Taking Care Of Your Oil Paintings

Taking Care of Your Oil Paintings

Paintings made using fine oil paints on quality canvases can maintain their brightness and vivid colours for centuries. All the paintings that are sold through our website employ the same techniques and materials that were used by the great masters when creating some of their finest artworks. If treated with care, your oil painting can last and maintain its vivid colours for decades. In order to ensure just that, just follow these simple rules:

Taking Care of Your Oil Paintings
Sydney oil painting

1. Storage Conditions

The most common damages to oil paintings are caused by inappropriate storage conditions. Remember extreme humidity, cold, or heat are potential hazards for your painting.
Your living space, where you and your family spend time on a regular basis, will usually be perfectly suitable to keep your painting. Just make sure the painting is not positioned near a direct source of heat, damp or draft. The optimum ambient temperature for oil paintings is around 200 Celsius depending on small seasonal changes.
Hanging an oil painting above the fireplace is perfectly secure.

2. Dusting and cleaning your oil painting

It is recommended to dust and clean your oil paintings on a regular basis, using a clean dry cloth. Gently wipe off the dirt and dust, without putting too much direct pressure onto the surface.
Don’t spray or use any type of chemicals while cleaning your painting.
A tip: you can use compressed air, just make sure you don’t spray it from a short-range since that may cause damage to the paint layers.

3. Moving and Handling

Never put any direct pressure or lay your painting with the canvas’ surface in direct contact with a sharp object.
Remember, any pressure on the canvas may change its original tension and cause damage to the thick layer of oil paints.
Make sure to cover and protect your oil painting when moving it or changing its position.
If you will follow these basic rules you and your family should be able to enjoy your new artworks for decades to come.

Oil painting was considered for centuries to be one of the highest forms of artistic expression. The rich texture and vivid colours of oil paints gave unlimited possibilities to the artist to express his or her talent. It was and still is, a form of art that is complex, beautiful and perhaps as rich as life itself.

Taking Care of Your Oil Paintings
oil painting italy

Yet, the materials that make oil paintings so special were a luxury. And the complex processes and techniques involved in creating an oil painting were also very expensive. It is not surprising that, until recently, oil paintings could only be enjoyed and appreciated by the rich. The expensive process of creating an oil painting made it often impossible for a common person to commission a work of art or even to see and appreciate one.

It is ironic to think that Leonardo da Vinci’s generation was actually unfamiliar with the mysterious smile of the Mona Lisa, a smile which has now become an icon of its time.
Only in modern times and thanks to the emergence of public museums and galleries have oil paintings been brought to the attention of the general public. Nevertheless, owning an oil painting remains a symbol of wealth. But all of that is about to change…

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