Water Damage to Art and Heirlooms: Before and After

Precious art and heirlooms have been submerged in water from a storm loss. Are these works lost forever, or can anything be done to conserve them? Check out these examples of art and heirloom conservation before and afters, then check out the new CE course “Art and Heirloom Claims,” now available to PLRB members.

Use the slider to compare before (left) with after (right).

Direct Water Damage to Painting

This is a great example of a historic portrait which was very valuable. It was engaged in a hurricane scenario and sitting in water for about four hours. Luckily, the restoration company moved to immediately get it out and lay it flat and try to protect the surface. As you see in the face upper sections, the pigment was starting to separate from the gesso layer. This was subjected to hot table treatment using heat and chemicals passed up through using vapor through the backside of the canvas, which relaxed the tented pigment down and secured it back to the gesso layer. The tricky thing is removing the yellowed varnish on the surface. Now, the varnish oxidizes when it’s exposed to water and heat and it turns into this yellowish gray color. Most people would assume that the image is completely disfigured as it looks on the left. But that is purely the layer sitting superficially on top of the pigment layer. So certain solvents under a microscope are swelled and removed using cotton swabs. And you can see the outstanding outcome on the right, saving this important piece for generations to come.

Humidity and Temperature

Humidity and temperature is something that we commonly see in pipe bursts or other environmental exposures. This is a Toulouse-Lautrec poster. And the thing that’s interesting and actually very confusing about temperature and humidity exposures is many times I hear, “well, there was a water claim but the artwork was not actually touched or water was not directly on the work of art.” And it is important to know the subtleties of humidity and temperature fluctuations: even though they’re not coming in direct contact with a work of art, just that environmental change can cause damage and degradation to the condition of the piece. So that high temperature and humidity from a steam pipe burst did this cockling that you see in the background and it made the paper change. So that needs to be dropped into a water washing bath, flattened under weights for a couple of days and then re-matted and framed. And sure enough, it was completely returned to a pre-loss condition, but it is what we call a passive situation where it may look fine but it actually has been changed by the claim situation.

Textile in Water

This is a great example of a textile collection from Iowa that was part of this Cedar Rapid Floods. And there was a collection of over 200 historic textiles, such as this, which were immersed in 14 feet of water. And once the restoration company was able to extract all the water out of the first floor of the institution, the entire collection was left completely degraded as you see here on the lower right. This was put into a chamber and humidified in a Gore-Tex chamber and slowly brought back to life. And you can see on the right the outcome using this very innovative technique.

Works of Art on Paper in Water

Some works of art on paper are more sensitive than others. So for example, pastels or watercolors are very difficult to treat because you cannot use water to treat them versus, let’s say an etching or a Giclee or anything that was used in a printing process that is very stable. You can use water washing techniques to treat it, but you can’t with pastels or watercolors. So this is a great example of a technique on a suction table, which is a metal platen with thousands of little holes in it. And you can wick a solvent through just the area that has been damaged and not completely submerged the work. So you can see the severe damage on the left was treated on the suction table, and the outcome was fantastic.

Check out the new CE course “Art and Heirloom Claims”, now available to PLRB members under the Education tab, CE Modules.