Repairing the Damage: Our Master Conservator Puts an Heirloom Back Together

The fully restored painting and frame

In need of art restoration? We've got you covered. Imagine you've got a precious family heirloom, that becomes horribly damaged. That happened to this beautiful seascape which a client brought to us with an extremely large tear in it. Fortunately we were able to reassure them that we could make it good as new!

The large tear through the center of the painting prior to restoration

The Frames and Stretchers team has a master art conservator on hand. Like all of our craftspeople, Julia Rivera is an amazingly talented artist in her own right. But we use her talent to help restore artworks to their former glory. Julia is a Bronx born New York native who studied at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas in Puerto Rico. She also received her MA in 17th century painting and restoration at the Studio Arts College International, Florence, Italy. Her art has been exhibited widely and is included in numerous international collections. 

Julia's impressive credentials include having worked in art conservation and restoration for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. So we knew we could count on her to fix this problem. 

Luckily the torn out piece of canvas was available for her to reattach to the rest of the painting. After adhering it with an archival adhesive she then had to painstakingly paint back in the areas along the seam and achieve a perfect match! Once that was done a fresh piece of canvas was attached to the back to create a seamless finish. Meanwhile, other members of our team worked on repairing minor damage to the ornately carved gold frame. The final step was refitting the painting in its original frame. The end result was fantastic and the client was overjoyed!