The maker is identified by a stencil directly onto the wood on the reverse of the frame, centre bottom, an unusual means of identification by Thallon. The painting appears in this frame in a photograph of the Loan Exhibition of Australian Art at the National Art Gallery of New South Wales (later the Art Gallery of New South Wales), Sydney, April 1918. A frame with the same profile but smaller sight dimensions appears in Thallon’s ledger in an entry for B. Hall, 28 November 1902. The basic form of this frame appears on a number of paintings in the collection over a period from 1896 to 1906, with slight variations in dimensions, treatment of the sight edge and veneering of the frieze. See also the entry for J. C. Waite’s Alfred Felton, 1905 (245–2), also framed by Thallon in this style.
Note:
The original sketch for Sleep, c.1906 is in the collection of the Castlemaine Art Gallery. It is framed with dark stained pine in the manner of frames noted in Thallon's ledger under entries for Hall. The two horizontal members are approximately half the width of the two verticals.