The frame is a well crafted example of a very large-scale gilded oak frame. The profile is classical in form but the surface treatment is characteristic of the finishes associated with Watts, Maddox-Brown, Rossetti and others. Gilding direct to oak was celebrated by Charles Lock Eastlake in the mid nineteenth century.1 The maker is identified from an entry in the artist’s diary, 21 March 1900: frame came from Dolman 2/8 (£2.8s), got it set up.2 The frame is a type preferred by Sir Hubert von Herkomer.3 A different profile with the same finish can be seen on Herkomer’s portrait of Queen Victoria (397.2-1), also in the NGV collection.
Notes
1 Eastlake provided advice to the National Gallery of Victoria in its formative years. Other well crafted frames with gilding direct to the oak are on Frank Dicksee’s The crisis, 1891 (p.396.2-1) and William Rothenstein, Aliens at prayer, 1905 (261-2).
3 For notes on Herkomer’s frames and, in particular, a frame very similar in profile to this one, see Jacob Simon, The Art of the Picture Frame, National Portrait Gallery of Victoria, London, 1996, pp. 106, 108.