The basic form of this frame is a solid plank of timber, flat across the reverse and bevelled across the face. The corners are mitred and secured with thin splines set into the reverse across the joints. The outer edge carries a run of egg and dart ornament, the inner edge carries a laurel and berry torus. The addition of a broad flat completes the structure. The bevel is enlivened with fine sand. The surface is a mixture of water gilding (slip and taenia) and oil gilding (torus and flat), now overpainted with a heavy, coloured varnish.
The construction of the frame differs sufficiently from local manufacture, for example the similar frames of John Thallon, to suggest this frame is English in origin despite stylistically being from a French source.
Thallon’s frames would be made from a plank of uniform thickness, with timber strips added across the reverse to build the rebate and outer edges, the corners more likely re-enforced with triangular wooden braces.
Gotch trained in London then studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Antwerp and Paris in 1881-3.
Though he exhibited at the Royal Academy, it seems unlikely a frame in this form would be an Academy frame.
The frame on Mental Arithmetic is in the manner of frames revived in France after the middle of the C19th. They appear in the background of paintings and photographs of French artists in their studios from the 1860’s onward. It is possible Gotch was aware of these framing styles in Antwerp and Paris in 1881-3.
Gotch visited relatives in Australia in 1883 and this painting was presented to the NGV by the artist’s cousin J.S. Gotch, Melbourne, 1884.
The painting and frame entering the collection in 1884 provides a possible reference point for a wave of frames in this general form that were made in Melbourne by John Thallon from around this date forward.