The frame is an almost exact copy of one of the frames designed by James Abott McNeill Whistler.1 Characteristically for a Chapman frame, it is well built. Though this frame appears in the early twentieth century, the Whistler prototype comes from the early 1880s, reminding us of the popularity of the ‘Whistlerian’ profiles. They had a revival in Melbourne in the 1940s for the reframing of nineteenth-century Australian paintings, replacing individual and, curiously, sometimes similarly aesthetically restrained frames. In this example it is tempting to see a conscious decision by Conder to use a definitive Aesthetic Movement framing style.2
2 A Chapman label with the 251 King’s Road address is also found on Conder’s Dance by the fountain in Boston. (This information was provided by Lynn Roberts.)