Edouart's work is coveted all the more when found in one of the original frames he had custom made to his specifications. Edouart would only sell his profiles in frames because he was afraid that to sell one unframed was to risk having it damaged. At least until the last years of his career, he only used this style of figured maple frames. This conversation silhouette is laid onto a sepia watercolor background. We know that, once Edouart became successful, he commissioned artists to paint backgrounds for him and that, like the clothing used by American portrait painters, the interiors and exteriors were fantastical -- seldom the real room settings belonging to his sitters. Some interesting points of this background are the string instrument leaning against a chair and the small statue under glass on the mantel of horse-drawn chariot with gladiator aboard. We have seen this statue in another background dated 1831--the year before this 1832 conversation. The wood backboard to this frame bears a previously unrecorded (though not unknown) trade label. Always a marketer, Edouart wrote the address in Glasgow where he was working at the time on the label.
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