Art Prints color shifting?

[mattl]

I'm doing my fall cleaning and was doing my breakfast room. There are several prints there that my mother really liked and have been there for 25+ years. Issue is the colors have all shifted to the blueish range. Pretty much all of the original color is gone. This is a North facing room, so no direct sun. It happened to all three prints in the room. While it's not really my taste in art when I look at the prints it reminds me of my mother and how much she enjoyed these prints so I'd like to update them.

I looked for the one that I can identify the artist but it seems to be unavailable. It's Georgian Way by Richard Earl Thompson, all the links on Google takes me to Allposters.com, but it's unavailable there. I did save a ebay search for the artist and who knows someday it will pop up there. Not crucial but at some point I'd like to replace it. The other two are botanical prints and I should be able to find something similar. Funny, the price tag is still on the one print, from the mid '80s it was $285, so it was a good quality print to begin with.

I have a lot of other art in the house and none of it exhibits the color shift these prints have, any idea why?

 

[danemodsandy]

Matt:

Could be unstable materials used by the artist, also could be a reaction to framing and matting materials.

If you're able to replace them, specify archival materials when you have the new ones framed. That, proper climate control and keeping stuff out of the sun is about all you can do.

 

[d-jones]

This is a common problem.

Even though the prints weren't in direct sunlight, as long as a window to the outside world is nearby, enough UV's will find their way in to cause a problem. Red tints are the most sensitive to UV's and are therefor always the first to fade, which explains the shift to the blue side that you're seeing. One way to prevent this is to use a UV blocking glass in the frame. Any reputable framing shop will have it available.

 

[mattl]

Interesting, I had not thought about UV rays. The room has floor to ceiling windows across two walls, so lots of light, just no sun...

 

[tomturbomatic]

You might check with a restorer to see if they can be saved. I know how comforting it is to enjoy the things a loved one enjoyed.

 

[whirlcool]

This was a major problem at an aviation museum where I used to be a director. All these artifacts (tickets, schedules, aircraft blueprints, etc.) from years gone by were in display cases that were supposedly UV resistant. After a few years the artifacts started to look "faded". So they put UV protectant film on the windows and thought that would do it. So to test it I put three strips of colored construction paper inside the cases next to the artifact. Within 2 months the blue paper faded to pink, the black to grey and the deep red to a light pink.
The main problem was with the property. There was near floor to ceiling glass on the east and west sides of the building. The only hope was to replace the glass with true museum quality glass which would have been prohibitively more expensive than the group could afford.

What can be done? Nothing except for as mentioned above a restoration which is usually pretty expensive. The proper way to handle this is to prevent the damage in the first place.

 

[kb0nes]

Beware of the UV

Years ago when I worked in a pool hall we had a counter display case that was lit with florescent lights. On the top shelf we kept some of our high end cue on display. These were hand made "artisan" cues in the $2000-9500 price range! These sold almost never and I would have to remove them to dust them from time to time. I started to notice the stain on the veneer inlays started to fade on the side exposed to the light. From that point on we made a point of rotating them to keep the fading uniform at least!

 

[mattl]

They are just prints, not signed art so there is little reason to restore them. I'm sure at some point the one main print will show up either on ebay or Allposters again. When I do replace the prints I will look into UV glass for the frames, thanks for the tips.