Many novels featuring art restorers or conservators are more concerned with plot than with details about how they do their work. On the other hand, Ready-money Mortiboy: A Matter-of-fact Story , by Sir Walter Besant and James Rice, first published as a serial in 1872, gives a detailed, slightly horrifying, and (we hope) exaggerated description of how a painting was cleaned in England in the later 19th century:
Soon there came a very busy time at cleaning pictures, and Burls asked Frank to help him. He found it a mighty simple matter, though it rubbed the skin off his fingers at first. "Lay the canvas down," said Burls, "and rub it. If the varnish comes off after a few rubs of your finger, it’s mastic, and 'II all rub off clean down to the paint. If it won't chafe, it's copal, and you must get it off with spirits, and be careful not to take the paint away with it. I've seen that done often."
So Frank and Burls spent much of their time together, chafing the dirty varnish off old pictures. When they had rubbed it off, and got down to the paint, one or the other dipped a wide brush in mastic varnish, dabbed it on like whitewash on a ceiling, and then laid the canvas flat on the floor of the next room.“ It all dries down smooth enough," Burls said, '' That's the beauty of it." And this, gentle British public, is the art of cleaning old oil paintings on a system invented by ourselves, without the slightest injury or damage, advertised by Bartholomew Burls and Co., Trafalgar Street, Haymarket. Country orders carefully attended to. And you are charged for it entirely according to Mr. Burls's belief in your capacity to pay — sometimes ten shillings, sometimes ten pounds ; but the process is always the same, and it takes a very slightly skilled labourer any time from fifteen minutes to sixty to complete the operation. Sometimes the pictures wanted repainting in places: then Frank took them into his own room, and did what was required, before they were varnished off.
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