Collection Online
Near Arundel
Medium
watercolour and gouache
Measurements
55.8 × 86.4 cm (image and sheet)
Place/s of Execution
England
Inscription
inscribed in brush and ink (in image) l.l.: E. Wake Cook 82.
Accession Number
150-2
Department
International Prints and Drawings
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bequest of Alfred Felton, 1904
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of the Joe White Bequest
Gallery location
Not on display
Frame
Original, by Foord & Dickinson, London

Frame

The label identifying the maker appears on the reverse of the thin timber backing board of the blind stretcher onto which the watercolour is stretched. The frame, though damaged, is most likely the original framing of the watercolour and as such represents a form of presentation of watercolours in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. The use of a wide gilded slip and a relatively narrow outer frame is closer to our expectation for the framing of these works. The company traded as Foord & Dickinson at Wardour St. from 1858 to 1899.1 As with a number of labels, the address on this one has been over-printed. Though the watercolour and the frame are now separated they have been re-assembled digitally.

Note

1 Jacob Simon, The Art of the Picture Frame, National Portrait Gallery, London, 1996, p. 134.

Framemaker
Foord & Dickinson
London
Date
1882
Materials

The frame is constructed using composition ornaments on a thin wooden base. The profile is a solid wooden section while the composition decorative panels appear to be machine rolled. The ornate foliate corners are more coarsely cast than the panels. Leaves extend across the mitres of the outer frame structure. The surface of the outer frame, now dark, appears to be oil gilded, through to the edge of the shallow scotia, where it changes to a bright water gilded surface on a red bole and white ground. The slip is a wide timber section and retains the original matte water gilding, on a thin red bole, in a very good state of preservation due to having spent most of its life glazed.

Frame Condition

The frame appears to retain the original surfaces. The composition ornaments to the corners are incomplete and have been reconstructed digitally.

Dimensions
81.0 x 111.5 x 6.0 cm; sight 55.3 x 85.5 cm
More Information
National Portrait Gallery