Art restoration and conservation
Cleaning, repair and conservation for paintings, works on paper and prints — arranged with a specialist studio, and quoted before anything begins.
The first question is not what a restorer could do to a work. It is whether anything should be done to it at all. A great many pictures that look past saving are dirty rather than damaged, and a great many that look worth rescuing will cost more to treat than they will ever make. Both of those are answerable from photographs, before a studio is involved and before you have spent anything.
How it works here
We are not conservators and do not pretend to be. The work is carried out by a conservation studio we work with, by people who do nothing else. What we do is the part either side of it: look at the work, say whether treating it is worth the cost, put the job to the studio with the right brief, and see it through.
The studio’s cost is quoted to you before anything starts, which is the same footing as every other third-party cost on this site — specialist shipping, a Pest Control application, conservation framing. Our own fees do not change because a work has been through a studio. How we are paid is unchanged by any of this, and it is the reason we can tell you not to bother.
By medium
What can be reversed, what cannot, and whether it repays the cost are three different answers depending on what the work is made of.
- Painting restoration
Cleaning, tears, flaking and old retouching — what can be put right on a canvas or panel, and when it repays the cost.
- Paper conservation
Foxing, acid burn, old tape and cockling — what a paper conservator can reverse on a drawing or watercolour, and what nobody can.
- Print and poster restoration
What conservation can do for an editioned print or a poster, and why on an edition the market compares your sheet with a clean one.
When we would tell you not to
When the treatment costs more than the work will make, which is commoner than anyone selling restoration will admit. When the damage is the kind nothing reverses — fading, a trimmed sheet, paint taken down too far by a previous cleaning. When the work is saleable as it stands and the buyer would rather make their own decision about it. And when the right answer is not restoration at all but reframing to conservation standard, which is cheaper and stops the damage getting worse.
Common questions
Do you do the restoration yourselves?
No, and it matters that we say so. The work is carried out by a conservation studio we work with, by conservators who do nothing else. We look at the work first, say whether it is worth treating, put the job to the studio, and stay involved through it. The studio's cost is quoted to you before anything begins.
Will restoration increase what my work is worth?
Sometimes substantially, sometimes not at all, and occasionally it will reduce it. Cleaning a dirty picture with a real market usually repays itself. Structural work on a modest painting usually does not, because the cost can exceed what the work will make and a saleroom will still catalogue the intervention. We would rather say that from the photographs than after a studio has quoted.
Does restoration have to be declared when selling?
Yes, and it will be found in any case. A specialist examining a work under raking light and ultraviolet sees retouching, relining and repairs as a matter of routine. An undisclosed repair discovered during a consignment costs far more than it ever saved, in both the estimate and the relationship with the saleroom.
Do I need a restorer near me?
Less than you would think, though more than for a valuation. Whether a work needs treating at all is settled from photographs, at no charge. Only if it goes ahead does the work travel, and it travels by specialist art carrier rather than by post — which is how it would move to a saleroom anyway. We are in London and act for clients across the United Kingdom.
Send photographs of the work and of the damage — the front, the reverse, and the problem close enough to see — to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk or through the contact page. Saying whether it is worth treating costs nothing.