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The village laundress

The village laundress
 (1891)

Medium
oil on canvas
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with the assistance of the Eleanor M. Borrow Bequest, 2008
Gallery location
Gallery 6
Level 2, NGV Australia

Artwork Details

Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
86.8 × 127.4 cm
Place/s of Execution
Melbourne, Victoria
Inscription
inscribed in brown paint l.r.: Leo (...illeg.) P (underlined)
over inscribed on previous inscription in brown paint l.r.: Leon Pole (underlined) / O
Accession Number
2008.508
Department
Australian Painting
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with the assistance of the Eleanor M. Borrow Bequest, 2008
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of The Vizard Foundation
Gallery location
Gallery 6
Level 2, NGV Australia
Subjects (general)
Human Figures Landscapes
Subjects (specific)
aprons (protective wear) baskets (containers) fields (land) girls hills laundering laundresses women (female humans)
Movements
Australian Impressionism Heidelberg School
Frame
Reproduction, 2009, based on a frame by John Thallon c.1905

Frame

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)

Frame Details

Framemaker
Reproduction - commissioned by the NGV
Date
2009

Colourmen

Colourman
W&G DEAN
Location of stamp
reverse of canvas
Transcript
-ESTABLISHED 1854-/-W&G. DEAN-/ARTIST COLORMEN/-PICTURE FRAMERS-/Collins Place [OFF Collins St.]/-MELBOURNE-
Medium
ink stamp

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