An Old Painting

An older painting of mine, for which I just found a not very good slide of. I think the bright areas at left and right are from the lights rather than a part of the painting, but my visual memory is mainly of the overall color purple. The frame is a variation on, and refers to a "naive" style frame from the early 19th. century. See here. The painting is small, and in fact, the owner has it on a bookshelf, as a "standing" frame, as the sides are flat.

The original is a frame I've repeatedly come back to, as a source for some modern variations, and I've also done some that are somewhat faithful to the original. Here, a modern version in real wood, gasp!, white ash, stained a little.

That one frame has been a very fecund well for me, and here is an example of the variation being only in the color. The link has some other images of the frame.

Frame for a Civil War Icon

 

The Last Meeting of Lee and Jackson

Oil on Canvas, 12'10 3/4"  x  9' 7".

I've long been acquainted with this image, one of the "iconic" images of the American Civil War. The image above is from a book, "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, The Civil War in Art", by Harold Holzer and Mark E. Neely, Jr., wherein I first saw the painting in its frame. It's great to see art in some context ... alas the above image has been truncated. See below:

The second image is courtesy of Thomas P. Crowther, Director, The Charleston Renaissance Gallery, who graciously e-mailed me a copy of the image from their archives. They owned the painting in the late eighties, and were responsible for the rescue and restoration of the standing outer frame. The base has been replaced, visible as a variation in the wood color. The painting is now part of the collection of The Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, VA.

And now, I shall curmudge. 8-)

By chopping off the eagle, one loses a good bit of  the wonderful Victorian excess in the frame, though to the books credit, most of the frame was included. And, they included the size.

My complaint is that the majority of imagery of Art has no context, no frame, and quite frequently little information as to size and medium. Usually, size is only for the canvas, or image, and of course, the frame is once again slighted. However from some images on the web, with people in front of the painting, context,  I suspect that the size above is actually for the outside of the frame, as if the canvas were that big, the frame would be close to 20 feet in height. Not inconceivable, but large.  I will check on that.

Here, a small rant on this subject. 

Addendum 1.: I completely forgot to include the artists name: Everett B D Fabrino Julio (1843-1879). He studied in Paris and Boston, and so was probably acquainted with the Pre-Rapahealite Brotherhood, who had a taste for achitectonic frames as well. A somewhat tragic figure, who died young, never having sold this painting. It did, however, go on tour, an alternate income source for many artists in the 19th. century.

Addendum 2.: Mr. Crowther, see above, has responded with a size for the canvas as: 108 x 72 inches, or nine feet high and six wide. Height precedes width.