Carving & gilding a British Rococo frame

…the stages in producing a faithful replica of the 18th century frame on a Gainsborough portrait

Thomas Gainsborough, Portrait of Thomas Linley the Elder, late 1760s, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

We think of the Rococo style – paintings, furniture, boiseries, and picture frames – as a confection of curves and extravagant asymmetry, flyaway scrolls and delicate floweriness.  Britain never seemed to accept this frivolous and flighty movement with quite the wholeheartedness of, for example, France; possibly because it had an entrenched Classical tradition, revealed in the numbers of Palladian villas which were built during the 18th century.  The Palladian style is also known as ‘Kentian’ after the architect and designer, William Kent: a style which began in the 1720s and merged almost seamlessly into the late 18th century trend for the NeoClassical, leaving little room for the Rococo to root itself too deeply.

Furnishings and objets d’art in the Rococo taste were more popular and more attainable than large-scale buildings; and there are several interiors where frilly Rococo boiseries or stuccowork have been layered onto the geometric classicism of a Palladian structure (Farnborough Hall in Warwickshire, for example).  Rococo frames were also very popular, especially for portraiture; they echoed the curves of the human figure, the curls of wigs and female ringlets, and the swoops and ebullitions of 18th century costume (Hogarth, George Arnold and his daughter Frances Arnold, 1738-40, Fitzwilliam Museum).  However, during the 1760s and later a reaction began to percolate through Britain against the more flamboyant forms of the Rococo, which meant that NeoClassicism was adopted quickly and enthusiastically.  The frame of Gainsborough’s Thomas Linley the Elder is a transitional design, picking up the restraint and linear structure of a straight-sided Louis XV-style frame, and looking forward to NeoClassical patterns.

Thomas Gainsborough, Portrait of Thomas Linley the Elder, detail of frame

The swirling, organic ornament which characterizes the Rococo has been compacted here in the cartouches at the corners of the frame: two scrolling raffle leaves support a deeply fluted shell, and trail small floral sprigs down the main ogee moulding.  Otherwise the structure is a pared-down version of Rococo from which a stronger, more masculine form emerges, composed in straight lines and carrying three orders of decorative moulding: a leaf-tip back edge, a gadrooned top edge, and an acanthus leaf sight edge.  There is also a small sanded frieze next to the sight edge.  Minus the corner cartouches, this arrangement has elements in common with 18th century classicizing patterns – a ‘Carlo Maratta’, or a NeoClassical hollow frame.  It is very appropriate for male portraits of the 1760s-70s, where costume and colouring are in retreat from the extravagances of the mid-third of the century, and wigs are straightening out from the poodle clumps of the 1740s.

In 1996, when two frame exhibitions were put on in London – The Art of the Picture Frame at the National Portrait Gallery and Frameworks by Paul Mitchell Ltd – this painting by Gainsborough in its straight-sided Rococo frame was one of the works borrowed for the latter, to illustrate a stage in the complex choreography of frame styles through Europe in the 18th century.  It was shown alongside different nationalities and earlier forms of Rococo, such as the Italian swept frame of the late 1740s on Francesca de Mura’s Portrait of Count James Joseph O’Mahoney.

Francesca de Mura, Portrait of Count James Joseph O’Mahoney, Lieutenant-General in the Neapolitan Service, Knight of St Januarius, c.1748, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Here, the swirl of the multi-scrolling rails with their pierced and engraved corners & centres and small demi-centres suits the billowing cloak and rather theatrical pose of the Count.  This is not the full-blown flamboyance of le genre pittoresque, however: this is the Italian Rococo – not so emphatically Baroque & sculptural as the French version, not so like shallowly-carved broderie anglais as the British, not so narrow in the rails and vast in the cartouche area as Scandinavian and German – but light, delicately ornamented, restrained.  In this respect the portrait and frame together make an interesting comparison with the Gainsborough and its frame: two men, painted twenty years apart, both in neutral earthy colours, a soldier and a musician; both set in what may well be the original Rococo frame in each case – frames which are appropriate for their subjects, similar in several features of their structure and lacking the operatic drama of many Rococo patterns.

The frame of the De Mura is still the richer and more resplendent of the two, and may even have been designed by De Mura himself; he certainly produced drawings of frames (De Mura, Portrait of a nobleman in a trophy frame, pen-&-ink, Cooper Hewitt Museum, New York).  It is covered all over with decorative punchwork, like lace; a characteristically Italian practice. The British frame is, as it were, more of an everyday design: costly, labour-intensive carving has been reduced by the choice of a straight-sided style, with the main part of the decoration confined to the corner cartouches.

British Rococo straight-sided frame with gadrooned top rail & corner cartouches, courtesy of Paul Mitchell Ltd.

Because of this everyday quality, and because its design breaks so easily into discrete quarters, this frame was an ideal pattern to reproduce for the Frameworks exhibition, as an example of how such an object would have been (and still is) executed.

British Rococo frame: bottom left-hand corner

The manufacturing process moves around the frame from the bottom left-hand corner.  The overall structure is made of pine, which became ubiquitous in Britain during the 18th century as it was soft, easy to carve and to obtain, rapidly-growing and prolific.  Earlier, from the 14th to the 16th century, frames were more frequently made of oak, which had also been very easily available at that time in Britain; since the styles then generally had little decorative carving, the relative hardness of oak was not a problem, and it was seen as hard-wearing and suitable for the stone and panelled interiors where it would hang, and had an attractive grain.  When carved decoration was required, limewood was often chosen, as it was as soft as pine, pale, close-textured, and also fairly easily obtainable.  Oak became less frequently used for frames as greater demands were made for it from the British navy, and also because it was much harder to carve.  Limewood enjoyed a huge boost in its use with the school of Grinling Gibbons in the 17th century, where carvers required a wood which could be transformed into fantasies of fruit, flowers, birds, lobsters and ears of corn, deeply undercut and reduced to the thinnest of slivers.  However, pine was the cheapest option, growing in use and popularity throughout the history of framing in Britain; often providing the base for frames veneered in other, more attractive woods, and capable of being easily laminated to give the requisite depth for high relief carving.

British Rococo frame: bottom right-hand corner

When the carcass of the frame has been cut to size by the joiner, and the design roughed out, the decorative elements can be carved.  Here, the corner cartouche with its raffle leaves, shell and trailing floral sprigs can be seen emerging from the wood; the mouldings along the separate limbs being carved in profile and then decorated with the appropriate motif.

British Rococo frame: top right-hand corner

The carving is brought to a high level of finish, and layers of gesso or whiting are then applied.  Gesso is made from extremely fine powdered chalk or gypsum, mixed with a size made from rabbitskin glue.  The resulting mixture is like a clay slip, but brilliantly white; it dries to an enamel-like finish which can be sanded and polished to give a surface as smooth as ivory, and can also be recut to sharpen the carving, and to add details such as leaf veins and surface texture.  Sand is added on top of the gesso in the small flat frieze next to the sight moulding; this gives a strong granular texture, and acts as a foil to the smoothness of the main ogee moulding.  Other things with greater heft than sand have been applied to frames in the past, in an effort to provide interest and variety: seashells have been glued on and over-gilded, and at least one large 19th century frame has had coffee beans stuck to its frieze.

British Rococo frame: top left-hand corner

The gesso and sand are then painted with yellow ochre as an underlayer for the gold leaf.  During the 19th century, the sides of a frame perpendicular to the wall surface might also sometimes be painted thickly with ochre and left, as a economizing substitute for gold leaf in an area which didn’t matter so much.  Whistler, for instance, asks for this to be done when he is ordering frames from Paris via his friend George Lucas. Gainsborough’s frame, however, is gilded on the sides as well.  Those parts of it which will be burnished to a shine are covered with a dark red gilder’s bole – a type of fine clay, which also comes in brown and a dark slate blue, enabling the eventual tint of the gold to be very subtly altered, from warmer to cooler.  The bole is sized, and gold leaf applied to the damp surface, to which it clings with a sort of magnetic attraction – a gentle breath will guide the leaves of gold around the contours and into the interstices of the carving.  When it’s dried, the gold can be burnished with a smooth piece of agate; this is very apparent in the top corner, where the burnished surfaces stand out darkly against the matte yellow areas.

