FAMAG 1923.8
A twentieth-century British frame in Louis XIV Régence-revival style, decorated in composition with continuous scrolling foliage and shell cartouche corners with rosettes.
About this work
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Brown, Sir John Arnesby RA (1866-1955): A Summer Day - a study for 'A June Day', Royal Academy 1913 (228), signed and dated 1913, inscribed on reverse, oil on canvas, 60 x 71.5 cms. Presented to the Corporation of Falmouth in 1923 by Alfred A. de Pass, in memory of his sons.
More information about the frame
This is almost certainly the original frame for the painting, acquired either by the artist or the first owner. Its reproduction of a very characteristically British eighteenth-century style indicates that Brown or his client saw the subject as in a direct line of descent from eighteenth-century landscapists.
A label on the reverse of the frame reads: 'J. J. Patrickson, Practical Picture Frame Maker, Carver & Gilder. Frames of every description made to order. Office and showrooms: 108 Church Street, Chelsea, London SW. Workshops: 59 Park Walk, Chelsea. Speciality: Old Style.'
The National Portrait Gallery?s online Dictionary of Framemakers includes an extensive history of this long-established firm. The founder Jesse John Alexander Francis Patrickson (b.1865) was already listed as a picture framemaker at the age of 15 in the 1881 census, following the trade of his father, a picture framemaker from Ireland. It was not until his mid forties that he set up independently, trading from Church St, Chelsea. In the 1911 census he was living in Chelsea, a picture framemaker and employer, with a daughter, Frances, aged 18, a clerk in the business and two young sons, Joseph and Frank. Given the long duration of the business, it was presumably managed by his sons from the 1930s. By 1975 the business was trading as Bourlet & Patrickson, with F.D. Patrickson as a director, following its acquisition the previous year by James Bourlet & Sons Ltd, itself by then owned by Sotheby's (The Times, 20 September 1974).