This frame is a rare example of early Tasmanian frame making and is the earliest nineteenth-century frame in the collection by an identifiable frame maker. The form and decoration of the frame bring to mind the frames favoured by Thomas Lawrence.
The attribution to Wilson rests on the direct similarity between the ornament on this frame and the frame on John Glover’s The Swilker Oak, Clarendon Homestead, National Trust of Australia (Tasmania), Bequest of A. H. Weedon, 1976, which carries the stencil of Wilson on the reverse. The strap-work ornament on the Mt Wellington frame is the same as that on the Swilker Oak frame, inverted.
The dating (c.1843) is based on William Wilson’s likely arrival in Launceston from Hull, England in November 1842 on the Royal Saxon as described in Robyn Lake and Therese Mulford ‘William Wilson: rediscovered Tasmanian framemaker’ Australiana, 23, 1, 2001, p.6.
The cleaning and restoration of the frame was carried out by Noel Turner in the Frames and Furniture Conservation Studio of the NGV. The retrieval of this rare frame took more than 700 hours.