1901. Oil on canvas, 60″ x 48″. Framed in custom cassetta frame in quartersawn white oak (Oxford Oak stain), 8″ wide, with gilt liner.
An impressive landscape oil painting by British artist Benjamin Williams Leader, R.A. with the artist’s typical mastery of light (for scale, see photo at right). I was struck by Leader’s embrace of the raw soil and exposed roots in the foreground which keeps this from being at all sentimental. The painting was to hang in a log home at Lake Tahoe, further arguing for an especially rustic treatment. The frame is almost 6-1/2″ tall, and came in at over 100 pounds! It’s a cassetta with a mortise-and-tenon joined flat and a carved cushion back edge and flattened ovolo, also carved, for the sight edge molding. The carved convex moldings echo the tree trunks. A 3/8″ wide flat in gilt oak provides another line of definition and highlight.