The Sunderland Frame — Arnold Wiggins & Sons

The ‘Sunderland’ frame pattern takes its name from the Second Earl of Sunderland, Robert Spencer.
Replacing an earlier house, Robert Spencer built Althorp, Northamptonshire, between 1665 and 1668, forming a Picture Gallery based on the original Elizabethan Long Gallery, and incorporating the original Tudor oak paneling. He reframed, uniformly and to dramatic effect, the extensive collection of portraits by Van Dyck, Lely, Beale and others, in this distinctive baroque style, which was the height of fashion at the time.

This frame style was most likely dubbed the ‘Sunderland frame’ in the 19th century. The pattern has its origins in an earlier auricular style and in the 17th century was often referred to by artists and craftsmen as ‘guilt leatherwork’.
Although executed in carved and gilded wood, its form of ornament was derived from embossed and folded leather work, popular in the 16th and 17th centuries. Mary Beale’s accounts for portraits in 1677 and 1681 refer to a ‘leatherwork gilt frame’. They were the most expensive frames she used, costing £3.10s each. The non-repetitive and sculptural quality of the carving took many hours and required the skills of a master carver, hence the high price.

The ‘Sunderland’ frame style is characterized by a cartouche at the top, grotesque mask at the bottom, and leafy ornament incorporating cartilaginous and lobe like forms that suggest grotesques or heads of beasts. The swirls of ornament, unusually, form an indented and uneven inner and outer edge

The frame is carved from four relatively thin planks of oak or pine, assembled on a half-lapped pine back frame, to form a rebate to house the painting.

Visus Seeing, Richard Gaywood, 1654/62 after Edmund Marmion. c.1650, Etching © The Trustees of the British Museum — Visus Seeing, Richard Gaywood, 1654/62 after Edmund Marmion. c.1650, Etching
© The Trustees of the British Museum

The auricular frame style appears to have been introduced some 20 years earlier than the Althorp framing, judging from a rare engraving, by Richard Gaywood after Edmund Marmion, of an interior showing portraits framed in the style.

Earlier auricular frames differ from the ‘Sunderland’ frame by having, at the top, a mask of an open mouthed and grimacing man, crowned with volutes and at the bottom a zoomorphic grotesque. A cavetto moulding forms a linear inner edge.

The auricular frame style was modelled on Dutch prototypes and was probably introduced to England in the 1630’s by the van Vianen family of silversmiths, from Utrecht, who worked in this style. Christian van Vianen worked for Charles I in 1639 and published his father’s designs in 1650.

The ‘Sunderland’ frame is a distinctive English frame style, examples of which can be seen as a house framing style at Althorp, Ham House, and Kingston Lacey.

Michael Gregory

References:

Reference The Art of the Picture Frame, Jacob Simon, National Portrait Gallery, London, 1996.