Background
He also worked in stained glass, most probably learning from his father, Edward Frampton, who was a stained-glass artist.
He also worked in stained glass, most probably learning from his father, Edward Frampton, who was a stained-glass artist.
He painted in a flat, stately style, and was influenced by French Symbolism. His work usually depicted symbolic subjects and landscapes. Early in his career he made sculpture.
A notable feature of much of the artist"s painting is the almost total absence of high lights and cast shadows.
Such a mode of treatment, in the hands of a less capable draughtsman, might well produce a painful impression of feebleness or lack of definition. Not so, however, in the case of Mr.
Frampton. With him, indeed, this diffused illumination is a matter of deliberate purpose.
He adopts a subdued tone from a sense of decorative fitness, his aim being to ensure the flat effect and the subordination proper to mural backgrounds, as distinct from the meretricious illusion of prominent relief and receding distances, which disqualifies the average easelpicture from a place in any broad architectonic scheme. Mr. Frampton"s compositions, on the contrary, are instinct with a restful and dignified serenity, no less satisfying than transcendental.
As typical of this phase of his work may be mentioned a large panel depicting a scene from the legend of Saint Brendan. The incident is one with which all readers of Matthew Arnold"s poems must be familiar — to wit, Saint Brendan encountering Judas Iscariot on the iceberg.
The quality of this picture recalls a forgotten chefd"œuvre of Spencer Stanhope"s, viz.
The Waters of Lethe. The twilight atmosphere is the same in both cases, but there is this difference, that Mr. Frampton surpasses the deceased artist in technical mastery of "echo".