FAMAG 2009.36.1
Early twentieth-century Continental artist's frame in oak with shallow scotia, frieze, and deep bevel at sight edge; finished in white paint with parcel gilding; supplied by Paul Mitchell Limited (r).
About this work
view without frame
Cross, Tom (1931-2009): Landscape in the Marche, near Recanati, Italy about 1956, oil on canvas, 61 x 80 cms. Presented by Mrs Patricia Cross.
More information about the frame
Simple frame profiles in polished or painted wood became extremely popular in the twentieth century. They echoed Art Deco style, and the plain lines and surfaces of the Machine Age; they also carried an innate rejection of Victorianism, with its multitudes of revival styles, and materials which pretended to be other things: moulded composition imitating carved wood, cheap metal leaf aping gold leaf (which, in its turn, was mimicking ormolu and solid gold). Paint and parcel gilding was also cheaper than finishing a whole frame in gold leaf; gilded oak picked up on the Pre-Raphaelite and Arts and Crafts fashion for truth to the material, and also on the novelty of a textured finish.
This recreation of an earlier ?artist?s frame? (with its echo of seventeenth-century Italian Baroque in the profile) provides a dramatic foil to the pure, hot Adriatic colouring of the picture, and lends a sculptural weight to the work of art as a whole.