An extensive landscape with travellers by ruins

The reverse of this panel bears a label from the cabinet-maker Thomas Fentham (1774-1825). Various forms of his label are to be found on several distinguished pieces of furniture, notably at Erdigg, Clwyd, for which Fentham was paid £15 12s 6d in 1775. He not only supplied furniture for Erdigg but his label is also to be found on the reverse of a picture frame in the Chinese Room. The frame for Romney's Portrait of Mrs Beal Bonnell in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge bears a similar label from Thomas Fentham. The label on the reverse of this picture indicates that the frame was most probably made between 1774-1793 when the firm was located at no. 52 The Strand, and it was probably the same Thomas Fentham who in 1782 supplied picture frames to the renowned connoisseur and antiquarian, Charles Towneley (see C. Gilbert, Marked London Furniture 1700-1840, London, 1997, pp. 28, 198-203).