State Library of South Australia

Portrait of Frances Amelia Skipper [B 47780] • Artwork

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Summary

Oil portrait by South Australian colonial artist and solicitor John Skipper of his first wife Frances Amelia Skipper, nee Thomas. The canvas is striped mattress ticking, indicating the difficulty of obtaining materials in Adelaide at the time. The painting is attached on its original timber auxiliary support but with the two side members of the auxiliary support mistakenly reversed.

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Physical description

Artwork (oil on canvas, portrait); 74 cm x 61 cm (image)

Dates / Publication details

Approximately 1850

Artist

Skipper, John Michael

Collection

Part of Artwork Collection

Subject

Skipper, Frances Amelia

Catalogue record

Return to catalogue

Formatted content

B 47780/1: Front of the painting
B 47780/2: Back of the painting
B 47780/3: Detail of the back showing striped mattress ticking.

General notes

The painting was cleaned by Artlab Australia in 2007-2008. Prior to that process the paint film was significantly discoloured and darkened from a degraded varnish, oil coatings and years of accumulated surface grime and dust. Artlab also reported that the canvas was in a very good condition for its age with no evidence of tears, apart from a small hole at the centre point of each tacking edge resulting from nails used to secure the painting within its display frame. The paint film is extremely desiccated and friable with an extensive network of mechanical cracking and paint cupping throughout. There is wear of the paint film along the edges of the cupped paint exposing the ground layer beneath. There is a large area of loss along the bottom end. The loss goes through the various paint layers down to the raw canvas in places. There is darkened retouching over the paint loss area probably extending over original paint. The State Library halted treatment at the end of the cleaning process because, while the painting was not aesthetically ready for display by Artlab's standards, it was now structurally sound.

Digitisation information

Date

21/05/2009

Format

image/tiff

Resolution

3,474 x 4,146 pixels (14.4 MP)

Size

43.25 MB

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