The Ship Painting

A bit of a 'diary' Blip today. This painting of a ship was bought by my great-grandfather who was a Master Mariner. It was thought in the family to be a painting of his own ship but I think it is unlikely as the painting is dated 1850 and I have his Master's Certificate which is from the 1870's. However, there is little doubt that it would have hung in the cabin on his ship, and we believe he plied his trade between Europe and the North East of England. I think it was probably passed to my grandfather when my great-grandfather died in the 1930's, to my father in the 1960's and then to me in 1993. The painting itself was not in very good condition; it appears to have been reframed in the 1930's, presumably when my grandfather got it, and in those days there was no acid-free paper or card so in the intervening period it had gained brown marks all over, a bit like water stains, and was generally pretty grubby.

In August we decided to take it to a restorer to see if it was worth having any work done to improve it. He wasn't too optimistic; the painting had been glued to the cardboard backing and would be difficult to remove, and he thought the damage caused by the acid in the paper may be permanent. However, he said he used a very good lady in Oxford and we agreed it was worth a try.

Today we got the picture back and we are really pleased with the result. All of the brown staining has gone, the colours, particularly of the sea, are much brighter, and the whole picture has been expertly cleaned. We also had it reframed which itself is a great improvement over the simple black frame with no border that it has been in for the last 70-80 years. It wasn't a cheap exercise; far from it, but I think it was money well spent.

I'm way behind on comments etc. on Blip at the moment so apologies to my regular 'Blip-mates' - I'll catch up soon!