This is Quinn’s travelling scholarship picture from 1901. The frame, like the French frame on Aby Altson’s The Golden Age (similarly framed in Paris and also a travelling scholarship picture (6-2), is intended to travel in sections and be easily re-assembled for display. The reduced form of the frame, amounting to a large torus with a simple articulation of the sight edge, is one that occurs regularly in the ledger of Melbourne framemaker John Thallon, in entries for works by, among others, Frederick McCubbin.
The frame uses a large-format cast plaster torus of imbricated laurel leaves, attached to a wooden chassis with nails and cross-banded at the centres and corners. The torus section is cast from a complex mould with deep undercut leaf forms. The surface is gilded throughout with gold leaf, the large inner and outer cavetto burnished, the remainder matte. The leaves appear to be gilded without a bole, the remainder of the surface uses a red bole. The frame is in four sections, held together at the corners with a dovetail, tapered spline and tie-bolts.
The surface is original throughout, with some losses in the cast ornament.