FAMAG 2009.47
A twenty-first-century British variant of a pattern derived from the traditional 'Salvator Rosa' profile, with convex top moulding and scotia; inserted slip or mount with small sight moulding; finished in off-white paint; made by Sully's Framing, Penryn.
About this work
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Dyer, John (born 1968): Zooing around, Newquay Zoo, 2009, signed, acrylic on board, 84.5 x 102 cms. Purchased as part of the Heritage Lottery Fund's Darwin 200 celebrations.
More information about the frame
This frame was made by Peter Hambrook of Sully?s Framing, Penryn. It is a moulding that John has settled on for his distinctive style: a variation of the ?Salvator Rosa? frame popular in Italy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where it was often used as a ?gallery? frame to unify a large collection of paintings.
Painted white frames have been popular at different periods; Botticelli?s Primavera seems originally to have hung in a white-painted frame over a Medici prince?s bed, and white chimneypiece frames appear in pictures by, for instance, Gerard ter Borch. They also appear in interiors decorated in Palladian and Rococo style.
However, after the dominance of gold leaf in the nineteenth century, the white frame was revived as a leitmotif of the avant-garde. As such its first recorded use was in the third Impressionist group show of 1877, when Degas and Pissarro both used white frames. These were considered neutral, as gold had been considered to be, but lacking the opulence and light-trapping qualities of gold. They were also very versatile: they could be painted overall, or decorated by the artist on the frieze or mount. Pointillists, such as Seurat and Signac, adapted part-painted white frames to complement the adjacent colours of the picture; and artists as diverse as Munch, Rudolf Jettmar, Mondrian, Jean Arp and Lyonel Feininger all chose white frames.
During the 1950s the simple white frame became popular in Cornwall with many of the St Ives artists because of its neutrality, cheapness and associations with the contemporary.
John Dyer carefully chooses an off-white for his frames so that the lightest tone is the bright white of his trademark seagull. He uses a Dulux matt emulsion in almond white (Code 0603Y 47R).