British Rococo frame: left-hand side

The left-hand side of the frame shows three stages of the gilding, in which the brilliant sheen of the burnished gold has been taken back by glazing with films of size and pigment in order to give the effect of the patina of age. This is done to suit the ageing of the picture, and to avoid the frame appearing to leap from the wall in a crude sunburst of shiny gold.  And there is the frame! – produced in exactly the same manner as in the 18th century, all by hand, but costing a lot more proportionately in terms of labour than it would have done then.  A hand-carved antique frame is like a master sculpture: the product of knowledge, skill, and hours of work, just like the painting.  The perfect frame design, beautifully executed, forms a marriage with the picture so that there are no longer two objects but one complete work of art.

I am grateful to Dulwich Picture Gallery and the Fitzwilliam Museum for permission to publish images of their works, and especially to Paul Mitchell for the photos of the replica frame.

Turner’s Picture Frames: Part 2

…the frames chosen by the artist, his patrons, and for public and private collections since his death.

 To recap briefly on Part 1 of this article: the emergence of two main types from the frames which remain to us, and the evidence of his own gallery, indicate that Turner did sometimes accept (and possibly orchestrate) his patrons’ preferences, that he used related patterns himself, and that he certainly produced his work in the knowledge of how it would be presented.

Turner, Admiral Van Tromp’s barge entering the Texel, 1645, 1831, Sir John Soane’s Museum

For example, he chose a Louis XV-style frame for the painting, Admiral Van Tromp’s barge  (RA 1831, London, Sir John Soane’s Museum).  This was exhibited at the Royal Academy, where Soane bought it for 250 guineas (£262.50) – a price which (as with The Bridgewater Seapiece, Part 1) would traditionally have included the ornate frame – and there is no record in Soane’s archives of its ever having been subsequently reframed[1].  Although the voluptuously curved scrolling foliate-&-shell cartouches and swept rails echo the lines of galleon and wave, it is not a particularly appropriate setting for a marine painting, and it was presumably intended to enhance and dramatize a ‘grand machine’.

T. Fearnley, Turner painting Regulus, 1837, private collection, Statens Museum for Kunst, Denmark

A similar corner-&-centre frame, with swept rails and the same swooping acanthus-&-shell cartouches as on the frame of Admiral Van Tromp’s barge, was used to reframe the large Regulus in 1837 (1828 and 1837, London, Tate Gallery), a picture which also features, and glorifies, a military leader; it can be seen in Turner painting Regulus, by Thomas Fearnley.

Turner, Modern Rome: Campo Vaccino, 1839, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; photograph courtesy of Sotheby’s

A more simplified Rococo revival frame, but one which is also almost certainly original, still surrounds Modern Rome: Campo Vaccino, 1839. This painting was acquired by Turner’s friend and patron, Hugh Munro of Novar, from the 1839 Royal Academy exhibition, and remained in his family until 1878, when it was bought (via Christie’s) by the 5^th Earl of Rosebery. A hundred years later, the 7^th Earl lent it to the National Gallery of Scotland, where it hung until 2010, when it was sold (via Sotheby’s) to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. This direct and straightforward provenance (and the undisturbed and pristine condition of the painting) means that the contemporary Rococo revival frame is very unlikely to have been exchanged at any point[2]; it also shares a number of features with the next frame.

Turner, The Dawn of Christianity (The Flight into Egypt), 1841, © National Museums Northern Ireland; Collection Ulster Museum

From 1840 Turner began to play with the conventionally rectangular shape of the canvas, producing square images which he would set in frames with a round or octagonal sight.  The Louis-XV-style pattern was adapted to this format by extending it inwards with delicate foliate spandrels.  The first appearance of this type was the Rococo frame with tiered rocaille cartouches used on Bacchus and Ariadne (RA 1840), and then later for The dawn of Christianity (RA 1841, Ulster Museum, Belfast), on which it remains[3].  Martin Anglesea suggests that this was a scientific solution to the problem of translating illimitable reality into the limited space observed by the spectator: Turner thought that,

‘the circular or octagonal format agreed better with the field of vision actually perceived by the eye… [it] also suited the vortex-like, centrifugal or funnel-shaped compositions which he was continually producing in the 1840s’[4].

Round images – tondi – had in earlier centuries often been framed in circular, garland-like frames, but Turner followed Baroque and Rococo patterns and retained the square outer contour of the frame around the circular or polygonal sight.  This may have been an extension of the field-of-vision theory, the spandrels of a square frame allowing the work to blend more subtly into the wider background; though equally it may have been for motives of economy (since a tondo frame had always been more difficult and expensive to make), or because he thought that his patrons would not accept an eccentrically-shaped picture into the unifomity of their collections.  It was an unfortunate decision, however, since ovals and tondi have frequently remained in their original settings because of the greater cost of reframing them; but Turner’s habit of starting with a square canvas which he painted from corner to corner has left future generations free to replace his original spandrel frames with standard square ones – thus displaying the entire painted surface and subverting the intention and the vision of the artist[5].

Here, for example, is an orphaned mount with spandrels which probably belonged to the frame of a painting in the Turner Bequest. Joyce Townsend, conservation scientist at Tate, ‘analyzed the traces of paint on the reverse and confirmed them as Turner’s paint’ (information from Adrian Moore).  The dawn of Christianity escaped this treatment because, although the canvas is square, the image itself is round and not merely prescribed by a circular sight edge.

Turner, The dawn of Christianity,detail of frame

 Turner, Modern Rome: Campo Vaccino, detail of frame

The frame shares some similarities with that on Modern Rome: Campo Vaccino, painted two years earlier. Both frames have a striated pattern in the hollow, imitating in compo the engraved hatching into the gesso coating of a carved giltwood frame. They both have narrow swept rails, almost identical floral sprays trailing out from the cartouches, and busy ornaments at the sight edge. By 1840, at least, Turner was using George Foord of Wardour Street as his framemaker (see note on Turner’s framers, below), so it is possible that both these frames are Foord’s.

Turner used versions of both the scotia and Louis XV-style pattern as ‘close frames’ (i.e. frames without mounts) for his watercolours.  Unhappily, these have fallen victim in even greater numbers to changes in taste and the technology of framing.  Watercolours in both private and museum collections have for conservation reasons been taken from their original frames, mounted in pale-coloured acid-free boards and set in plain pine mouldings.  This does much for their preservation but nothing for their presentation.

Turner, St Hughes denouncing vengeance on the shepherd of Cormayer… (Val d’Aosta), RA 1803, Sir John Soanes’s Museum, London

A rare surviving example of an original ‘close’ frame can be seen on the watercolour, Val d’Aosta (RA 1803, Sir John Soanes’s Museum).  This is a scotia pattern, decorated – like the frame of The Bridgewater Seapiece (Part 1) – with acanthus leaves, and defined by an inner gilt cuff or slip, egg-&-dart moulding, and a knulled top edge.  The work was purchased for 50 guineas (£52.50) from Turner’s Gallery by Mrs Soane, and, as in the case of Admiral Van Tromp’s barge, there is again no record of Soane reframing it.  The only archival reference to it in the Museum notes its escape in the 1880s from a recommendation to provide it with a mount ‘of at least four inches in width’, and a new frame[6].  As well as retaining its original frame it has also been protected from light. The resultant survival of intensity in the colour of the paints demonstrates why Turner chose – as many of his peers did – to frame his watercolours like his oil paintings, unmounted, in heavy golden borders.  The frame on the Val d’Aosta is particularly wide and opulent, compared with contemporary or earlier examples of 18^th century close frames surviving at, for instance, Stourhead House in Wiltshire[7].

Turner, Val d’Aosta, 1803, Sir John Soanes’s Museum, detail of frame

In 1857 a writer in The Builder observed, of this practice of close-framing watercolours, that ‘Turner always contemplated the union of the gold of his colour with the gold of his frame… he… used to urge the hanging of frames containing his drawings in groups, without intervals between the frames, so that nothing but gold might be seen in connection with the drawing’[8].  The lack of interval between the frames was familiar in the hangings commonly used by institutions such as the Royal Academy, Old Water-Colour Society and Paris Salon, where simple want of sufficient space produced exhibition walls resembling secular polyptychs, with ‘the appearance of an immense mass of gilt gingerbread’[9].

