Jonathan Adams

Talented picture restorer Jonathan Adams has got visitors to an exhibition in a tiny south Shropshire village doing a double-take with his near-identical copies of some of the world’s most famous paintings, writes Sophie Bignall.

The artist regularly reproduces works by George Stubbs, George Clausen, Jan de Heem and Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin as well as restoring works and producing his own landscapes from his studio in Ashford Carbonell.

He said: “I went back in time with my painting. I am a closet Victorian. I became very interested in the way Victorians did things. I am stuck in some sort of time warp from a bygone era.”

He said he first became interested in copying work as a teenager.

“I must have had a book on Caravaggio and I tried a still life. it was something that I liked doing and I have been doing it ever since.”

Mr Adams said people have copies made for a number of reasons.

Inheritance

“If families want to leave a painting as part of an inheritance and there are other siblings. Others want to sell their original but want to have a copy made as a momento.”

He added: “I like to think I have done all the eminent 19th century horse painters from the originals. The biggest painting I have ever done was an eight-foot by six-foot portrait. I had to stand on a step-ladder to reach the top.

“I will tackle just about anything when it comes to copying.”

Mr Adams’s most amazing discovery came after a man bought in a badly damaged oil painting to restore. He said: “A chap bought in a very bashed-up horse painting which was done in the early part of the 19th century. I started to clean it when I found the signature of John Boultbee, a well known 19th century painter.”

The work was valued at about £20,000. Mr Adams said: “It went from being an old relic in the attic with a hole in to being something worth getting excited about.”

His studio at the Methodist Chapel in Ashford Carbonell, which will also showcase his own work, will be open as part of H Art week from September 11 to 19, every day from 11am until 5pm.

For further information visit www.oilpaintingcopies.com