This frame is very similar to the frame for Cope’s The Pilgrim fathers: Departure of a Puritan family for New England, 1856, purchased 1864 (p.300.10-1) – which appears in accounts from 1871 as by the Melbourne frame maker W.R. Stevens.
It is unclear whether the painting arrived in Melbourne in 1869 with a frame. It had toured England through autumn 1868 rolled on a cylinder and arrived in Melbourne with damage to the paint layer.
The frame comes apart into four sections which would aid in transport but the similar form and detail to the Stevens frame on the Cope suggests it was either the prototype copied by Stevens or was in fact made by him in Melbourne after the painting arrived. Several early acquisitions were framed some years after their purchase with locally made frames (seven years later in the case of the Cope), a number by Stevens.
This frame had been removed from the painting in the move to the new building in 1968 and was found in storage and returned to the painting in 1999.
The painting was cleaned and restored in 2013.