Restoring Extreme Damage to this Victorian Portrait - Part 1

This isn't just one accident, it's a lifetime of accidents. The painting dates from around 1850 and to say it's had a hard life is an understatement. It's got multiple rips and tears all the way across its surface. There's gouges, there's bits missing, there's extensive crackler, there's bitumen creeping, it's on an oval stretcher, it's barely hanging on there. There's old repairs, new repairs, it's cockled, the varnish is tired. I just don't know where to begin. Some of the repairs, let's say, have kept it here. They might not be the best quality but in its lifetime, in its almost 175 years on this planet, it's not been thrown away. It's still here. It's standing the test of time. So before we get to it, this is part one of a multi-part series where we do a deep dive into the restoration of this painting. The first thing we do is we look at the surface. We put it under UV light and we look for past restorations and these show up as dark pigments and we can see already there's extensive retouching in his hair, in his chin, on those damaged areas. All those past rips and gouge marks have been touched over. You can see the varnish is very discoloured and is fluorescent green. There's extensive crackler on there. This looks like the most recent puncture. It's retouching there and then we have this missing piece that we need to remedy and then back up at the top we can see more retouching. His face looks good though. There's minimal little bits on his lips and his moustache and extensive retouching in his crackler. His cravat has creeped dramatically. So yeah, there's lots to go out here. There's lots that's going to come off when we start cleaning it but before we do any of that he needs stabilising. In this episode I'll go through the whole process of preparing a canvas ready to be relined. It's barely hanging on to this stretcher. There is a million tacks in there. The canvas has removed from a lot of those. There's still some holding in place you can see. Each one of those tacks is kind of either rusted or degraded so it's holding it together but only just. I've tried to remove a number of these tacks on the top so the heads are just flicking off. It's quite dangerous. I don't want to damage the painting further. The canvas weave is so weak around the pin heads so the ones that don't remove I can just lift the canvas around the pin head and that's the method that I'm going to do with this portrait. The canvas is so weak that you can just lift it above or around the top of that tack edge rather. If I can remove the pins I will but some of them are so stubborn and this just seems the gentlest way to do this. The tacking edge I'm going to save because I want to just double check how this was painted so I think it's worth saving that tacking edge rather than cutting it off and just by gently prising the canvas away I can remove it from the stretcher. So again you can see how much that tacking edge has deteriorated but I do want to try and save it. So I need to flip this painting over now and remove the stretcher. So I'm going to brace it on the front with this piece of acrylic and then with a little bit of board on the back I can just gently flip this over again without putting the painting under any due pressure. Keep everything intact and then I'll be able to start the process of removing that stretcher and having a closer look at those repairs. Now this painting has been in the studio again for about six months. The client's been extremely patient with me and knew it would make a good YouTube episode so I'm just hoping that he's watching this now and seeing the work that's happening to his picture. So we'll remove the stretcher out of the way. It looks like a nice stretcher. It might not be original, it looks quite modern in parts and then we can look at these repairs. So each of these patches is cardboard or mount board. Here that tear has been reinforced with a little bit of tape. We've got patches at the bottom here. We've got our usual dust and accumulations. Looks like we've got some hay seed or barley seed in there as well. I'm not entirely sure what that is. But yeah, it's very dirty. It's been on there a while. Maybe you guys can tell me what these are. They look like spider's nests or egg nests. I don't know, you might know more than me. I've no idea what they are. But this stretcher is going to get a good clean up. It is really nice. I do think it's probably late 19th century, maybe early 20th century. That wood looks a little bit machined. But yeah, it's a lovely stretcher. I'm not sure it's original to the painting though. So the conservation vacuum is just going to take off the worst of that dirt and dust that's collected on the canvas. I'm just going to gently remove all this as much as possible. It's always quite nice at this stage to start cleaning the painting. It's one of the first cleaning sections that I'll do with this picture. It's nice just to get all that dirty soot and dust and grime off the back. And you can still see even after the hoover, just with a gentle brushing that there's so much on there. I think this painting has been neglected for quite a while. Some of these repairs are old and historical, but this card looks fairly recent. So I do feel like there's been lots of damage to this picture. And then somebody's attached those card elements to prepare it for sale. While it's flat on the bench, the first thing I want to do is create an insert for that large loss. Now this is Belgian linen that's been sized with rabbit skin glue. So it's got a bit of stiffness to it. The linen matches the weight of the painting. So it's not thicker than the actual canvas or linen that this has been painted on originally. So it's a really good match. I'm just mindful to match up the direction of the weave as well, so that my insert matches the same weave as that of the painting. And once I'm happy with that, I just need to mark this out. Then I'll be able to cut