Johann Heinrich Ramberg, The exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1787, engraving by Pietro Martini, Royal Academy

However, Turner’s patrons also followed this method of hanging – notably Windus, with his watercolours, whilst Turner’s own gallery shows a similar exercise in the exclusion of as much visible wall space as possible.  This dependence on the frame as the sole foil to the painting (in either medium) is dictated again by the richness of colour Turner employed; where background did intrude, he responded by intensifying the relative tint in his painting – hence the notorious increments in his reds on Varnishing Days at the Royal Academy.

His principal care with regard to frames seems thus to have been the maintenance of a tonal equilibrium in his work, by offsetting it with a wide margin of gold, then considered a ‘neutral’ colour.  The section and ornament of the moulding produced further effects, isolating that picture from others; enhancing pictorial depth and perspective; providing secondary illumination; echoing compositional forms and lines; indicating the grandeur of the work.  Yet Turner never seems to have been tempted to design his own frames from scratch, as the Pre-Raphaelites were to do after his death; he used and adapted existing patterns.  His only excursion into innovatory design is in his famous use of ship’s cable to frame his work, reported first of his Roman exhibition in 1828.

Turner, Vision of Medea, 1828, Tate, replica rope frame by Lawrence Gowing

This included a Vision of Medea, View of Orvieto,  and Regulus (1828, reworked 1837 and reframed in revival Louis XV-style; see above).  J.A. Koch described the exhibition in his Moderne Kunstchronik (published 1834), noting that,‘The pictures were surrounded with ship’s cable instead of gilt frames’[10].  The cable was apparently painted to resemble gilding, and was either an act of economy or a desperate measure in the face of a deadline.  However, Turner shrewdly saw the inherent possibilities; a report of the same technique used later at the Royal Academy emphasizes the theatricality of its unveiling, whilst the painting to which it was applied this time was appropriately a marine subject:

‘His brother artists greatly admired it, and all remarked on the absence of a frame.  Day after day they exclaimed, ‘Where’s the frame?’  Turner replied, ‘All right, it is coming’.  Only on the morning before the private view did he make this good.  He brought four lengths of the thickest ship’s cable, and nailed them round the picture; this he painted with yellow ochre, and brightened the prominent parts with real gold.  The effect was excellent and people went so far as to admire the richness and appropriateness of the frame.’

Turner, Vision of Medea, 1828, Tate, detail of frame

Carved rope mouldings were already part of the established vocabulary of architectural ornament, so this use of cable may not have seemed quite so radical to spectators who saw the finished, gilded border on the painting, as opposed to those who saw Turner produce it dramatically, like a conjuror’s rabbit; at any rate, it does not seem to have spawned a genre of instant framing. (Lawrence Gowing’s replica rope frame seems much too slight; ship’s cable in the early 19th century must have been much weightier, and – as Koch noted – Turner used four separate pieces, since presumably his cable was too thick to bend at the corners).

After Turner’s death, his staple (conventional) frame patterns continued to be rehashed and served up in ever cheaper and more unpalatable forms, debasing the relatively chaste, well-made revival designs which he had used; whilst for watercolours fashion veered from close frames towards plainer mouldings and pale card mounts.

The National Gallery, bequeathed nearly twenty thousand of Turner’s unframed drawings, set in only three of the largest in gilded close frames.  Charles Eastlake, then the Director of the Gallery, reported,

‘…that these three drawings had been exhibited at the Royal Academy, and that, when so exhibited, the drawing itself was, in each case, in contact with the gilt frame, without mounting.  The Committee were of the opinion that… no mounting is advisable.  The pattern of a frame suggested by Mr Russell was adopted for the three drawings severally[11].’

The Committee decided that a selection of the rest should also be set in Russell’s pattern: ‘Frame to be in oil gold 2 in^s wide/flat with 2 engraved lines’; and that most of them were to have ‘a French mount (that is a sheet of thick paper, of a tint agreed on…)’.  Only the Liber Studiorum drawings retained, save a few, Turner’s own mounts.  They were ‘to be framed singly with french mount 3 in^s wide – Drawings not to be desturbed [sic] – dirty mounts to be adapted accordingly…’ The work was carried out by Colnaghi, at a cost of £116.12.00 [£116.60] for 67 watercolours.

John Ruskin, as an executor of Turner’s will, interfered tirelessly in the deliberations of the Committee, determined to see that the paintings were protected adequately from light and dust, and giving as much of his attention to the backs as to the fronts of the frames.  His ideal was a special gallery for Turner’s watercolours, with each in a ‘golden case and closing doors’[12], like a mediaeval triptych; but he suggested a more practical system to the National Gallery’s Trustees:

‘The drawings chosen for permanent exhibition should… be arranged in two rows along a well lighted wall not exposed to sunshine.  They need not be in separate frames: a… narrow bar of gold separating the mounts would be all that was needed, but some considerable space should be allowed in the mounts, otherwise the drawings will injure each other[13].’

Here we see the beginning of the clipping of Turner’s vision: where he had wished that ‘nothing but gold might be seen in connection with the drawing’, the gold was now to be pushed out to a perimeter edging, and replaced by a tinted mount.

Mahogany cabinet for Turner’s watercolours, 1861, probably made by William & Edward Snell, London; © Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Ruskin’s solution for his own Turner watercolours had been to commission light-excluding mahogany cabinets, into which groups of framed and mounted paintings could be slid.  He recommended similar cases to the Trustees; mounts were to be white, while ‘The frame is of white pine; because the whiter the wood, the less it hurts the colour of the sketch’[14].

Mahogany cabinet open, showing how the paintings are slotted in

Cabinets to the coloured design he attached were apparently made for the National Gallery, but have long since been lost; Ruskin’s own cabinets remain, now at the University of Lancaster, and in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.  The cream of the national collection was to be housed like this, shut away from atmospheric damage; whilst watercolours of lesser importance were to be exhibited to the public in an arrangement more like that suggested by Ruskin in his first letter to the National Gallery Trustees (see above: 8 Dec. 1856).

Arthur Severn, The interior of Ruskin’s bedroom at Brantwood, 1900, Ruskin Foundation, Lancaster University; with thanks to The Victorian Web

Arthur Severn’s Interior of Ruskin’s Bedroom at Brantwood shows that Ruskin’s own Turner drawings were hung like this, almost edge-to-edge in white mounts and narrow gilt frames, and these became the standard treatments for Turner’s watercolours in public and private collections.

Ruskin’s evangelizing vision of how best to present his hero’s work became so far the accepted method that in the 20^th century, the Farnley series of twenty watercolours was reframed in this way.  C.F. Bell had described the series as it still existed in the 1890s, in an annotation to his own copy of Exhibited works of J.M.W. Turner:  ‘… the original collection of Turner’s water-colours… were all framed in these deep gilt frames, some decorated with the family crest, in which Fawkes and the painter had had them put’[15]. The reframing, into narrow gilt frames with white mounts (illustrated in Country Life, 27 May 1954, p.1714), destroyed what was probably the only surviving collection of Turner’s paintings to have been framed by the artist.

Other groups – for instance, the Lloyd Collection in the British Museum – tend to have uniform settings and mounts chosen by the purchaser, often, as in this case, produced c.1912 by the firm of Agnew, which seems automatically to have reframed many of the Turners which have passed through its hands.

Turner, The falls of Terni, c.1818, in an Agnew’s watercolour frame with blind (down on the left, raised on the right); courtesy of Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery

Watercolour frames with inbuilt blinds, like this one (above), which have been described as Ruskin’s, were almost certainly also produced by Agnew’s, possibly in the late 19^th, but more probably in the early 20^th century.

A loss similar to that of the Farnley frames is the disappearance of that made for Robert Stevenson’s Bell Rock Light House (watercolour, 1819, National Galleries of Scotland), for which we have apparently the only extant Turner sketch for a frame section[16].  The picture remained until quite recently in the possession of the Stevenson family – often the best guarantee for the retention of the original frame – but unfortunately, when it passed into the collections of the National Galleries of Scotland, it lost this guarantee.  The seemingly universal museum practice of reclothing watercolours in the white mounts and pine frames advocated by Ruskin does not extend in an equal gesture of conservation to cover the original frames – even those designed by the artist – and this frame seems to have disappeared completely.

When we look at Turner’s works, therefore, whether oil paintings or watercolours, in public or private hands, it is important to remember that the way that they are now presented is often far from the way in which the artist expected and intended them to be seen.

