FAMAG 2003.6
A French carved giltwood frame, early twentieth-century, modelled on a 1740s?1780s British Rococo pattern, with chain cabochon back edge, swept rails with bound fasces ornament, fanned lambrequin corners and shell centres with rocailles; the ground decorated with cross-hatching, the corners with diapering; small sanded frieze and an acanthus leaf-tip sight.
About this work
view without frame
Romney, George (1734-1802): George Boscawen 3rd Viscount Falmouth (1758-1808), oil on canvas, 76 x 63.5 cms. Purchased with grant aid from Resource/V & A Purchase Grant Fund; NACF; Beecroft Bequest and Philip Mould/Historical Portraits.
More information about the frame
This superb carved wood frame was probably produced in Paris in the early 1900s, at a time when eighteenth-century British portraits were in great demand, and were being shipped out by dealers such as Joseph Duveen. Duveen had spotted the potential link between impoverished British aristocrats with too many pictures, and the newly-wealthy American entrepreneurs with not enough. He also arranged for the portraits he sold to be reframed in the more opulent styles required by his transatlantic clients for their replica chateaux in Rhode Island or their French-inspired townhouses in New York.
The pattern used for this frame is found on portraits by Raeburn and Hoppner during the 1780s. It differs from that usually employed by Romney, who preferred, if left to his own devices, to use a Neoclassical design with a knulled top edge, which is now known as a 'Romney' frame. Romney's account books survive, and reveal that he undertook the framing of up to 70 per cent of his paintings. Before 1782 they were made by Thomas Allwood and from 1782 by William Saunders; Romney received a percentage of the framing cost. This portrait of Lord Falmouth would almost certainly have been framed originally in a knulled ?Romney? frame, probably by Saunders.
The carving on the present frame is remarkably skilful, in the best tradition of frames made for Duveen. There were still carvers working in Paris during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who maintained the standards of the eighteenth century, producing sculptural designs after earlier models, gessoing them, recutting details into the gesso and finishing them with matt and burnished water-gilding. The labour was considerable, and expensive, but it made British paintings, such as Gainsborough?s Blue Boy (now in the Huntingdon Library, San Marino, California) even more desirable for American collectors.
About the Artist
George Romney was one of this county's finest portrait painters, along with Gainsborough, Reynolds and Lawrence. He was born in Beckside on a small farm near Dalton-in-Furness, and became apprenticed to his father, a joiner and cabinetmaker. Romney spent ten years carving gilding furniture while copying prints in his spare time. After further apprenticeships in the North, he eventually settled in London, where he was extremely productive and successful. In 1781 he met the beautiful Emma Lyon (Hart), later Lady Hamilton and the mistress of Horatio Nelson, and painted her on numerous occasions.