How to care for an original painting
A painting does not need maintenance so much as it needs the right place. Get the wall right and it will outlive you with no attention at all. Get it wrong and the damage is slow, invisible while it happens, and permanent.
Light is the one that matters
Direct sunlight fades pigment and embrittles the canvas. It works slowly enough that you will not notice — which is exactly the problem. Compare a painting to a photograph of it from ten years earlier and the loss is obvious.
Hang out of the sun’s path. Not just where the sun is now: where it will be in July, at four in the afternoon. If the only good wall is a bright one, the answer is a curtain or a UV film on the window, not moving the painting every summer.
Humidity, and why bathrooms are the worst room
Canvas is fabric on a wooden stretcher, and both respond to moisture. Steady humidity is fine, almost any level of it. Swings in humidity are what loosens canvas and, over years, lifts paint.
That rules out bathrooms and the wall directly above a kitchen hob. It also rules out an unheated holiday house that goes from cold and damp to hot and dry twice a year.
Cleaning: less than you think
Dust with a dry, soft brush — a clean makeup brush is ideal. Work from the top down, gently.
Never use a damp cloth. Never use any cleaning product, however mild. Varnish and paint are soluble in things you would consider harmless, and a solvent lifts both together. If a painting is genuinely dirty, that is a job for a conservator, and it is cheaper than you fear.
Moving and storing
Carry a painting by the sides of the stretcher, never by the top bar alone, and never with fingers on the painted surface.
If it must be stored, stand it upright — never flat, never with anything resting on it. Put acid-free tissue against the face and a rigid board in front. Store somewhere with a stable temperature; a loft is the worst place in most houses.
What normal ageing looks like
Fine surface craquelure in oil is not damage; it is what oil paint does as it cures over decades, and it appears on paintings in every major museum. Flaking, lifting or a cloudy bloom are different — those are worth a conservator’s opinion.
