Mrs John H. Connell
1900

• John LONGSTAFF

Almost identical to the frame on Stuart Murray (unaccessioned item, id. no. 60969) the frame is in the form of Italian cassetta frames, but uses surfaces from other sources. It is very wide, the base plank having been machined from a 9 in by 1 in board. It is not the widest of this type in the collection; the frame on Arthur Loureiro’s The vision of St. Stanislaus is 13 ins wide.(99-2). The frame here is in direct contrast to another framing of a Longstaff portrait of Mrs John H. Connell (1900) (656-2), which uses a swept-edge Louis XV frame, also by John Thallon at the same address.

Note

1 Hilary Maddocks, ‘Picture Framemakers in Melbourne c. 1860–1930’ in Vol. 1, Frames, Melbourne Journal of Technical Studies in Art, University of Melbourne Conservation Service, 1999.

The frame is built on single planks of timber joined with mitres at each corner. The planks are well selected timber. They have not warped substantially. The working edge and the rebate edge are formed by the addition of battens. The vertical battens at the rebate run through to the top in order to brace the mitre on the reverse. The outer edge carries a composition torus of imbricated laurel and berry on a stepped base. The torus is banded at the centres and corners. The sight edge carries a small-scale border, also of laurel and berry and also banded. The frieze panel between these borders is veneered with oak. As with a number of Thallon frames the veneer runs across the mitre of the sub-frame, which causes the veneer to rupture as the timber shrinks at the mitre. In this instance the join is horizontal – the more common approach to the form of these frames is to join the oak flat vertically. The surface is gilded with large-format false gold leaves.

Good original condition throughout though the veneer is ruptured across the mitres of the sub-frame.