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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;verybrad, post: 24702, member: 37&quot;]I am usually attracted to gloomy paintings for some reason and like this a lot. While it probably could use a cleaning, It appears to be a night (or early dawn) scene so can&#039;t imagine it is overly bright. </p><p><br /></p><p>When cleaning paintings, I usually start with plain distilled water and move up the scale from there. Next step up is a little ammonia in the water, rinsed with clear water afterwards. I sometimes will use as much as 25% ammonia for stubborn soiling. If you are getting color on to your q-tips, your solvent is too strong. I work in small patches with q-tips, then go back and even everything out with an quick overall wash. You always have to be careful not to get the painting too wet so that the paint remains adhered. </p><p><br /></p><p>Mineral spirits usually doesn&#039;t do much but won&#039;t generally hurt the paint. Old yellowed varnish is tough to cut. The ammonia will do it slowly but I sometimes use harsher solvents carefully to advance progress. This is something that takes a bit of knack to do, so don&#039;t recommend people do it without some practice on old paintings of little value.&nbsp; Once clean, you have to re-varnish to bring the color back out. </p><p><br /></p><p>I find most 20th century paintings pretty easy to clean. When you get in to some of the older paintings, the paint seems less able to withstand cleaning. For some reason, old browns seem particularly vulnerable. I won&#039;t even attempt to try and clean most 19th century paintings of any real value.</p><p><br /></p><p>I learned to clean paintings from an old book on the subject and lots of practice over the years. There are probably better methods employed today by those professionally trained. I have heard some recommend the painting cleaners sold by the art supply companies but have never tried them. I have some paintings I cleaned and varnished over 10 years ago and they have remained in good condition so I must have done something right.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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