Talking about picture frames past and present, Margreet asked me why I haven't written about frames, especially when I was well known and selling in the 1950s? In a way, she suggested, it would be of period interest. So here goes.
I suppose that those early frames surrounding portraits of queens, kings, noblemen, sailors, heroes and villains were carved beautifully out of wood and finished with gesso and gold leaf. They are generally works of art in themselves if we care to look at them closely. Later, with less noble sitters, there was less carving and more gesso used. Then came moulded gesso and gold leaf or gold paint. Machines have now mainly taken over the framer's art. But gesso is still much used - especially by the framers of international art. What is gesso?
Well, the girlfriend of a neighbour works for a famous framer in London. She tells me that gesso is not necessarily made of just chalk and glue, as I had supposed, but of many different powders and glue binders. And these vary, depending mainly on restoration work and the re-framing of "collector's art".
We have a large mirror in our bedroom that is surrounded by a gilded gesso moulding. This plaster stuff falls away from the wooden backing frame at the slightest touch. The gesso therefore, was of poor quality.
A 1933 painting in its original frame hangs on our wall with gesso moulding that is so strong that a hammer blow would hardly disturb it. So gesso quality is of great importance when dealing with frames that are not of the "manufactured" quality.
In the 1950s I believe there were far fewer framers around. And those that were, were very professional. Not only that but there was generally a close relationship between the artist and his/her framer. That closeness was, and is, good for framing.
I used Ernest Wheatley, who had a premises close to Carnaby Street in London. Two key men worked there. One was an Italian gilder, called Dino de Biasi, and the other, Len. Len was a genius. He could paint a frame by dragging various colours over it, and could cut a cardboard mount with a scalpel and by eye. He had amazing skills. I never used Robert Siell (if that was how his name was spelled). He would put a painting on an easel, stand back like an artist, and apply various mouldings before painting the appropriate one. I have a painting of a nude lady in one of his frames. His own design of a moulding for this is a simple spoon-shape, painted a dark grey, with the forward edge a ripple of gold leaf. It is a frame made by a master.
Dino de Biasi left Wheatley to set up on his own, and I used him for a part gilded frame of some width around one of my first landscapes painted after the war. But the large area of gold detracted from the leafy green subject, so I had to rub a thin mixture of wax and oil colour over it to soften its power. The change was surprisingly successful. Dino left for Wales. I hope he did well there.
When someone buys a painting from me, I would rather that they have it framed by their own framer, but for the mounts on A4 small works I like to paint a mount around the subject to get the effect that I think is appropriate. And I don't pay much for the frames as I expect the new owners to have different ideas from mine.
My present framers are Llexia, run by a charming Japanese lady, called Matsue, and her husband Patrick.
I wrote earlier of the close relationships between artists and framers. Now came an even more surprising relationship between Patrick and myself.
I had taken into his shop one of my larger paintings to be framed for a one-man show at the Mayor Gallery, in Cork Street, London. It was one for the exhibition entitled "Aircraft Shadows". So we started to talk of aeroplanes, and he to learn that at one time in the war, when I was training to become a pilot, I was stationed at RAF Davidstow Moor in Cornwall with Coastal Command to gain operational experience. I was simply another pair of eyes and sitting in the co-pilot's seat of Warwick aeroplanes on the lookout for the highly armed German Condor aircraft. We had a lifeboat slung beneath the fuselage to drop toward baled-out aircrew. It transpired that Patrick's father was also at Davidstow as a pilot, flying the same aircraft. In the often rather casual way we treated flying then (there was no Health and Safety regulation), my name might or might not be in his logbook. So we looked up dates and they coincided. But instead of my name he had recorded "passenger".
So had we been shot down over the Bay of Biscay, drowned, and our bodies recovered, perhaps my gravestone would have simply stated "A Passenger".
