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A Guide to Picture Frames
at Beningbrough Hall, Yorkshire
This guide was first produced
on the occasion of a lecture by Jacob Simon at Beningbrough Hall
on 24 June 1998. Beningbrough, eight miles outside York, is an
imposing house built for John Bourchier on his return from the
Grand Tour and completed in 1716. The baroque interiors are ornamented
with some of the most exceptional woodcarving of the period.
Beningbrough is owned by the National Trust and houses more than
120 portraits on loan from the National Portrait Gallery. For
opening times, see the National
Trust website, www.nationaltrust.org.uk/ or telephone 01904
470 666.
Introduction
The picture frame has
existed for as long as pictures have been moveable. Any moveable
painting required a frame to protect it and even a fixed painting,
such as the overdoors at Beningbrough, needed some sort of framework.
While the frame may have started out as a form of protection,
its visual and symbolic purposes soon became very important.
At Beningbrough the visitor has the opportunity to study the
superb early eighteenth-century woodcarving of the house itself,
as well as the picture frames which range in date from the mid-seventeent
century onwards, with an emphasis on the period 1680-1770.
Techniques and Materials
The story of the picture
frame in England really begins in the sixteenth century. The
earliest frames were made of oak, which remained popular until
the mid-seventeenth century and was used again in the late nineteenth
century. From the late seventeenth until the twentieth century,
pine was the most frequently used wood, but lime, a softer, paler
timber, was often used for the most delicate carving as in the
State Bedchamber and adjoining 'cabinet' rooms at Beningbrough.
The earliest frames were joined at the corners with a lap joint,
where the frame sides overlap, but by the eighteenth century,
the mitre joint, where the corners are cut diagonally and are
joined by a key on the rear side of the frame, had become universal.
In the sixteenth century frames
were usually painted, but from the seventeenth century onwards
many frames were gilt, that is covered in gold leaf, or finished
in silver and lacquered for protection and to give the appearance
of gold. The gold leaf was attached by an oil-based adhesive
('oil gilt') or one which was water-based ('water gilt'). Water
gilding was a more time-consuming process and required a special
preparation of clay (the 'bole') which provided the firm, smooth
foundation necessary for the gilding to be burnished, or polished.
Elaborately carved frames were
expensive to make. It was cheaper to produce ornament by pressing
a pliable material, such as papier-mâché or compo,
in a mould, and then setting it on a wooden framework. Papier-mâché
was used in the mid-18th century and again for a time in the
mid-nineteenth century. It was, however, the introduction of
compo, a composition of whiting, glue, resin and linseed oil,
in the late eighteenth century, which drove out the carved frame.
Compo allowed for larger and more richly ornamented frames but
its fragility proved a drawback.
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Fig.1 Sir Peter Warren
by Thomas Hudson, c.1751
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The Artist and the Picture Frame
Artists throughout the
centuries have taken an interest in how their paintings were
framed, and this is particularly the case with portrait painters,
who often have been obliged to make framing arrangements for
their clients. Some evidence of the taste of artists in framing
survives from the eighteenth century onwards, but it is sometimes
difficult to ascertain the precise nature of their involvement.
An artist's preference, however, can often be discerned by identifying
those frame patterns which occur exclusively or frequently on
his or her pictures. An example is the unusual rococo pattern
on Thomas Hudson's Sir Peter Warren (Great
Staircase; see fig.1), a design often found in this form on Hudson's
work in the 1750s. |
 Fig.2 Alexander Pope by
William Hoare of Bath |
William Hoare of Bath, a contemporary
of Hudson, used a variety of frame types during his career, including
a restrained Maratta pattern, named after the Italian artist
Carlo Maratta, for his oil, Christopher Anstey and his
daughter, Mary (Family Matters).
George Frederic Watts gave his
name to the well-known Watts pattern which was taken up by many
artists in the late 19th century. It can be found on the pastel
of Lady Victoria Dawnay (Blue Bedroom), by an unknown
artist.
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The Role of the Patron
Whatever the wishes of
the artist, it was the patron who had the final word on the framing
of all commissioned portraits. Grand pictures commissioned by
rich patrons were more likely to be elaborately framed, as in
the case of the large family group of The Taylor Family
(Saloon) with its fine carving.
Sometimes pictures might be framed
or reframed for a particular setting. Jacob Tonson junior (Dining
Room), for example, had the large series of portraits by Sir
Godfrey Kneller of members of the Kit-Cat Club (Dining
Room) uniformly framed in 1733 to be hung together in a specially
designed pavilion.
