Edward Reginald Frampton (1870-1923)
THE PROPERTY OF A LADY
Edward Reginald Frampton (1870-1923)

Our Lady of Promise (La Madonna di Promessa)

Details
Edward Reginald Frampton (1870-1923)
Our Lady of Promise (La Madonna di Promessa)
signed 'E Reginald Frampton' (lower left) and signed again and inscribed "Our Lady of Promise"/E. Reginald Frampton/1 Brook Green Studios/Brook Green/London W.14/£600.0.0.' (on a label attached to the stretcher)
oil on canvas
50 x 46 in. (127 x 117 cm.)
Provenance
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 16 December 2009, lot 28, where purchased by the present owner.
Literature
London, Royal Academy, 1915, no. 1147.
Paris, Salon, 1921.
Nottingham, City of Nottingham Art Museum, Special Exhibition, 1922.
London, The Fine Art Society, Memorial Exhibition of Paintings and Water-Colours by the Late E. Reginald Frampton, 1924, no. 26.
Exhibited
A. Vallance, 'The Paintings of Reginald Frampton, R.O.I.', The Studio, no. 75, 1919, p. 72, illustrated facing p. 68.

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Clare Keiller
Clare Keiller

Lot Essay

In his Introduction to the Frampton Memorial Exhibition catalogue of 1924 the art critic Rudolf Dircks wrote that the artist ‘was amongst the few distinguished modern painters who sought to express decorative form in his pictures…his spirit moved in the type of legendary or religious subject which lends itself particularly to decorative treatment...’ and went on to comment on ‘the poetic and decorative fervour’ of his works, which were ‘all accomplished in detail, beautiful and sensitive in colour’ (R. Dircks, cited in Memorial Exhibition of Paintings and Water-Colours by the Late E. Reginald Frampton, London, 1924, pp. 3-4).

Following its exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1915 (with the Italian form of the title appearing in the catalogue), this painting was discussed and illustrated in the article on Frampton by Aymer Vallance published in The Studio four years later. Vallance described it as 'a variant' of a slightly earlier work, The Gothic Tower (private collection), that was shown at the Royal Academy in 1913 and sold in these Rooms on 11 June 1993 (lot 97). 'In both paintings', he writes, 'the Madonna, with her Child, is seated in front of a lofty belfry-tower. The broken classic columns [seen to the left and right of the Madonna in Our Lady of Promise] are meant to symbolise the decay and ruin of the old paganism, [while the Gothic tower represents] the flourishing character of Christianity and its aspiring architecture. A slender tree beside the tower conveys the same message of vigorous growth'.

According to Vallance the tower in Our Lady of Promise is 'a fairly literal rendering of the south-west tower of Rouen Cathedral, universally known as the 'Tour de Beurre' because it was erected either with 'the proceeds of market dues on the sale of butter' or with 'the money paid for indulgences to eat butter during Lent'. He might also have observed that the compositions of both pictures are indebted to Jan van Eyck's well-known drawing of St Barbara in the Museum at Antwerp. In this the Saint is seen seated in front of a Gothic tower that is being built to serve as the prison in which she is to be incarcerated by her father to protect her from the attention of importunate suitors. As all this implies, there was a pronounced 'early Flemish' dimension to Frampton's later work. It is traceable again in A Maid of Bruges, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1919 (see The Last Romantics, exh. Barbican Art Gallery, London, 1989, cat. p. 100).

In fact Frampton's art, which embraced not only easel pictures but mural painting and stained glass, was the product of many a love-affair with 'primitive' styles. As a young man he had travelled in Italy and studied the work of Puvis de Chavannes and Burne-Jones, whose retrospective exhibition at the New Gallery in 1892-3 struck him, according to Vallance, 'with the force of a revelation'. In later life he was moved not only by early Flemish painting but by the ethos of Brittany. His landscapes tell us that he travelled in this region, and it is clear that, like Gauguin and his followers a generation earlier, he responded both to its deeply religious character and to the local artistic tradition. Just as his Flemish sympathies are embodied in the two 'tower' pictures and A Maid of Bruges, so the Breton influence emerges in A Madonna of Brittany of 1911 (Bradford Art Gallery; see Vallance, p. 77) and Brittany 1914 of 1920 (Tate Britain), in which a French soldier and a Breton girl are seen praying at a wayside shrine.

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