this to shape. And then I'll use this later on in the process. I think it's quite lucky where this impact and this loss is, because it's not in the gentleman's face. I think if it was in the gentleman's face, then that might have been the straw that broke the camel's back and prevented it from being saved. But as it is, it's in a kind of background area. So I think that's a small mercy for this picture. So this canvas is quite stiff because it's been sized. So I'll be able to use my scalpel and just cut this out. You do have to apply quite a bit of pressure. I'm trying to follow that line as closely as possible. It won't be a perfect fit. There'll be a little bit of tolerance within there. But it's going to be close enough to match that missing section. Again, it's quite nice to kind of break up the work that you're doing. So by creating something that's going to replace a missing section is nice. After you've just been cleaning the back with the vacuum and dusting it. And then we'll just offer this up just to see roughly how it looks. And I'm pleased with that. We've got a nice match there. When the canvas is laid flat, it's going to be a good fit. And as I say, there'll be a little bit of expansion when the glue goes on there. So this is my first real headache with this painting. I need to assess what glue has been used to attach these card patches. Now I'm hoping for an animal glue. Something that I can use water with. And this is my first test. I'm using some slightly warm distilled water. I'm just seeing if that removes. It doesn't seem to have any impact whatsoever. It does remove a little bit of the dirt. My next swab is a solvent swab to see if that does anything. Again, it cleans. You can see the dirt lifting. And then it does actually bite into that glue. So I'm going to need to use a solvent to remove this glue. You can see that taking it off and getting through to that carved layer. The other issue is that I want to soak this card patch. And the surface of the card is very shiny and not very absorbent. So I want to remove that top layer and get down to the fibre of the board. And then once I'm on the fibrous start, or part of the board rather, I can then apply the solvent to break through and soften that adhesive. So this is the first stage. Thankfully the glue's been applied uneven in some sections. So it's not like fully on that card. You can see there that the spatula goes underneath the parts. So I'm just trying to loosen those edges. And then this is the solvent that I'm going to apply. So you can see now that it soaks into the card. It's going to penetrate through to the bottom of that card. And then hopefully start to soften the glue that's attaching it to the painting. This evaporates quite quickly. So I'm using a little bit of Melonex just to hold the vapours in, if you like, and give it a maximum dwell time on the painting. And once it's been on there for a few seconds, 20-30 seconds maybe, that's when I'll go back in with the spatula and see what's softened. And you can see straight away there I can get a little bit more underneath that patch. I'm trying to keep the Melonex on just to stop that evaporation. But I think it's going to need a little bit more solvent on there to make any real difference. I'm going to apply a second soaking, shall we say. And then we'll see if that's made any difference on softening the glue when we come to put the spatula to it in a second. Now I have checked this solvent to make sure that it's not going through to the front of the painting. I don't want it to penetrate the ground layer and affect the paint. So I haven't shown that, but I have been checking the front of the picture as well. And I've decided that even though it evaporates quickly, that Melonex is just in the way. So it's softened and you can see that I can remove parts here. The bit that's got the most strength to it is where it's stuck to the filler. So where this wound is on the painting, that's where it sticks the most. But I can actually get through this now. You can see it's softened that quite a bit. And while it's still active, that's when I try and get as much off as I can in biggest sections that I can as well. I don't want to be messing about with small areas. So while that's still active, I want to remove as much as possible. Because then what happens is I get to that bottom layer of the card that's thinnest, and that takes the longest to remove. So a stiff brush sometimes just allows that softened glue to congregate and lift. But again, it's just solid on that painting. It's such a difficult glue to remove. And this is how I spent the best part of an afternoon and the next morning. So probably four or five hours just scraping away, listening to a podcast, softening the card, removing sections. But it was real slow progress. And I tried to just do one patch at a time and not jump about too much. But there were some sections that were just so stubborn. And when you got down to that thin layer of the card, it got really, really difficult just to... Well, you can see here, so this is close up. These are the last sections. They're probably attached to filler. There's a real tight bond there. Something chemically must have happened with the glue in the filled area. So I just had to keep gently applying a little bit more solvent, letting it soak in. And then what I found was probably after about 10 seconds was the optimum time for it to remove. But if you didn't get it all off, the residue was left there as well. So then you had to go back in to remove the residue as well. But those patches are what have, you know, kept this painting alive. They've kept it together. Whether it was the right thing to do or not, it was probably the right thing at the time to save this painting. So it's almost like it was an emergency repair to keep it in one piece. And even though it's made my life a little bit more difficult, it did serve its purpose and protect this painting and keep it in a salvageable condition in the future. So