This is a fine example of the frame that carries the artist’s name, on one of his own paintings.1 The other painting in the collection by Watts, Alfred Tennyson, (p.312.9-1), purchased the same year as this one, is framed in an identical frame carrying the same label. Both paintings were shown at the Grosvenor Gallery Intercolonial Exhibition, Melbourne 1887–8, as numbers 142 and 139 respectively.2 It is reasonable to assume that the paintings were given identical frames by the same framemaker for the exhibition. The style adopted by Watts was popular in the late nineteenth century, and was literally copied or used in variant form by a number of framemakers. Characteristically, in the construction of the Smith frame the veneered flat is joined in the vertical, not as the veneer over a mitred chassis. The frame may not be the first framing of the painting.
2 I am indebted to the research of Annette Dixon, former Curator of European Art, National Gallery of Victoria, who first sourced this reference.