Chronological note on framemakers recorded as mentioned by Turner himself:

1800:   sends his ‘respects to Mr Williams & family’; possibly John Williams of Oxford, listed with ‘Printsellers, Carvers and Gilders and Picture-frame Makers’, in Pigot’s Directory, 1823-24. A Mr & Mrs Williams bought prints of Turner’s work, and Iffley Mill, Oxford, watercolour, 1800, was given to ‘Williams the Engraver’, at whose house Turner was staying in Oxford (Gage, The collected correspondence of J.M.W. Turner, Oxford, 1980).

1809-12:   James Wyatt, carver & gilder, Oxford, commissioned High Street, Oxford, and Oxford from the Abingdon Road, sending the frames to Turner for  exhibition.

1820:   ‘Stegler, the frame-maker, called…’ This is possibly ‘Stiggle’, rather than ‘Stegler’: there was a William Stiggle, Carver & Gilder at 440 Strand, in the Post Office Annual Directory, 1808 (Gage, ibid.).

1840: Offers John Sheepshanks a choice between Venice from the Canale della                                   Giudecca… and Venice, the Bridge of Sighs, adding, ‘…when you desired me to tell Mr Foord to make for you the Frame I told him to make exactly the like for me, hence arose the Two Pictures…’

1844:    To Thomas Griffith, probably re Hero and Leander, ‘…The stormy Picture      you said in the Parlour for Mr Foords Hero to advise with about both cleaning and lining…’ (Gage, ibid.).

The ‘Foord’ in both paragraphs above is George Foord of Wardour Street, Soho. See the entry for George Foord, later Foord & Dickinson, in the National Portrait Gallery Directory of British Framemakers.  He was framemaker for the Society of Painters in Watercolour from c.1830-1850, and also worked for Ruskin.  His firm later became the Foord & Dickinson which framed work for Rossetti, Lord Leighton, Albert Moore and Whistler, etc., and in 1861 made the frames for the Turners which Ruskin gave to the University Galleries of Oxford.

For further information: ‘Understanding the framing of the Turner Bequest’ by Ivan Houghton and Gerry Alabone considers and catalogues the various frame patterns on the paintings left by Turner to the nation and now in the collection of Tate Britain. It was published in the British Art Journal in 2011.

A series of photos on Flickr charts the restoration of the frame on the version of The Battle of Trafalgar in the National Maritime Museum.

Most of the images included here are courtesy of the respective museums or owners, to whom I am extremely grateful; especially to those who took photos for me themselves, or otherwise alerted me to an original Turner frame.

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[1]  Information from Helen Dorey.

[2]  Information on Modern Rome… from Sotheby’s sale catalogue for the painting, 7 July 2010; contributions by James Stourton and Simon Howell.

[3] This suggestion as to the two occupants of this particular frame comes from Professor Gerard E. Finley, via Martin Anglesea.

[4] Martin Anglesea, catalogue entry on The dawn of Christianity for the Ulster Museum, no date.

[5] For example, Light and colour (Goethe’s theory)… and Shade and darkness… (both RA 1843, Tate); Peace – burial at sea and War. The exile and the rock limpet (both RA 1842, Tate). The Oxford Companion…, op. cit.

[6]  Sir John Soane’s Museum, Trustees Minute Book, 2, February 1883; information from Helen Dorey.

[7] The close frames at Stourhead are generally narrower and simpler, characterized by a plain scotia, a sight moulding of small leaf-tips/ rais-de-coeurs, and a top moulding of leaf-&-berry, twisted ribbon or pearls.  A number frame the work of Abraham Louis Ducros (1748-1810), who, according to Colt Hoare, should be credited with the revolutionary step of framing watercolours like oil paintings, in close gilt frames (information from Alistair Laing).

[8] Gage, 1969, op.cit., p.163.

[9] Martin Hardie, Watercolour painting in Britain, London, 1967, vol. I.  Representations of these exhibition hangings include Pietro Martini’s engraving, …au Salon du Louvre en 1785 (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Dept.des Estampes); Martini’s engraving after J.H. Ramberg’s Exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1787 (London, Royal Academy); Samuel P.B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre, 1831-33 (Chicago, Terra Museum of American Art); Pierre-Ambroise Richebourg’s photograph, Salon de 1861 (Paris, Louvre); Jean Bérard’s A day in the Salon, 1874.

[10]   Gage, 1969, op.cit., p.104.

[11]   National Gallery Archives (NG5/131/1856); ‘Dec. 5 Report of Director’).  The three watercolours were Battle of Font Bard, Val d’Aosta; Edinburgh from the Carlton Hill; and Funeral of Sir Thomas Lawrence.  Russell was one of the Trustees of the National Gallery.

[12]  Ruskin to his father, quoted in Ruskin and the English Watercolour, exh, cat., Whitworth Gallery, University of Manchester, 1989, p.42.

[13]   National Gallery Archives (NG5/131/1856; Dec. 8).

[14]  National Gallery Archives (NG5/220/1857; March 2).

[15]  Clive F. Bell, Exhibited works of J.M.W. Turner, 1901, V7 A, London.

[16]  Illustrated in John Gage, ed., The collected correspondence of J.M.W. Turner, Oxford, 1980.

A Royal Frame in the Egyptian Taste…

…from the exhibition Cairo to Constantinople: Early Photographs of the Middle East, at The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, 8 March – 21 July 2013 and at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, October 2014 – February 2015.

A mid-19^th century frame in the  Egyptian taste, design attributed here to Phillips; workmanship attributed here to Foord & Dickinson; 1863-69; Royal Collection Trust © 2013, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

This astonishing, carefully-archaeological and very attractive Victorian frame, made for an Egyptian stela of 3^rd century BC, is one of the items in an exhibition based on a tour of the Middle East made by the young Prince of Wales in 1862.

The 20 year-old Prince, later Edward VII, had only recently lost his father, Prince Albert (on 14 December 1861); however, the Middle Eastern tour was of enough political significance for it to go ahead, the Prince’s friendly relationship with the Viceroy of Egypt being particularly important. After travelling through France, Germany and Austria to Venice, the Prince’s party continued by boat via Dalmatia and Corfu to Alexandria, arriving on 1^st March 1862[1]. It contained the first Royal photographer to take part in such a tour – Francis Bedford; he recorded the entire trip, and these photos form the basis of the exhibition Cairo to Constantinople.

The Royal party spent March 15^th-20^th in Luxor, and on 18th the Prince visited a dig at the Memnonium in Thebes.   His journal records the visit, and the fact that the Viceroy of Egypt was allowing him to have anything of interest which was found that day; he received ‘a small mummy’ and the wooden funerary stela. Details of the stela and its conservation can be found online, in the pages dealing with the exhibition.

The tour had a large cultural component, as well as political ends; the Prince busily visited museums, galleries and temples throughout the four months of his tour, and was obviously very alive to the rarity and value of the stela, commissioning the frame, above, which has contained it ever since.  The genesis and manufacture of such a unique design, is, however, almost completely undocumented, and it is due to the inclusion of the stela in the exhibition based on the Prince’s tour that the production of the frame is now being examined.

Phillips’s label, on the reverse of the framed stela; Royal Collection Trust © 2013, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

The only clue which it offers is the label on the backboard, of ‘Phillips,/23 Cockspur St/ London’, beneath the Royal crown. This is the label of the jewellers, Phillips Brothers, also known as Robert Phillips, founded by Robert and his brother Magnus at some point before 1839. According to the 1841 census, Magnus was much older than Robert (40 to his 26), and was classified as a silversmith, whilst Robert was a watch maker.  Magnus died in 1847, and the 1851 census records Robert, by now 36, as having been born in Abergavenny, Monmouth, and describes him as a goldsmith and jeweller.  Magnus’s place in the business is later filled by Robert’s son, Alfred (born 1845/46). In 1869 the name of the firm changes to Phillips Brothers & Son to reflect Alfred’s becoming a partner with his father; he takes over completely in 1884, Robert having died in 1881[2]. This means that the label (unless slightly out of date, which may be unlikely on a Royal commission), gives an end date for the frame of 1869, because of the name change; the Prince’s tour itself giving an earliest date of summer, 1862.