these are the fruits of my labour over, like I said, probably a full afternoon and a full morning. All the patches are off. All the damage is revealed. The past repairs. The missing sections. There's still some residue on there. It looks like I've been stripping wallpaper, but this is everything that was removed from that painting. You can see that degraded glue is quite strong on there. But yeah, a lot of work, but it is rewarding. So I'm going to revisit those areas again. I'll probably give them a little bit more of a clean. But before I do that, I just want to relax these tacking edges, flatten them out for the next stage of the painting's restoration. So what I'll be doing next is transferring this to a loom and relining it. But before I can do that, I need to mark up a loom. And to do that, I need to have the edges nice and flat. So the moisture will just relax everything. I'll put a few weights on there to keep it flat. Probably keep it like this overnight. And then when I come back in, those tacking edges will be nice and flat and I can create a really good template on the loom. I'd just like to take this opportunity to say thank you to all my Patreon supporters. We recently got to 200, which is brilliant. And we had our apron giveaway. So one lucky winner got one of these fantastic Bloomfield Art restoration aprons. My next giveaway is going to be when we get to 300 Patreons. We're at 225 already. And by the time we get to there, this should be ready to go. I'm working on this Bloomfield Art restoration tool roll or brush roll. And when we get up to 300 Patreons, we will do another giveaway. And I think we'll do it fully loaded. So it will be fully loaded with brushes, palette knives, tools. Most of the items are all the things I use on an everyday basis. So if you want to be part of that giveaway, head over to Patreon. There's loads of exclusive paintings on there, tutorials, things that don't make it to the main channel. So please head over there. Thank you to all my new YouTube subscribers. It's great to see you all join in and get involved with the comments. I'm trying to grow the channel up to 50,000 and your support means an awful lot. So if you haven't done already, please hit like and subscribe. Just click the link at the bottom and the bell for notifications. Right, let's get back to this Victorian gentleman. So I've pre-prepared this loom. I did this a few weeks ago, hoping I'd get to this portrait sooner than I have. It's Belgian linen. It's stretched over a frame. It's brought up to tension. Not full tension. There's still a little bit of play in that canvas. Not too much though. And the first thing I'm going to do is apply a size. I'm going to apply a rabbit skin glue to this. This will act as a waterproof barrier and just protect it going forward. So I'm using a bit of a cheap method today. So I've got some very warm water just off boiling and I'm applying the rabbit skin glue granules to it. And then I'll just give this a nice good mix and allow it to soak for probably 20-30 minutes just to make sure everything has been absorbed. So again, I like using traditional methods. I like using traditional recipes. And this will really protect that stretched Belgian linen going forward. One of the things that stopped me from starting this restoration was because I wanted to think of the method that I would re-stretch it on the oval stretcher. There's a bit of a technique to doing this. Now this linen, once it's been sized, is quite stiff. I think you saw the piece earlier when I was making the insert. And that would be really difficult to stretch over that round oval stretcher. Now I've done a little test off camera just to see what technique I'm going to use. And if I apply a little bit of moisture to the linen, even though it's been sized, it will soften enough to allow me to stretch it around the oval and then pin it to the back of the canvas. So I'm going to leave this overnight to dry. And when I come back in in the morning, it'll be nice and taut and ready to start the next part of the journey. So this is next morning. And what I want to do is transfer the painting onto the loom so I can start marking out the template. So this has been pressed as well now, so those tacking edges are nice and flat. And because it's already braced between the acrylic, I can just gently slide this over. So there's an awful lot of work involved in just preparing the canvas for the treatments that you're planning to do. So there's not been an awful lot of change in this picture so far, apart from that all the groundwork and prep work has been done. So the next stage, once we've got it on the loom, will be to fully reline it. We'll be going through the gluing process, using the bracing tissue. I'll do that in the next episode. But I just thought I'd show you where it is today at the end of part one. So the painting's been removed from the stretcher. We've removed all those repairs from the back. And that was the bulk of the work this week. He's now in a much more stable condition. The loom's prepared. And even though he looks very, very similar, I feel like we're at least 50% of the way through this restoration. So next time we'll go through the full relining process and get to the exciting part, which I know you all love, which will be the varnish removal and cleaning of this fabulous portrait. Well guys, I'm afraid that's all we've got time for today. I know there was a lot of prep work with that painting, but he's in a real good position now to start the relining and the cleaning for next time. I hope you're all well. Thanks as ever for your support. The weather in Manchester today... You know I like my weather reports. Cloudy, warm and grey. The temperature's rising. I don't know what it is, but it's definitely getting warmer out there. Still very wet, though. I hope you have a lovely weekend, whatever you decide to do. And I will see you all on the next one. Okay guys, have a lovely weekend and I'll see you soon. Cheers, bye.