Another delightful portrait of a young girl
Early 20th century. It is signed by Manns Pebar, the date is fragmented, 194 ?
Very interestingly it was painted directly onto a canvas with a herringbone weave and had no ground. It is a family heirloom and portrays the mother of the client as a little girl.

It was in bad condition and had drops of an unidentified substance on various areas of the paint layer, as well as several dents and tears.

The painting was 105 cm x 90 cm and the stretcher was not of sufficient strength to support it. The stretcher was not keeping the painting as taut as required and therefore there was some serious flaking of the paint layer especially at the bottom right.
The first thing to do was to get a new stretcher with cross bars. This would keep the tension of the canvas balanced in all directions.

After the canvas was stretched in its new stretcher the cleaning process began. This painting had never been varnished therefore there was no case of oxidized varnish on the surface. But there was atmospheric pollution, dust and insect dirt. These were all removed with gentle solutions, especially ph neutral soap and white spirit.

Finally the missing paint areas were restored with a very dry medium of oil paint to emulate the technique used by the artist.

All the work done to this painting is 100% reversible.