20th Century British Art

Valentine has extensive experience in the conservation and restoration of Modern British Art particulary through her work with the Imperial War Museum and Crane Kalman Gallery. These paintings are coming to an age where they require treatment.

LS Lowry

Lowry’s paintings are now of an age where they are not only dirty but they have begun to crack or delaminate. This example highlights both of these problems.

The image below shows a cleaning test highlighting how very dirty some of his paintings have become. The surface dirt was removed to reveal the richness of colours used by Lowry.

This image shows a typical ‘spider-web’ crack which becomes evident some time after the canvas has suffered an impact and is clearly shown with strong raking light. The paint was relaxed and the effect of the cracking was reduced so that it was less visually disturbing.