FAMAG 1000.6
Nineteenth-century British Régence-revival ogee frame with applied compo foliate corners and flower sprigs, textured rail, acanthus leaf-tip moulding and fillet to sight; finished in 'radiator paint'.
About this work
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Luny, Thomas (1759-1837): Dutch Boats Racing, signed, oil on panel, 30 x 21.8 cms. Presented by De Pass, Alfred A.
More information about the frame
During the nineteenth century revivals of just about every style and nationality of frame became fashionable in Britain. This was possible because of the newly mechanised processes whereby lengths of machine-turned wood and moulded composition ornament could be easily and economically produced. Reproductions of ?Louis? frames ( French eighteenth-century patterns, from those of Louis XIV to the Neoclassical styles of Louis XVI) were particularly popular; the style of this present frame is from the period of the Régence or regency, during the childhood of Louis XV. Compared with the originals, however ? sculpted by master craftsmen, gessoed, recut with intricate details and background hatching, and then water-gilded and burnished ? this is very much an economy model. The textured surface here is even a reproduction of a reproduction, since Victorian revivals of ?Louis? frames often replaced the hand-etched patterns used on the eighteenth-century frames with a layer of lace or fine net, laid over the ogee rail of the frame and then sized and gilded. This frame looks as though it has been textured with 1970s Artex, although this may be due to an accretion of paint layers. The latter is known informally as ?radiator paint? by framemakers and art historians, after the dull metallic paint used on cast iron school radiators in the first half of the twentieth century, and apparently seen as ideal for spot repairs on gilded frames.