Meredith Frampton

Catalogue entry

Meredith Frampton 1894-1984

P11081 Sir George Frampton 1919

Etching 196 x 245 (7 11/16 x 9 5/8) on laid paper 257 x 393 (10 1/8 x 15 1/2); plate-mark 197 x 246 (7 3/4 x 9 5/8); watermark ‘FJH' in cursive capitals plus the cropped image of a [?]haloed head; printed by the artist, not editioned
Not inscribed
Presented by the executors of Mrs Hilda Frampton, the artist's widow, 1985
Lit: Richard Morphet, Meredith Frampton, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, 1982, p.14, repr. p.31

Sir George Frampton (1860-1928), an internationally known sculptor, craftsman and designer, was the father of the artist. He was fifty-nine when P11081 was executed. He had already sat to William Strang for a dry-point portrait in 1907 (no.480 in Strang's catalogue of etched work). When P11081 was exhibited in the Tate Gallery's Meredith Frampton exhibition in 1982, the catalogue entry read: ‘An etching after a lost oil portrait of the artist's father ...', but as a result of a Sotheby's sale on 13 November 1985 of the contents of Meredith Frampton's studio and estate, a private collector in America was alerted to the fact that a painting she had bought in America many years previously was this lost oil portrait of Sir George Frampton by his son. There are some differences between the painting and the etching, the major one being that the painting is virtually square and it includes the left hand of Sir George at its bottom edge. This is cut off in the composition of the etching. The chair-back is patterned upholstered leather in the painting and plain in the etching. The background is a uniform green plane in the painting and has a simple curtain to the right in the etching. Frampton painted a further portrait of his father in 1925.

Published in:
The Tate Gallery 1984-86: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions Including Supplement to Catalogue of Acquisitions 1982-84, Tate Gallery, London 1988, p.367

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