Not surprisingly, the patron
whose hand can most often be seen at work at Beningbrough is
that of the National Portrait Gallery itself. From the mid-nineteenth
century onwards, many period pictures have been reframed by the
Gallery. So while frames may be original in the sense of being
of the period, they are not necessarily all original to the picture.
Some of these frames are highlighted in the text which follows.
Ground Floor
Much of the fine architectural
decoration in the Hall is in stone or plaster rather than wood,
the junction between plaster and wood being clearly visible at
balcony level where the cornice above the pilasters steps back
to meet the balcony woodwork. The Hall's bold repetitive running
mouldings, such a feature of decoration of the baroque period,
may be compared to the carving on some of the picture frames.
The distinctive ribbing, known as gadrooning, on Kneller's
Duke of Bedford relates closely to the plinth below the
marble bust of Pope Clement XIV while the intricate foliage pattern
on the same artist's George I, a picture painted
in 1716, the year that Beningbrough was completed, may be compared
to some of the cornices.
On the Great Staircase Thomas Hudson's prominently placed Sir
Peter Warren (fig.1) is in a distinctive rococo pattern
of a type often used by this artist in the 1750s: this was at
a time when the selection of a stylish frame was assuming much
greater importance for artists. The plasterwork of the staircase
itself is a puzzle; the white plaster frames ornamenting the
walls combine a variety of Palladian, rococo and other motifs
and is evidently later in date than the staircase woodwork and
most of the other interiors at Beningbrough.
Some of the richest woodcarving at Beningbrough can be seen in
the cornices and overdoors of the Drawing Room, work produced
by unknown but highly skilled carvers of the York school to the
order of William Thornton, the supervising architect at Beningbrough.
The overdoor pictures have their own individual carved and gilt
frames which in comparison are comparatively modest.
The Kit-Cat Club (Dining Room) was a Whig political dining
club which first met at Christopher Cat's Tavern. The portraits
are double hung here, rather as they would have been in Jacob
Tonson junior's pavilion on the Thames at Barnes, which was built
specially to house the pictures in 1733. The portraits were framed
for Tonson by the King's framemaker, Gerrard Howard, for two
guineas each in a fashionable Palladian style to match the design
of the pavilion itself. The Palladian or Kent frame, named after
the architect William Kent, features projecting square corners,
a flat frieze decorated with sand or an architectural pattern
and raised edges carved with an architectural motif.
First Floor
In the Saloon the pierced
carving of the pair of shaped overdoor frames, Stag Hunting
in Galtres Forest, show the fine quality of two of the
few frames original to the house. On the fireplace wall the three
large pictures, all dating to within a few years of 1695, show
differing tastes in picture framing: John Closterman's Taylor
Family is housed in a superbly carved intricate running
pattern, presumably made for the picture. To the right Closterman's
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury and his brother has been
reframed in a slightly later frame with projecting carved shell-like
centres and corners. Elsewhere in the room a wide range of eighteenth-century
framing styles can be seen from the high quality running pattern
on Closterman's Unknown Youth, clearly cut down
from a larger frame, to the Maratta style found on Pompeo Batoni's
Philip Metcalfe. It is also worth examining the
carved mirror frames between the windows, where the technique
of using white gesso over a wood base as a preparation for gilding
can be seen in areas of old damage.
The use of artificial materials, such as papier-mâché
and compo, is discussed above under 'Techniques and Materials'.
In Lady Chesterfield's Room, the papier-mâché frame
on Sir Joshua Reynolds's portrait of the future Duchess
of Devonshire, a frame of about the date of the portrait
although not original to it, shows how deceptive such frames
can be and how the ability to produce ornament cheaply by a manufacturing
process encouraged patrons and framemakers to select richly ornamented
frames.
Returning to the Great Staircase it is instructive to look out
over the hall balcony and in particular to notice how the carving
on the frame of Prince George of Denmark (Hall)
closely matches the ornament of the arch vaults of the Hall itself
with their rosettes within a twisted ribbon.
Finally, on the East Landing, we can pay homage to the late seventeenth
century's master of carving: Grinling Gibbons
the virtuoso woodcarver and sculptor, who created some of the
richest and most elaborate picture frames of the late 17th century,
for example for Hampton Court Palace.
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