FAMAG 1923.15
A rare late nineteenth-century French artist's frame; reverse profile with gently canted frieze surmounted by torus moulding with applied plaster garland of imbricated (overlapping) bay leaves-&-berries, centred, and bound at centres and corners; round and hollow stepped mouldings to sight edge; finished in matt and burnished water-gilding; supplied by Paul Mitchell Limited. (r) A rare late nineteenth-century French artist's frame; reverse profile with gently canted frieze surmounted by torus moulding with applied plaster garland of imbricated (overlapping) bay leaves-&-berries, centred, and bound at centres and corners; round and hollow stepped mouldings to sight edge; finished in matt and burnished water-gilding; supplied by Paul Mitchell Limited. (r)
About this work
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Waterhouse, John William RA (1849-1917): The Lady of Shalott - from the poem by Tennyson, oil on canvas, 121 x 69 cms. Presented to the Corporation of Falmouth in 1923 by Alfred A. de Pass, in memory of his sons. Picture adopted by Lynne and Louisa Brunton.
More information about the frame
Related plain gilt borders, which in Britain were a product of the avant-garde via the Arts and Crafts movement, developed in France from a modernising take on the Neoclassical idiom. This was combined in the present frame with Symbolist designs and with the fruit-&-leaf garland frames of the 1880s onwards. It is a superbly contemporary design, which creates a tension between the clean uncluttered plane of the frieze, and Waterhouse's graphic brushwork - the latter echoed in the random, organic pattern of the leaf garland.
A very similar frame is found, coincidentally, on one of Thomas Cooper Gotch's paintings, The lady in gold: Mrs John Crooke (Christie's, 4 Nov.1994), which is a British version of the design, with edge mouldings around the outer contour and the leaf garland, and a canted insert at the sight.
The comparatively large size of the painting means that a frame on this scale, with a complex, sculptural profile, would certainly be seen as functioning like a door into the world of the image; however, this flattened border with its ornamental garland causes an equally flattening effect on the work of art as a whole, reinforcing the decorative qualities of the painting at the expense of the realistic. This is very much a characteristic of the Symbolist movement - to imply reality whilst undercutting it, and the nature of the work as a flattened decoration is enhanced by the prominent torus moulding, with its hint of Apollo's laurels. The competition between art and reality which is the subject of the painting is thus summarised brilliantly in the choice of this frame to contain it.