What is the difference between the cleaning and restoration of an oil painting?

Cleaning means the grime and fly spots that adhered to the surface of the oil painting, along with any discoloured varnish, is removed. No repairs or retouching are carried out to the painting but a new protective coat of varnish is applied.

Restoration includes cleaning but will also repair any damage such as tears in the canvas, flaking paint, or weak canvas. Any associated paint that needs retouching will be carefully colour matched so it will not look repaired. Restoration work may be carried out in house or by a specialised restorer depending on what work is required. This can take anything from 2 to 6 months depending on the complexity of the job.

Watercolours and antique engravings are usually cleaned in house. Included in this work is the resizing of the paper, as after cleaning the paper becomes absorbant like blotting paper. Framers in the past sometimes fixed an image to a backing board and this needs to be removed before cleaning, this is a more complex job as the backing board has to be removed from wet paper! The services of a qualified paper conservator are also used for specialised cleaning of very valuable artwork.

Therebuilding of antique frames is also undertaken. Generally this is far more expensive than having a new frame made, and takes longer as once the damage has been repaired, the whole frame has to be refinished to obtain a good final result - not just the damaged bits. A cautionary note - only the newly repaired parts are guaranteed as old embellishments may still fall off if knocked.

If you would like a free appraisal of what work is necessary to return an old painting, engraving or frame to its former glory, then please bring it into the gallery. Generally the estimates given are the total cost of the work but sometimes unexpected problems can occur that will involve extra cost.