Sample projects

This panel was the same size as a self portrait long believed to be by Rembrandt that is in the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin.

It was coated with dirt and yellowed varnish, and the background had been repainted – possibly to hide the many little lumpy lead soap inclusions and showed as white spots.

Cleaning revealed a painting in very good condition and of good quality; further investigations may be able to link it to Rembrandt’s busy workshop.

Increasingly heavy rainfall can overwhelm guttering in historic houses, as happened at Bowood House in Wiltshire, the home of the Lansdowne family.

During a storm, water ran down the back of this painting by Horace Vernet (1789-1863) of the Battle of Hanau. It rapidly saturated the lower part of the canvas, causing glues from sizing and lining to seep through the cracks to the front of the painting.

A 1950’s family portrait had become damp, resulting in detaching paint.

The project involved the reattachment of flaking and consolidation of incipiently flaking paint and restoring areas of loss to match a very matte paint surface.

A major project was at the Suffolk Church of Kedington, where a cycle of ten hatchments, hung high up in the Nave, all needed to be taken down, cleaned, lined and restored and reinstated whilst respecting the fabric of the building.

This involved the complexities of liaising with Church Architect, parishioners, builders and scaffolders.

The hatchments had been repainted in the past, as well as having suffered from the vagaries of Church environmental hazards.

This conservation project took place in public view in Christchurch Mansion Museum, Ipswich. The painting of the millstream at Flatford had not been cleaned for over 100 years.

After researching the condition of the painting and obtaining scientific analysis of the paint and varnish, the process of removal of dirt and varnish layers was carefully planned. Daily Q & A sessions were held, where I was able to discuss the usefulness of information given by X-rays and paint sample analysis.

The cleaning made headlines: as the hundred-year-old yellowed varnish came away, a tiny kingfisher appeared over the water. Constable had originally painted birds in the middle of the composition, then painted them out — hidden for two centuries until Rosalind's cleaning revealed them, and a ghostly earlier position of the chimney as well. The discovery was reported by The Telegraph and covered on national television.

This early C19th portrait of a lady in a turban was almost completely hidden by layers of dirt.

When these were removed, paint of good quality and lovely condition was revealed.

Long tears, deformations and brittle canvas meant that lining was necessary, after which the canvas was restretched on its original stretchers.

Minimal restoration was needed and the painting was revarnished, all materials used being conservation quality and fully reversible.

The damage to this family portrait was severe, as it had been cut from its stretchers, folded, rolled and then compressed over a long period of time.

Inevitably, this caused the paint layer to flake off dramatically. After discussion with clients, the extensive and expensive work required to reconstruct the image was confined to a central oval, and the picture was framed accordingly.

Reconstruction was entirely successful.