Transparent Conservation Before the 1970s the worlds top glue and wax picture liners were unable to conserve an oil painting with writing or other information on the rear of the canvas without losing the detail. Wax impregnation had a low success rate, writing on the back of the lining canvas or taking a photograph are options and not conserving a painting is another. Just click on the images below to see some of the results of our transparent conservation techniques. I started to research and develop transparent conservation around 1975 after requests from picture dealers and collectors and had a reasonable success rate, but not satisfactory by the standard I was looking for. During the 1980s I started to produce very high standards of transparency bearing in mind the difference between the 1600s and present day canvas. Around 1990, major breakthroughs had enabled my studio to produce a quality that may never be surpassed. You can see from the conservation examples how clear the detail on the back of each painting is. My studio has lost count of how many tranparent paintings conservation jobs we have completed.