No.23 Cockspur Street is apparently the central building, with 3-storey bay and quoins (demolished 1914) although it is the building to the left which has the Royal Warrant over its window; photo courtesy of English Heritage and London Metropolitan Archives, via British History Online

Mary Haweis mentions ‘Messrs Phillips of Cockspur Street’ in her 1878 book, The Art Of Beauty: ‘Under the direction of Messrs Phillips, the most perfect models are sought for the ornaments they furnish. Museums and picture galleries are ransacked for devices of necklaces, earrings and pendants…. I saw facsimiles of exquisite Etruscan and Greek collars in gold, every detail being carefully studied, and reproduced after the manner of the ancients.’[3]  This archaeological accuracy seems to have lapsed with Alfred’s accession to the business, but from the 1840s to the beginning of the ’80s, it was one of the driving forces behind the firm.

Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament, cover of 1865 edition, courtesy of  The New York Public Library

This was in tune with the Victorian interest in historical revivals. Owen Jones’s Grammar of Ornament, published in 1856, was both a symptom and a stimulus of the thirst for knowledge of the past, like the sudden fashion for Anglo-Saxon Christian names (all those Aethelwalds and Cuthberts), and the popularity of Renaissance revival furniture in the 1851 Great Exhibition[4]. The enthusiasm for Egyptology in particular increased markedly during the 19^th century. The British Museum, founded in 1753 and opened to the public in 1759, had been steadily creating its own purpose-built home in Bloomsbury between the 1820s and the 1850s, the Egyptian Galleries being constructed from 1825-34. The Museum had acquired the Rosetta Stone in 1802, which was added to the original 150 Egyptian objects from the collection of Sir Hans Sloane it had owned since its foundation; acquisitions gradually accumulated and by the 1860s its holding in this department was about 10,000 objects. British travellers had begun to visit Egyptian sites from the early 19^th century, and by the time that Jones published his collection of a hundred and twelve plates of densely-packed ornamental motifs from around the world, he was able to include Egyptian examples not only from the British Museum and the Louvre, but from the temples and tombs at Thebes.

Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament, ‘Egyptian No. 4: Plate VII’, with thanks to John Hopper, Design Decoration Craft

The most interesting of Jones’s Egyptian plates, in connection with the frame of the stela, is No. 4 or Plate VII in the book. This is made up of blocks and bands of running decoration, much of it from ‘the walls of tombs and temples’ (a number of which are in Thebes), and many examples of which are ‘derived from the same elements, viz. the Lotus in a pendent position, with a bunch of grapes intervening’[5].

Frame in the Egyptian taste, detail of the base; and Owen Jones, ibid.: Plate VII, detail of No.12

No. 12 in Plate VII, which is the upper part of the third block down on the left-hand side of the page, is almost identical to the decoration of the top moulding and frieze of the frame, whilst the roundels with centre dots on the sight moulding can be seen in No.21 on the plate – the block immediately below Nos.12/13.  Both of these blocks of ornament are labelled by Jones as ‘From the Tombs, Gourna [Thebes]’. The band of red, green, and yellow oblongs with black-&-white dividers is also very similar to the band painted across the stela itself, immediately beneath the figure scene and around three sides of its perimeter.

Detail of painted border on the funerary stela

The closeness of the decoration of the frame both to elements of the stela itself and to Jones’s reproduction of motifs from the location where the stela had been found, shows that the designer of the frame was well aware of the provenance and rarity of the stela, and had the knowledge to create an appropriate setting for it; he also had the means to research ‘authentic’ decoration for that setting. Along with the label on the reverse of the stela, this puts the ball firmly into Robert Phillips’s court, which is just what the Prince of Wales seems to have done.

Detail of a necklace atributed to Phillips Brothers, 1862-63, scarabs dating from c.1600-650 BC; Royal Collection Trust © 2013, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

Detail of the crest of the ‘Egyptian’ frame, with winged solar disc held between two snakes.

As well as the stela and the ‘small mummy’, the Prince had been presented with a set of ancient scarabs; he commissioned a necklace from Phillips into which the scarabs were set, and gave it to his bride, Princess Alexandra of Denmark, whom he married in 1863, the year after his expedition. Each scarab has been set in gold, and hangs from a miniature winged solar disc held between two S-shaped snakes, just like the enlarged version which crowns the frame. The agence of Robert Phillips in the production of the frame is therefore, from all the evidence, almost certain.

Phillips Brothers, gold and enamel pendant in Egyptian Revival style, in the form of two cobras flanking a large cabochon agate, 1863-70, © Trustees of the British Museum

However, Phillips was a jeweller. He worked on microscopic productions of tiny forged links and delicate engraved decoration. His work rooms would not have been equipped to make something of wood, gesso and gold leaf on the scale of this frame; and although he and his workers possessed enviable skills, they were not the right skills for framemaking. He must have drawn the design, and then contracted it out.

There are three possible framemakers to whom he might have turned.  One was Joseph Green the younger (1808-73) of Charles Street, north of Oxford Street; framemaker to the Pre-Raphaelites and son of such an expert carver that the latter supplied the compo ornament maker, George Jackson with carved boxwood moulds. A second was William Brooks (c.1799-c.1871) of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, who was appointed carver and gilder to Queen Victoria in 1863 (but who had himself been a customer of George Jackson’s in the 1830s & ’40s). The third was the firm of Foord & Dickinson (Charles Foord, c.1836-92, & William Dickinson, c.1816-74) of Wardour Street, framemakers to the National Portrait Gallery, and to DG Rossetti, Holman Hunt, the ‘second wave’ Pre-Raphaelites & the Olympians, who took over Green’s clients, following his retirement.

William Holman Hunt, The scapegoat, detail of right-hand rail with heartsease, 1854-56, Lady Lever Gallery, Port Sunlight; and frame in the Egyptian taste, detail of the base

Green is included amongst the candidates because he was the most innovatory framemaker in London from the late 1840s, carrying out designs for the Pre-Raphaelites which were extremely avant-garde for their time (see ‘Pre-Raphaelite frames’ for Holman Hunt’s The hireling shepherd, the frame of which was probably executed by Green in 1852, and The awakening conscience, definitely by Green and executed in 1854).  He may well have worked for Ford Madox Brown from 1846-47, as the latter’s studio in Clipstone Street was only four streets north of Green’s workshop in Charles Street, and as he certainly produced the frame of Rossetti’s Self-portrait drawing of 1847, NPG, probably framed 1848 when Rossetti was briefly a pupil of Brown’s[6]. He made the frame for Hunt’s The scapegoat, in 1855 (see ‘More Pre-Raphaelite frames’), and this is relevant to the production of the Egyptian frame, since the low-relief motifs carved onto the rails of The scapegoat were actually cut into the thick layer of gesso which coats it, rather than into the wood, and it seems likely that this is how some of the decoration of the Egyptian frame was also achieved. From the point of view of training, innovation and technique, therefore, Green looks a very probable contender. However, there are no discoverable bills of the 1860s from Green in the Royal Archives[7]; the workshop in Charles Street was a long way north of Cockspur Street, and there are indications that, by the mid-1860s onwards, Green may have become progressively less in control of his business[8].

The second candidate is William Brooks. There is a cluster of payments to Brooks in the Royal Archives for unspecified paintings during the 1860s, three in 1865, and two each in 1867, 1868 and 1870:

Brooks. Picture Frames                   £   5. 3.-           11 Dec 1865

Brooks Carver & Gilder                    £ 20.17. 6        16 Jan 1865

Mr Brooks                                             £ 30. 5.-           11 July 1865

Brooks – Picture frames                  £ 25.10.-            3 Jan 1867

Mr. Brookes Picture frames           £ 10. 4.-             7 Jun 1867

Brookes Picture frames                   £ 32.15. 6        23 July 1868

Brooks Picture frames                      £  6.12.-             7 Nov 1868

Brooks – picture frames                  £ 19. 7. 0           2 June 1870

Brooks – Picture frames                  £ 31.18. 6        15 Dec 1870[9]

 He had been appointed carver and gilder to Queen Victoria in 1863, as noted above, and this appointment was carried through, in the person of his son, William Elliott Brooks, into the reign of Edward VII, the quondam Prince of Wales. Brooks was about nine years older than Green, and a much more conservative framemaker; he would have suited the Queen more in this respect. In the Post Office London Directory for 1852, he is entered as ‘Brooks Wm. carver & gilder, 14 Gt Queen st. Lincoln’s inn flds’, but in the census of the previous year he is described as a ‘Picture Frame Maker Employs 4 Men’, which seems to sum up his relationship to Green, who is described as ‘Carver Gilder’ who was currently employing eleven men. The overwhelming impression gathered from the recorded scope of his work is that William Brooks was much more a maker of conventional and academic frames decorated with composition ornament than he was an imaginative trailblazer producing handcarved, original designs. The Directory of British Framemakers notes that the frames he produced for the Royal Collection were ‘Lawrence frames’   (see Jacob Simon’s essay, ‘Thomas Lawrence and picture framing’, page 2) and ‘Alhambra frames’, both of which were encrusted with a restless surface skin of compo decoration. One of his creations was destined for a portrait by Winterhalter – not an artist ever knowingly under-ornamented with compo in the frame area.

