretcher bar cracks across the top again. That's my main concern, so by applying this it's just going to protect the rear of the canvas for the next hundred years or so. Sometimes you have to think forward as well, so it's not just a direct process that you're working on, it's the environment that it may go in, what could happen to it in the future and what you can do to prevent any further degradation of that painting. When I first saw this painting online something hit me straight away and I just couldn't resist having a bid on it. Now it was something to do with the composition and that boat in the foreground and that flag, but by cleaning it and restoring it, looking into the artist, I think that my instincts were right that this is a quality Dutch painting. There's so much detail in there, it's just got that hundred years of tradition instilled in it, or distilled should I say. The sky is fabulous, it's expansive in that Dutch tradition, it's telling a story, it's commenting on the daily life of people in the estuary, and I don't know, it's just got a real calmness and magic to it. So let's just remind ourselves of what the painting arrived like in the studio. This is the before, you can see that the frame's been knocked and damaged, the painting's really dark, it's discoloured, there's a film over the top of it, but you can just see that there is quality underneath there. And then after cleaning first that smoke nicotine layer and then the varnish, the true colours have appeared. It's been on the vacuum table to flatten out that craquelure and reduce those stretcher bar marks, and here you can see side by side how they look together. And I'm really pleased with it, it's a lovely little painting, and if you want to be its custodian for the next hundred years or so, or maybe less, it's now available for sale through my website. Right guys, I hope you enjoyed that episode, it's been a great painting to work on, to find something of that quality and then have a bit of a battle online at an auction to get it. I was so excited to win it, my heart was racing, and then to get it back to the studio and for it to clean the way it's cleaned and for those colours to reveal, and then to be able to find out some more about the artist and who he was influenced by and the kind of work he did, it's just been a great picture to work on. So yeah, as I said, it's available for sale on my website, so I'll put a link in the description below. Thanks as ever for your support, it means the world, thanks for your comments, I try to get through as many of them as I can, so if you do know about these boats please let me know, I don't want to make the same mistakes as I made last time with the Weber painting, I go into so much trouble about different boats and different types of craft. But anyway, weather, it's quite late this evening now, it's getting dark almost, it's been a kind of cloudy muggy day today with these really heavy rain showers, but you know, we are in June, I believe it's summer somewhere, maybe we'll get one at some point, but anyway, hope you have a fabulous weekend, thanks for watching and I'll see you all on the next one. Okay guys, see you soon, bye.