Military man portrait

http://www.pageconservation.com/problem_frame.htm


http://www.grashe.com/projects_in_progress_Emig.html

http://cleanoilpainting.com/oil-painting-cleaning-price.html

 

Pictures are varnished to protect the paint surface. Some varnishes are more easily removed than others.

Personally, I wouldn't recommend trying to clean it yourself if you've never gone through that before. Solvents strong enough to remove varnish are strong enough to damage paint. Over cleaning a picture is real easy (voice of experience!). The effect is called 'scrubbing' and it can destroy any value. I have no idea what it would cost to have the painting professionally cleaned, or any idea if it would be worth it.

Your new photos, to my mind, do make the painting seem more amateurish.

 

I just noticed on the last pic "yellow man" has a fountain pen in hand.He still looks so familiar to me ????????????????

 

Here's another altered view from the new pictures. But these altered views are so skewed as to be almost useless. Does look, though, that he was a blue-eyed blond.

 

Would be cool to have access to a government agency facial recognition software

 

The usual treatment is isopropyl alcohol and a cotton bud, or rather loads and loads of cotton buds, but any good book or article on picture restoring will give proper instruction.

Removal of varnish without removing paint depends on the different solvents used in oil paint and varnish, done properly it can be very effective, but it is far easier to get wrong than to get right

 

Photoshop Elements or Photoshop would remove that dirty varnish in an instant. Unhappily I lost my PE when a previous computer crashed and only have Picasa on this one, it's not bad but it's not as capable.

If anyone does have Photoshop, try 'auto levels' on that original yellow picture.