This painting from the Civil War period proved to be one of the trickier paintings to remove from its stretcher. Besides the more obvious time-related effects: loss of hydration, degradation of paint film, destabilization of canvas, degradation of the stretcher bar wood–time has also seen the advancement in how paintings are attached to stretcher bars, and as a result this painting had a few tough corners. Some delicate scalpel work and finessing with fingers and one of our newer restoration agents helped to get this painting off while maintaining as much canvas integrity as possible. Stay tuned fore more…