Early 19th Century Woolwork Commemorative Picture
in Original Frame

This beautiful wool work picture has never been removed from it's original frame. It is worked on felted wool with an applied memorial urn bearing the name Werter. It is a commemorative piece done to celebrate  The Sorrows of Young Werther a play based on the loosely autobiographical novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first published in 1774.

The majority of the novel is presented as a collection of letters written by Werther, a young artist with a very sensitive and passionate temperament. In these letters, Werther gives a very intimate account of his stay in the fictive village Wahlheim, where he meets and falls in love with Lotte, a beautiful young girl who is taking care of her siblings following the death of their mother. Lotte is, however, already engaged to a man named Albert. Despite the pain this causes Werther, he spends the next several months cultivating a close friendship with both of them. Every day serves as a torturing reminder that Lotte will never be able to requite his love, and after several failed attempts to break off his ties with her, Werther sees no other choice but to take his own life.

These commemorative pieces were popular through the first quarter of the 19th century, when this one was likely worked, coinciding with the popularity of the play. The woman, presumably Lotte, standing to the right of the urn is wonderful in her detail. Her dress, cloak and hat are all wool with embroidered details. There is a silk bow at the neckline forming the closure for her cloak. Her face and hands, holding a book, are watercolor on paper. There are seven pin holes along the edge of the paper just under the line of the woman's hat. This may have been a basting or marking line. There is no evidence of lost stitching along the line of the hat. Across the top of the book a word or name is printed which looks like "R I. Orstock". Behind the urn is a traditional weeping willow tree.

The frame is original and has hand writing on the back. The ink has run and is mostly illegible though some of the words around the perimeter can be made out. The piece has not been out of the frame as the paper backing is affixed to the inner backing board and is still glued down on two sides. The oval liner of the frame has three breaks and is slightly warped in the upper left hand corner. The decorative medallion is missing in the upper right hand corner. I will add new archival sealing tape to the open edges of the back, top and right side. The frame could be restored by a professional frame restorer, but this should be undertaken carefully to preserve the original elements.