FAMAG 1000.14
A British bolection frame, second and third quarters of the twentieth century; with small back moulding; steep ogee; astragal and hollow stepped to sight; small insert or slip; finished with matt and burnished water-gilding over dark red bole; supplied by Paul Mitchell Limited. (r)
About this work
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Williamson, William Henry (1820-1883): Collecting Wreckage - A shipping scene, signed and dated 1857, oil on canvas, 49.5 x 74.5 cms. Presented by Alfred A. De Pass.
More information about the frame
A splendidly plain and unfussy setting for an evocation of Nature?s power and its results, this elegant ogee frame gives greater importance to a mid- to small-sized seascape. The painting is pushed forward, and at the same time the counterpoint between the violence of the painted elements and their cool, minimalist boundary is emphasised.
The distressing of the finish, so that the ground of dark red bole beneath the gold leaf is revealed, gives an authentic and aged appearance to the frame; this is one of the methods by which the frame is kept slightly behind the shoulder of the painting, not intruding nor making itself inappropriately manifest. The nineteenth-century Régence-revival frames on William Strang?s portrait and José Weiss?s landscape, with their monotone shiny gilding in the German fashion, tend to come between the viewer and the picture, upsetting the delicate balance which characterises the marriage of a painting and its frame.
About the Artist
William Williamson was a nineteenth-century marine painter. He exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1853, 1885 and 1875 and at the British Institution from 1855 and 1856.