Finally, there is Foord & Dickinson. This is a firm which was also employed by the Crown; there are three payments recorded to it for unspecified paintings during the period relevant to the Egyptian frame: in 1866, 1868, and 1870:

Foord & Dickson Frame                    £  6. 7. 6          11 July 1866

Ford & Dickinson Frames                 £ 46.11. -         22 July 1868

Foord & Dickinson P frames            £ 10. 2. 6            1 Dec 1870[10]

It had the same second-generational continuity to it of Joseph Green, father and son: Charles Foord was the son of George Foord, who had died in 1842 when his son was only about 6; the business had been run by Charles’s mother for the next 14 years, probably heavily reliant upon her foreman William Dickinson, a carver and gilder from Hampshire, who had been in his mid-twenties when George Foord died. For a brief space after Elizabeth Foord’s own death in 1856, the business was owned by her three daughters and run by Dickinson; it then passed to Charles Foord and Dickinson in partnership. The firm had a history under George Foord of working for institutions such as the Society of Painters in Water-Colour and the Royal Manchester Institution; from 1857 it worked for the National Portrait Gallery and occasionally for the National Gallery. It was also employed by rather less academic and more outré artists than perhaps Brooks was, working during the 1860s for Frederic Sandys and Holman Hunt[11].

William Holman Hunt, The lantern maker’s courtship, 1854-61, detail of frame with applied compo decoration, Birmingham AG; and Owen Jones, op.cit.: Plate XXXV, detail of No.21, with thanks to John Hopper, Design Decoration Craft

Foord & Dickinson’s work for the National Gallery and its work for Hunt are particularly interesting in this context: the National Gallery commissioned a frame from Foord’s in 1858 for a pair of pictures attributed to Quinten Massys, Christ and The Virgin, which had been designed by Owen Jones[12], whilst Hunt probably used Foord & Dickinson to make the frame of The lantern-maker’s courtship, in 1861, and that for the small version of The afterglow in Egypt, in 1863, the medallions on both of which are based upon the central roundel of ‘Arabian No. 5’, or Plate XXXV of Jones’s The Grammar of Ornament.

In other words, Foord & Dickinson were already as familiar with Owen Jones and his Grammar… as Robert Phillips would have been; in fact it was extremely likely that they all knew each other personally, since Jones would almost certainly have liased with the makers of the Massys frame for the National Gallery, and Phillips’s archaeological enthusiasm would just have certainly have introduced him to the author of such a treasure-house of archaic designs as Jones.

Detail from Cross’s London Guide, 1844, via MapCoNet; Phillips in Cockspur Street is the bottom red dot; Foord & Dickinson’s workshop, the dot top left, and Wm Brooks’s workshop, top right  (with thanks to MapCo.Net)

Phillips and Foord & Dickinson were also conveniently close to each other; certainly nearer than Phillips was either to Green or to Brooks. Foord & Dickinson’s location in Wardour Street has been shrouded in complications engendered by the knocking down of so many buildings, renumbering, and the fact that only the houses and businesses on the west side seem to have been recorded.

George Price Boyce, Backs of some old houses in Soho…, 1866, © Trustees of the British Museum

However, a watercolour by George Price Boyce has surfaced in the collection of the British Museum. Painted in 1866, it has an unwieldy title which is just a description of what it shows: Backs of some old houses in Soho, and St Anne’s Churchyard; view beyond a wall of trees and houses, in the foreground a lamppost and church notice-board. But it is also inscribed on the back, by C.F. Bell, who owned it :

Label taken off the original frame which was a 3/4 inch plain gold moulding with a 2 3/4 inch gold flat inside/ “From a 1st floor of a house overlooking the churchyard of St Anne’s, Soho/ April 26th 1866″ written on the back of the drawing. The place whence the view was taken was no doubt the room over the shop of Foord and Dickinson, carvers and gilders at 90 Wardour St/ I bought this drawing for my Father at an auction at Phillips’ in New Bond St., October 3rd, 1893/C F Bell/

In order for the view to make sense, the artist must have been in the building marked in red on the map below, the wall in the painting being that running along the south side of Old Compton Street and forming the northern boundary of St Anne’s churchyard.  The church itself would be out of view on the left in the painting, and the houses would be the backs of those on the north side of King Street.

Detail from Map of London 1868 by Edward Weller,  via MapCoNet; Foord & Dickinson, 90 Wardour Street, is marked in red (with thanks to MapCo.Net)

This means that Foord & Dickinson were located at the south end of Wardour Street, at the junction with Princes Street, Old Compton Street and Pultney Street. This was very accessible to Phillips in Cockspur Street: a direct walk down Prince’s Street and Whitecomb Street, with the National Gallery on the left and Phillips across the road to the right – convenient  for both firms involved in the creation of such an important design as the frame for the stela.

Exposure to the pioneering work of Owen Jones, through the commissions from the National Gallery, Holman Hunt, and – now almost certainly – this Egyptian Revival frame for the Prince of Wales, stood Foord & Dickinson in good stead with regard to the arrival of the so-called Olympian painters, especially from 1870 onwards. It was the firm which shone most brightly in the opulent setting of the Grosvenor Gallery, from 1877, supplying some of the  great aedicular frames of the last quarter of the century, to Burne-Jones (The Days of Creation, 1872-76; The story of Troy, 1878-90), and Leighton (Fatidica, 1894), as well as framing the work of Whistler, Albert Moore and Edward Lear.

As Rossetti was to write in 1876, ‘it is evident that F. and D. are the only frame makers’.

Frederic, Lord Leighton, Elisha raising the son of the Shunamite, RA 1881, Leighton House, detail of frame

************************************************

I am extremely grateful to Alessandro Nasini, Collections Information Assistant at the Royal Collection, Windsor Castle, who alerted me to the frame of the stela, and to the Royal Collection and the Royal Archives for permission to publish images of the stela & frame and the detail of Queen Alexandra’s necklace.  I am also grateful to the respective museums for permission to publish comparative details from works by Holman Hunt & Leighton, and for the images from the British Museum; also for other online images which have been individually cited.

This article is underpinned by and greatly indebted to the enormous amount of information on the respective framemakers available in Jacob Simon’s Directory of British Framemakers, National Portrait Gallery website.

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[1]  The Prince’s Journal for the tour, 6 February-14 June 1862, can be read online at the Royal Collection.

[2]  See census returns for 1841, 1851, 1861 & 1871. There is some  information on the firm on the British Museum website, and on Sotheby’s website. The death of Magnus Albert Phillips in 1847 is recorded at St Martin-in-the-Fields; with thanks to Jacob Simon for this information.

[3]  This reference comes with thanks to the Jewellery section of the  V & A website.  See also Mary Haweis, The art of beauty, 1978, p.104-105.

[4] Ralph Wornum, art historian & later Keeper of the National Gallery, noted in his review of the Great Exhibition that, whilst NeoLouis items were the most numerous, the most popular were 16^th century Renaissance. See Edward Joy, English furniture 1800-1851, p.153.

[5] Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament, 1856, p. 20.

[6] Hunt’s The awakening conscience  and Rossetti’s Self-portrait both have Green’s label on the back, the one on the former advertizing that he was a  ‘Fancy Wood Frame Maker’; see too Judith Bronkhurst, William Holman Hunt, A Catalogue Raisonné, 2006, vol. II, p.296.

