Goodenough College, London

A pair of large paintings, in oil on canvas, each 300cm x 500 cm, entitled Life in London House and Scene on Mecklenburgh Square, 1970, by Leonard Rosoman.

The final stage of this project has come to fruition! After being hidden away in storage for several decades, rolled onto narrow cylinders, these painting are at last on display at the College (www.goodenough.ac.uk). Originally, designed by Rosoman for display at the café, they now hang in the library following an extensive refurbishment programme.

They required considerable moisture/heat treatment coupled with application of tension strips and pre-stretching, in order to flatten severe planar distortions caused by incorrect rolling and storage. In addition, conservation treatment involved surface-cleaning, retouching of damages to the paint layers, and introduction of missing pictorial sections at the corners. The unvarnished acrylic surfaces had been irretrievably stained by coffee drips, a sign of their previous location. Back at the college, the canvases were re-stretched onto purpose-built stretchers and installed in the Library, neatly above a wall of wooden bookcases.