Excellent Large Print, FRANCES, Countess of Somerset. Murderer! Poisoner!! Terrible Scandal During The Reign Of King James I !!!

Treasures from THE FASHION COLLECTION at The Grand Review.  Print size 18 x 24 and consciously formatted to work with a standard 18 x 24 frame, or custom framed as you see fit.
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It does the world no good to glorify the purely evil.  - Todd Bernard Kimmell

With that in mind, why on Earth would we offer up a portrait of the woman at the heart of what is considered the worst royal scandal of all time?  Well...

I acquired this steel engraving without knowing a thing about Frances, the Countess of Somerset.  As I held the raw work in my hand, I thought about how few women from this period we see.  It is usually only men, except for Queen Elizabeth and her often stodgily represented half sister Mary, Queen of Scots.  Frances, visually, was great example of the style of the English court.  Hair, jewelry, an amazing collar and dress, and eyes you fall into.  I brought her home and eventually we put her through our restoration process.  I was thrilled with the results and then, only after all that, did I begin my research.

Well, actors and actresses love to play villains, and you'd be hard pressed to find a more villainous creature.  After several attempts to poison her ex husband to advance her side of battling court families jockeying for more favor from Charles I, she succeeded in a manner I will not repeat here.  The scandal broke and Charles was furious that their shite hitting the fan basically splattered his shoes in the process.  To close to home.  She and her 2nd husband were to be executed, but Charles put them into The Tower at the last minute, where they stayed for years until he finally let them out.

All that said, whenever I hang Frances at a show, people always stop and ask about her, and many have taken her home.  Visually, she is all that, and people love to have a good yarn to spin when friends and family are over.
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Note that the other photos are either prints from our collection or just here for reference and for fun.  Enjoy!

SHIPPING
All prints are shipped in a sturdy mailing tube for $8, which covers postage, tube and S & H.

BUYING MORE THAN ONE PRINT? Add a second print or any number thereafter of this or any other prints in our catalog and shipping is still just $8, total!!!

International shipping is available and reasonable. Please contact us for details.

A NOTE ON OUR PROCESS, OUR CHOICES AND THE QUALITY OF THE GRAPHIC CRAFTSMANSHIP THAT GOES INTO OUR PRINTS.

Every print we deem exciting enough to present to the public via our Etsy store or available here at our studio has gone through a number of steps. The first of those is always discovering and falling in love with an obscure image, always an original that we can hold in our hands. That image is speaking to us, sometime screaming “Don’t leave me here. See what I am, what I was, what I can be, what I SHOULD be!”

There is a real sense of excitement involved, and a great many smiles and knowing grins when we make that deal and bring that ancient print, that battered photo, that scrap of ephemera that contains some scrap of genius from an unknown commercial artist home with us, knowing already how we mean to approach its restoration.

There is the heady promise of a further hunt just as real as what drags a weekend fisherman out of bed at 3AM to work a favorite brook as we start our research, looking for that great backstory, and both ready and willing to tumble down as many rabbit holes as are revealed to us to get that story.

Then there is a meticulous digital restoration that is as often as much fun as riding a vintage Moto Guzzi on a winding coastal road. I don’t care if that sounds crazy, it really is like jumping in the saddle! So many choices, so many chances to take to subtly or spectacularly give new life to otherwise permanently obscure images.

This dedication and the ongoing rush of joy in the accomplishment of it, and the opportunity to share the results in our studio and here on Etsy, is the fire of passion that keeps these engines roaring. We make every effort to ensure our customers are not just satisfied but thrilled, and we happily stand 100% behind our work.