page_title: John Thirtle
section_title: Frame-making business
hierarchical_section_title: John Thirtle / Life / Return to Norwich and subsequent career / Frame-making business
caption_attribution_description: English: A photograph of the shop owned by the water-colourist John Thirtle (1906)
context_page_description: John Thirtle was an English watercolour artist. Born in Norwich, where he lived for most of his life, Thirtle was a leading member of the Norwich School of painters, whose paintings of Norwich are considered to be outstanding in the history of watercolour painting.
  Thirtle was apprenticed to a London frame maker before returning home to Norwich. There he set up a successful frame-making business, whilst continuing to paint as well as working as a drawing-master, a printseller and a looking glass maker. In 1812 he married Elizabeth Miles, the sister-in-law of John Sell Cotman. He suffered from tuberculosis for much of his life, and his worsening health reduced his artistic output up to his death in 1839. He produced relatively little: his unpublished manuscript Treatise on Watercolour was probably for his own use, and he exhibited fewer than a hundred works of art. He was a member of the Norwich Society of Artists and for a time its vice-president, but in 1816 he was one of a number of artists who seceded from the Society to form a separate association, which dissolved after only three years.
context_section_description: On successfully completing his years as an apprentice, Thirtle returned to Norwich and set himself up to produce picture frames and prints in a shop in Magdalen Street. During what appears to have been a mainly uneventful life, he rarely left his home city again. He is recorded as having returned in 1805, when he exhibited five paintings at an exhibition of the Norwich Society of Artists. In 1806, when he had already established himself as a picture framer and gilder in Norwich, he described himself in the Society's catalogue as a "Miniature Painter and Drawing Master". His extensive business activities, and particularly the production of his decorative picture frames, led to his becoming one of the more financially successful members of the Norwich School, despite strong competition from Jeremiah and William Freeman, who dominated the Norwich framing market during this period.
  Several of Thirtle's own frames have survived and point to his fine craftmanship. Many paintings by fellow members of the Norwich School were framed by Thirtle's business and bear his name on the frame, including those by John Sell Cotman, John Crome, Thomas Lound, James Sillett and Joseph Stannard. At least one such framed painting, Vincent's Trowse Meadows, near Norwich, an oil on canvas that was first exhibited in 1828, was copied by Thirtle, who produced the same scene as a watercolour. His trade label took several forms, ranging from the early "Thirtle, Miniature Painter, & Drawing Master" to the elaborate "Carver, Gilder, Picture Frame and Looking Glass Manufacturer, Wholesale and Retail", used in the 1830s.
  Paintings still in Thirtle's original frames can be dated as being before 1837, the year John Thirtle died. William Boswell, who took over the business that year, initially included "Late Thirtle" in brackets on his labels. In 1922, W. Boswell & Son acknowledged in one of their publications that "Thirtle was a well-known frame maker, and the maker of the now famous swept frame, which has never been equalled, he also was, and still is an artist of no small repute".
caption: A 1906 photograph of the Magdalen Street building where Thirtle lived and worked
exif: {"Image Tag 0x000B": "Windows Photo Editor 10.0.10011.16384", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image Software": "Windows Photo Editor 10.0.10011.16384", "Image DateTime": "2018:06:06 18:27:57", "Image ExifOffset": "2242", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "96", "Thumbnail YResolution": "96", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4516", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "12540", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2018:06:06 18:26:09", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2018:06:06 18:26:09", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "90", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "90", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}