In this way an old picture gets a new lease of life; but the question remains whether the new lease might not be made longer, and indeed extended almost indefinitely, by impregnating the canvas with something that would increase its durability without weakening its substance. It is well known that the fiber of the threads in canvas is so weakened by the application of oil-paint, or oil alone, that it afterward is easily torn, and it is weakened in the same way by some other applications.
Oil-pictures unprotected by glass are always quietly accumulating a coat of dust and dirt, which, in course of time, unless it is occasionally removed, makes the hazardous process called "picture-cleaning" present itself as an ineluctable necessity if the work be visible at all. The two preservative cleanings are first simply dusting with a light feather-brush and an occasional careful washing with a soft rag, some warm water, and a little soap, but not a strong soap. I remember a house where a new Scotch house-maid, who was alarmingly industrious, was discovered one morning on the point of cleaning all the pictures in a certain room with soft-soap and a scrubbing-brush. She was about to apply the same treatment to the frames, on which there was a good deal of burnished gilding, which would all have immediately disappeared. As for the pictures themselves, if they were covered with old well-hardened varnish, they might possibly have survived, but unvarnished works would have been injured or destroyed. It is impossible to foresee what schemes a zealous servant may not carry into execution. Projecting ornaments on frames are always in danger from servants' dusters. I once possessed a plaster statuette, which was valuable because there were only three copies in existence, and every successive house-maid broke its arm off with a blow from the wooden stick which is inside a feather-brush. The arm was regularly glued on again for the next house-maid. The feather-brush looks a most innocent instrument, but the stick in it makes the house-maid formidable.
I once knew an old gentleman who possessed a picture of great value, the most important work of its master (one of the old masters) in existence. This picture was the pride and pleasure of his old age, and he could not help caressing it, as it were. From sheer love of it, he could not be satisfied with looking at it, but must needs touch it frequently also, and his way was to pass an oiled rag gently over its surface. I believe the oil he used was olive-oil (he was a Frenchman, and so there would always be olive-oil in the house for the salad), and as olive-oil never dries, or at least is the worst drier known,[1] perhaps it did not accumulate on the picture, but the dust must have stuck to it, and made a fresh application necessary from time to time merely to
- ↑ Field says that olive-oil is reported to have been used for painting in Italy in place of the desiccative oils, but he thinks it likely that it was only employed as a diluent. No painter in our climate would think of using olive-oil in any way whatever.
