FAMAG 1000.30
British twentieth-century reeded bolection frame with stepped fillets to sight, deriving from nineteenth-century designs by Albert Moore, Whistler and Degas; finished with oil gilding.
About this work
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Holgate, Thomas Wood 1869-1954: The Cutty Sark in Falmouth Harbour, signed, oil on canvas, 25 x 34.5 cms. Presented by T.W Holgate.
More information about the frame
The reeded frame developed in many versions during the last third of the nineteenth century, and was adopted by every Western country. It began with the ?reed-&-roundel? frames created by Ford Madox Brown and Rossetti, which had thicker reeds, applied more usually to flat surfaces. Albert Moore and Whistler, who worked together for a few years, produced their own versions of the reeded frame, and when their paths diverged Whistler continued to play with the contrast of bands of small reeds and tiny flat friezes, eventually settling on a complex frame of convex and flat surfaces, covered with panels of reeds.
In France, Degas produced several reeded designs of his own, which Whistler decided had been plagiarised from his own, but were more probably influenced by Pre-Raphaelite Brown/ Rossetti frames which Degas had seen in exhibitions.
The present frame is a descendant of the late Whistler pattern, with a curving canted plane covered in small reeds and crowned with a tiny frieze. Another narrow flat band of reeds leads to a stepped chamfer, sloping down to the sight edge. The reeded frame is an extreme version of the repeated linear moulding, which creates the optical effect of receding parallels regressing into the picture plane and thereby enhancing the appearance of spatial recession.