[7]  There seem to be none after 1843, at any rate, when Joseph Green framed Daniel Maclise, Scene from Undine; see Lucy Whitaker, ‘ “Preparing a handsome picture frame to pattern chosen by HRH The Prince”: Prince Albert frames his collection’, Victoria & Albert: Art & Love, Published by Royal Collection Trust / © HM Queen Elizabeth II 2012

[8] By 1870, the firm had become Joseph Green & Co, and was taken over by W.A. Smith in 1871, the year in which poor Green was possibly confined in Camberwell lunatic asylum; however, Smith (presumably Green’s foreman) may have taken over in fact if not in name some years earlier, since in 1868 Rossetti mentions the ‘wiseacre who now rules the destinies of “Green’s”… His ways are of the shifty and mysterious order’. Hunt seems to have switched to Foord & Dickinson during the 1860s, but returned to Green in 1869, by which point Smith was almost certainly in charge.  It is unlikely that a designer seeking to sub-contract work on behalf of the Prince of Wales would have trusted it to a firm, however formerly prestigious, which was going through a rocky period in the 1860s. For Green, see the entry on the NPG website, as in the previous note.

[9]  Royal Archives.

[10] Royal Archives

[11] Most of this information is from the entries for George Foord and Foord & Dickinson, NPG Directory of Picture Framemakers.

[12] See the NPG entry for Foord, ibid.: ‘Ralph Wornum, keeper at the National Gallery, noted in his diary, 15 February 1858, that he had “received from Ford’s the frame for the Quentin Matsys pictures, made from a design by Owen Jones” (information from Nicholas Penny, see National Gallery Archive, NG32/67)’.

Renaissance symbols…

…The iconography of a 15th century frame

One of the most beautiful and interesting frames in London belongs to the V & A (although sadly it’s in storage at the moment). It’s a carved and gilded Renaissance aedicule, probably made in Tuscany[1] in the last quarter of the 15^th century, and it was acquired by the Museum for £19 in 1859[2]. It’s quite an impressive size, standing 58 ½ inches high (148.5 cm), and is just over 40 inches across (102 cm), – although the part of the frame which is set back from the front portion (i.e. the outermost pilasters, with their attendant cornice and pedestals) may have been added later, perhaps to accommodate a change of position or a slightly different function.

Carved aedicular frame, maker unknown, ?Tuscan, ?Venetian, 1475-1500, © Victoria and Albert Museum, London: museum no.: 5893-1859

The structure and surface decoration of this frame have been intensively studied by Christine Powell and Zoë Allen, frame and woodwork conservators at the V & A, in their book, Italian Renaissance frames at the V & A, 2010, to which this article is indebted for all information as to its physical make-up; you can read much of the relevant entry on the Museum’s website.   What is particularly interesting about this object, however, apart from its beauty, the skill of its execution and its pedigree, is the iconographic content of its decoration. This was clearly chosen very specifically by the clients who commissioned the frame, and was added to – also with great care – if and when the aedicule was enlarged. The main element in this respect is the predella panel, described as carved with the instruments of Christ’s Passion. This could be taken to mean the instruments of the Crucifixion, as on the ‘Medici’ frame of Veronese’s Holy Family, where the cherubs hovering in the folds of ornament hold nails, a hammer, pliers, a coil of rope, and a spear.

Veronese, Holy Family with Sts Barbara & John the Baptist, 1550, Galleria degli Uffizi

The predella of the V & A frame is far more inclusive, however, comprising items and symbols which represent episodes from the last Supper onwards. The predella unrolls in a procession of objects from the centre outwards, with no chronological pattern in their placing but rather an emphasis on creating visual balance from this collection of disparate shapes, and a need to include everything relevant to the various events in Christ’s Passion.

Detail of predella: first section from left-hand side

So, starting from the far left, the objects in this section of the predella include two crossed banners scrolling around their shafts, a spade, an axe, a chalice and a small ciborium. The axe almost certainly refers to the cutting-down of a tree to make the cross; in apocryphal myths relating to the crucifixion, Christ’s cross was made from the wood of the tree of the knowledge of good & evil which grew in the Garden of Eden, and from which Adam and Eve had eaten fruit, precipitating the Fall.

Mosaic in the apse of the basilica of San Clemente, 1130s, Rome

See, for example, John Donne’s poem, ‘Hymn to God, my God, in my sickness’, 1623-35: ‘We think that Paradise and Calvary,/Christ’s cross, and Adam’s tree, stood in one place…’ This is often depicted, in paintings of the crucifixion, by setting the cross over a small cave-like tomb in which the skull of Adam is revealed; in the mosaic (above) the cross grows out of a bush in a new Eden.

The spade was presumably used to dig the hole to plant the cross, since Christ’s tomb was to be a ready-made cave in a rock, supposedly donated by Joseph of Arimathea. The chalice caught the blood of Christ, which flowed from His side; it also stands for the cup He used at the Last Supper, and through the latter represents the sacrament of the Eucharist: the changing of wine into the blood of Christ at Mass. The ciborium is the receptacle of the Host: the bread or body of Christ, taken during the Eucharist.

Agnus Dei or Lamb of God, stained glass, Church of St John the Baptist, Needham Market, Suffolk; photo by Simon Knott; see Simon’s Suffolk Churches

The banner is an accessory in representations of the risen Christ, who often carries one as He leaps from the tomb; the Lamb of Christ is also represented as carrying a banner.  The framemaker seems to have conflated these two images, as the form engraved with star-shaped punches on the left-hand banner appears to be the face of a lamb.

Detail of predella: second section from left-hand side

The next section of the predella (reading from left to right) has a ladder forming a saltire with the cross, a pair of pliers, nails, a hammer, another axe (or a mattock), the crown of thorns twisted around the junction of the cross, and – in the centre of the saltire – a representation of St Veronica’s veil.  These objects point towards events including the mocking of Christ, when he was given the crown of thorns, a purple mantle and a mock sceptre; see, for example, Mark 17: 17-20: ‘And they clothed him with purple and plaited a crown of thorns, and put it about his head. And began to salute him, Hail, King of the Jews!’ They are items which also record His progress through Jerusalem to His crucifixion – the Way of the Cross, or Via Crucis – during which St Veronica is said to have wiped his face with her veil, capturing on it a perfect image of Christ’s face. The other objects – ladder, cross, hammer, pliers, etc. – all relate to the crucifixion itself.

Detail of predella: first section from right-hand side

At the other end of the predella can be seen the lance of the centurion Longinus, with which he pierced Christ’s side, forming a diagonal cross with the forked stick holding a sponge, which was dipped in vinegar and given to Christ on the cross to drink.

Detail from the doors, 1015, Cathedral of St Mary, Hildesheim, Bernwardstür, Courtesy of Bischöfliche Pressestelle

Both actions can be seen in this relief of the crucifixion from the bronze doors of Hildesheim Cathedral.

A horizontal stave crosses this second saltire at the centre; it seems to be the shaft of a torch (the cage holding fire is at the extreme right edge). There is a curved horn or trumpet in the bottom right corner, the container for the vinegar at the junction of the crossed staves, and a representation of the Temple, in the shape of a falling censer, above it. To the left of these is the cat o’ nine tails, with which Christ was whipped, and at the left again another trumpet – this one with a swag of drapery, and probably belonging to a herald angel.

Detail of predella: second section from right-hand side

Moving in towards the centre from the right, the next section begins with a triangular form with clasp and tassel, set over another trumpet.

Panel from an ivory casket, The Crucifixion of Christ, late Roman, AD 420-30, © Trustees of the British Museum

This is Judas’s purse, containing the thirty pieces of silver; it often formed a detail of paintings of the Last Supper, and makes an appearance in conflated scenes of the crucifixion and Judas’s subsequent suicide – for instance, here, in an ivory in the British Museum. The purse can be seen beneath the feet of Judas, as he hangs from the tree at the left. Next along, the cockerel which crowed after Peter had denied Christ three times struts along the column to which Christ was tied to be whipped.  Over the column hang Christ’s clothes, for which soldiers cast dice at the foot of the cross; a little pyramid of dice surmounts the clothes. Behind the column is the mock sceptre given to Christ, and – balanced near the top of the column – a covered jar.  This is either the jar of ointment with which Mary Magdalene anointed the feet of the living Christ, or it represents the spices brought to the tomb by the women who were going to anoint His dead body. At the extreme lower left of this section, there is a curved knife, possibly standing for the sword which Peter used against one of the guards who came to arrest Christ.

Detail of predella: central section

Finally, the centre of the predella contains a carved representation of the rocky tomb, the stone half rolled away from the door. ‘…they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others came with them. And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre…’ (Luke 24:1-2).  Its position is important, as it signifies that the narrative displayed by the whole predella, from the Last Supper to the crucifixion, has moved beyond this, to the Resurrection of Christ: from death to the promise of life.

