A nearly identical but unlabelled frame appears on von Guérard’s Mr Clark’s station, Deep Creek, near Keilor , 1867 (A2-1986). Whitehead frames are often associated with von Guérard’s paintings but the style is not unique to Whitehead. Examples by Stevens (Melbourne) and Vokins (London) are generically similar in style and construction. The frame carries a label centre bottom and there is also an inscription, Isaac Whitehead, in pencil on the stretcher, right edge, which may indicate Whitehead was the supplier of the stretched canvas. The frame is well proportioned and the near central positioning of the torus gives the frame a balance which differentiates it from more classical forms. The frieze pattern is seen on other frames by Whitehead.4 Among English frames which might serve as models for the type brought to Melbourne by Whitehead, we can look to the frame on Ophelia by John Everet Millais, in Tate Britain, thought to date from the end of the 1850s or early 1860s.5
1 The absence of an address on the label leaves the dating open. The frame is believed to be contemporary with the date of the painting, 1866. There are, however, a number of paintings which entered the collection in the 1860s but which were framed some years later.
3 The nearly identical but unlabelled frame, logically attributed to Whitehead, on von Guérard’s Mr Clark’s station Deep Creek, near Keilor, 1867 (A2-1986), shows a mixture of matte and burnished water gilding.