Unknown artist: Portrait of Elizabeth, 19th C
Oil on canvas, 30” x 24”
Project Highlights
This family heirloom had a brittle and cracked paint layer with a myriad of paint losses. The surface was dirty with a discolored varnish, and it had been badly restored. The painting was cleaned, cracks were relaxed and lowered, paint was stabilized, and the canvas supported through lining. After removal of a restorer’s overpainting and re-inpainting, the sitter transformed from a girl with a subdued cap in a dark landscape to the original artist’s vision of a young girl with a jaunty bonnet in a spring garden.