When acquired in 2008, Leon Pole’s The village laundress, 1891, was framed with a fluted scotia frame. (above) The frame could date from sales of the painting anywhere from 1952 or the 1970s and 1980s.
The painting had been owned in 1936 by the Pinsent Hotel in Wangaratta but the framed painting did not appear in images provided by the Wangaratta Historical Society.
Very few works attributable to Pole are known and none appear to have their original frames.
Pole completed this work in his final year at the National Gallery Art School for which he won second prize.
Based on this information, a simpler framing style was sought for the painting.
The frame by John Thallon on J.C.Waite’s Portrait of Alfred Felton, 1905, (245-2) was selected as a model for reframing the Pole.
This simple cassetta form, using a fluted dowel as the outer edge, a chamfered dowel toward the sight edge, gilded mostly with false gold, patinated with ormolu showing a pronounced crackle pattern, had been used by a number of Poles contemporaries for travelling scholarship pictures.
The reproduction frame was made and fitted to the painting in 2009. (top)