Treasures Regained...

Restoring deteriorating art works have become a trend among major collectors. But this process, experts caution, requires expertise. Okechukwu Uwaezuoke reports

O bviously, that large oil on canvas painting hanging on the wall of the vice chancellor’s office had certainly seen better days! Cracks had developed on it and the white surface of the canvas was beginning to show. It was a large Ben Enwonwu landscape painting, depicting the University of Ibadan campus in its current location dated 1952. Worried by its derelict state Omooba Yemisi Shyllon, a keen art aficionado, wondered if his host was aware of the value of the work.

No he was not. His host, Professor Olufemi Bamiro, then serving his tenure as the university’s vice chancellor, used to be a lecturer in the university’s engineering faculty. Art was not his thing, he offered by way of explanation.

Shyllon, who used to be his student, took time to explain not only the greatness of the artist but also the painting’s importance to the history of the university. Hence he couldn’t help lamenting about its then sorry state.

This was in 2009. Activities heralding the university’s golden jubilee anniversary celebrations were revving up. Anything that would burnish the university’s image would be welcome.

“It was in the process of our subsequent discussion that I offered to restore it,” Shyllon recalled two years later in his Lagos office. “I saw myself as a stakeholder, being an alumnus of the university. I thought I should contribute my quota in preserving the institution’s history.”

Through his foundation, OYASAF – acronym for Omooba Yemisi Adedoyin Shyllon Art Foundation, he contracted a Lagos-based landscape painter, Oyerinde Olotu, to restore the work. Olotu soon began to work in earnest...

This was not Shyllon’s first attempt at initiating the restoration of art works. Sometime in the late 1990s, he had contracted Abraham Uyovbisere, a Lagos-based artist, to restore one of the many paintings in his collection. Subsequently, another Lagos-based artist, Emmanuel Mbanefo, helped to restore a surrealistic painting by the late Clary Nelson Cole. Then, Olotu was also contracted to restore a series of paintings, one of which was by Jossy Ajiboye.