By the use of such objects, easily recognizable during the Renaissance by people of all classes, literate or not, the carver of the predella has set out the whole course of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection in a small space, and has also provided items to be meditated upon in prayer. If the actual narrative episodes had been used instead (as on most painted predellas), the effect would be like a graphic novel, where one pictorial frame illustrates one episode or part of a scene.  As it is, this is more like a 17^th century still life painting, in which the aesthetic arrangement of objects is used to help convey their meaning.

Candelabrum ornament & torch on left inner pilaster

The decoration of the rest of the frame above the predella contains further symbols, moving (literally) upwards into a more heavenly plane. For example, the candelabrum ornament on the two original pilasters bearing the arch terminates at each side in a flaming torch.  This represents renewed life, Christ as the Light of the World, and the illumination of the soul.

Scallop shells from front of arch

The outer facade of the arch is lined with scallop shells, which are the emblem of the pilgrim, and the inner arch is carved with five cherubim (we know that they’re cherubim, because they have each have two pairs of wings). These are associated with the presence of God.

Cherubim from inner arch

The question now arises, from all this symbolism loading the frame, what was it designed for? – where was the thrust of the symbols directing the worshipper? – what would the frame have contained?

One of the nearest forebears of this carved aedicule is a marble tabernacle by the master carver Desiderio da Settignano (c.1429-64).

Desiderio da Settignano, Tabernacle of the Sacrament, 1461, San Lorenzo, Florence

Desiderio was admitted to the guild of master carvers in stone and wood, the Arte dei maestri di pietra e legname, in June 1453, and opened a workshop with his brother near the Ponte Sta Trinità in Florence. Surprisingly soon afterwards he was employed on a major commission, the tomb of Carlo Marsuppini in Santa Croce, Florence (finished 1459)[3]. He was then commissioned, possibly by the Medici, to carve the tabernacle of the Sacrament in San Lorenzo. This held the sacred Host in a carved marble aedicule with the same trompe l’oeil perspective, inner arch, coffered ‘ceiling’ and floor with manipulated vanishing points, as the V & A frame. Desiderio’s work, however, was a large and complex structure, given greater form and presence by the altar of the Pietà on which it is raised, the two free-standing figures of angels which guard it, and the sculptural lunette above.

Tabernacle of the Sacrament, central aedicule; carved aedicular frame, V & A

It does not employ symbolism in the same way as the V & A frame; it is laden with figurative work – with angels, cherubim, Christ as a Child blessing on the crest of the lunette, Christ with the Bible in the tympanum at the back, the dead Christ on the façade of the altar – but otherwise it relies on purely decorative classicizing ornament for its effect. It was also designed specifically as a tabernacle to hold the sacrament, within a cupboard at the back, whereas the V & A frame has ‘no remnants of hinges or holes to indicate that there could have once been a door’[4].

The V & A frame, has, however, probably been altered at some unspecified point by the addition of the outer pilasters, with their attendant cornice and pedestals. If these were in fact part of the original conception, the function of the structure as some part of a sacramental container or cupboard might be more likely: possibly as a wall-mounted entrance to a niche within the church wall, which already possessed some means of being closed into a cupboard.

Outer pilaster with vines, detail; with dolphins, detail; carved aedicular frame, V & A

This may be possible, since the decoration of these outer pilasters is teeming with Eucharistic iconography. The candelabrum ornaments which rise from base to top are wreathed in vines bearing rather globular clusters of grapes: Christ is the vine, while the grapes stand for the wine of the Eucharist. Below the grapes two dolphins are posed on either side; again, the dolphin symbolizes Christ.

Outer pilaster with sun/moon & ears of wheat, detail; with cherubim, detail

Above the grapes, where the arch springs, what appears to be a flower with a face can be seen on each pilaster: these are actually traditional representations of the sun and the moon at the moment that Christ died on the Cross:

Sometimes, near to the top corners of the composition the sun and the moon are painted, in stylized form, each having human face, from which rays of light emanate… The two solar lights remind us both of universality and God’s creation and the two natures of Christ: his divine nature (the sun) and his human one (the moon)[5].

Ivory plaque with the Crucifixion between Mary and St John, the sun and moon carved in the upper corners, c.1130, German, © Trustees of the British Museum

The ears of wheat are another reference to the sacramental bread, and the cherubim signal the presence of God or Christ.

These various symbols, joined with the instruments of the Passion in the predella and with the flaming torches and cherubim, would certainly be appropriate to a tabernacle holding the Host. However, given that there is no evidence that the frame was ever used in this way, and considering the shape of the sight, with its slender elongated arch (compared with the small oblong ‘doorway’ of the San Lorenzo tabernacle), it seems much more likely that what the frame held was an image of the crucifixion, and that its symbolic programme was designed to support this and was later expanded in the same mode. The representations of sun and moon almost certainly confirm this idea.

Basilica of Sant’ Andrea in Mantua, Leon Alberti (begun in 1462)

The outer stages of the frame therefore make great sense in terms of their symbolic content.  They also make great formal sense. The structure as a whole is evidently related to the San Lorenzo tabernacle, which was designed from the beginning with inner and outer pilasters[6]; it is also closely related to the Renaissance church in the form of a Roman triumphal arch. Looking, for instance, at the façade of Sant’ Andrea in Mantua, by Leon Alberti, the common ground between the V & A frame and contemporary architecture is strikingly clear. Even the insides of the arches have similar coffering. The addition of the outer pilasters has completed the frame as a formally perfect aedicule, in the same way that their decoration has completed its iconographical programme.

Carved aedicular frame, maker unknown, ?Tuscan, ?Venetian, l475-1500, © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The effect was designed to echo the vast and awe-inspiring entrance of a church like Sant’ Andrea both literally and metaphorically. The sloping floor of the niche was almost certainly inscribed or painted with receding perspectival lines, like those on the San Lorenzo tabernacle, intended to draw the worshipper in as if into the entrance of a majestic basilica – but this was a representation, not merely of a temporal church, but of the celestial Church, emphasized by the gilding and the decorative and symbolic ornament.  The worshipper would approach, the perspective would welcome him or her spiritually into the niche (or nave of the church), and at the end a vision would appear, of the crucified Christ, with golden cherubim hovering above his head.

A final note on the colouring of the frame: the present dark navy ground, composed of French ultramarine, white and black, was applied in the 19^th or early 20^th century, possibly after the V& A acquired it[7]. The ground would originally have been painted a brighter and purer blue, over a warm base layer; the floor of the niche was probably marbled in red, and some of the carved objects in the predella seem to have been glazed over their gilding in transparent tones of red and purple. The original water gilding remains on the inner pilasters; elsewhere it has been over-gilded. The first colour scheme would have been much brighter, clearer and more varied. It would also have invoked the symbolic resonances of divine gold, celestial blue and blood-red: fitting for a crucifixion.

* All good wishes for a peaceful Easter from The Frame Blog *

I am very grateful to Zoë Allen and to the V & A for the opportunity to write about this frame; also to the British Museum, and to all the generous online donors of images noted above.

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[1]  Although see also Note 5 as to its region of manufacture.

[2] This doesn’t sound a huge amount, and translates in today’s prices to roughly £1,300, or $2,000, which isn’t excessive for such a rare and exquisite object; however; cost is not directly translatable between different eras for objects which would be differently valued in those eras.  The average nominal earnings of a working person in 1859 were twice the cost of the frame (measuringworth.com), which would bring its price today to £52,000.

[3]  See the biography of Desiderio da Settignano, National Gallery of Art, Washington. His work was extremely influential; see, for instance, wall-mounted sculptures by his colleague, Mino da Fiesole.

[4]  C. Powell & Z. Allen, Italian Renaissance frames at the V & A, 2010, p.82

[5]  Veronica Ion & Alexandina Păduretu, Religious Symbols in Christian Iconography, PhD thesis, 2010, p.4.

[6] The V & A frame has also been compared to a late 15^th century Venetian aedicular frame illustrated, PL. XXXVI, in Guggenheim, Le cornici italiane dalla metà del secolo XV allo scorcio del XVI…, 1897.  In this connection, it should be pointed out that the scallop shells round around the face of the arch are, as well as an emblem of the pilgrim, the attribute of Venice – on picture frames especially: these emphatically concave and sculptural shells, running in a continuous chain around a frieze or moulding appear on many Renaissance Venetian frames.

[7]  C. Powell & Z. Allen, op. cit., p.81 ff.