A silly question ? Do oil paintings fade ?

[Bagpuss]

I have a customer who wanted a non-reflective glass over his oil on canvas on board, I thought this would be fine as it was a lovely oil painting of a gorilla that he had commissioned. I then mentioned a museum glass that would give him UV protection as well a reflection control, I was just about to send him a quote with museum glass then I started to wonder, are oil paintings actually susceptible to fading like a print might be ? I wouldn't have thought they do , do they ?

Answers on a postcard please
Thanks, Adam/Bagpuss

[Not your average framer]

I would say that some degree of fading is certainly possible, but not all colours are susceptable to fading to the same degree, so the degree to which fading will affect any particalar painting will depend upon the quality and lightfastness of the paints employed in that particular painting.

Since I also clean customers paintings, I get to see the edges of older oil paintings that have be shielded from light by the sight edge of the frame and yes, there are noticeable differences between the faded and unfaded parts of the picture. Does it always matter? Well, very few people seem to notice this, so maybe, maybe not.

[prospero]

That's a damn good question for which I don't know the answer on a scientific level. I will say that I have never known
an oil painting to fade in the same way as a watercolour. They get dirty though atmospheric muck and discoloured varnish
but faded pigment? Even ones that look like a piece of felt off the shed roof can be brought back to pristine condition
under the hands of an expert restorer.

Whether to put them under glass is a matter of taste. My default stance is not to glaze, but it depends on the painting.

[odocat]

If it has been varnished this gives the painting a degree of UV protection. The rest of the problems are down to extream temperture changes.

[Rainbow]

FWIW I've got an oil painting which was painted 45 years ago and is unglazed. The colours still look unfaded to me, although I don't know whether the colours under the frame would be different.

[prospero]

The fact is that if an oil painting has been executed using quality materials and correct techniques then it is
going to be very durable. Paints using lightfast pigments - usually 'earth' pigments are very stable in terms of permanence.

Oils done with 'student' quality paints are a different proposition, although the paint will probably drop off long before they
get a chance to fade.

Synthetic pigments give the artist a greater range but some can be extremely 'fugitive'. This type of pigment is mostly aimed
at illustrators who want vivid colours but the original artwork is essentially of no importance once it has been reproduced. In fact
a lot of it is simply binned.

[Justintime]

Experts have recently discovered that one of the colours of paint in a Van Goch painting has been fading for over 100 years, the fading is not visible to the naked eye yet...
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theg ... s-to-brown

[Framemaker Richard]

With older paints and pigments, it seems there are changes occurring over time:

https://indianapublicmedia.org/amomento ... paintings/

and are quite a few papers online from museums and conservators looking at the fading of some pigments in oil paint.

[prospero]

There was a fad in the early 19c for paints using bitumen-based pigments. It gave a lovely warm brown.
Only problem was it degraded to the point that the paintings gradually turned into something resembling
a piece of felt on a shed roof on a hot day. Joshua Reynolds was notorious for using it.