Adapted from the Book by Sylvia Yount, Cecilia Beaux: American Figure Painter
Published by University of California Press (August 1, 2007)
An Essay By Mark Bockrath Pages 84-102
The earliest frames Beaux used are high-quality examples of eclectic “Renaissance” designs, with Classical motifs in gilded cast composition (a kind of putty that can be pressed into molds to make ornaments) or designs that reflect Aesthetic taste. Beginning in England in the 1860s, the Aesthetic Movement represented a shift away from ponderous Victorian ornament to more refined designs frequently influenced by the ideals of Classical and East Asian art. Beaux’s early training in Aesthetic design is suggested by the frame for her watercolor Edmund James Drifton Coxe of 1884 (fig. 70). This early work is framed in a flat profile with low-relief casts of composition in trailing patterns of flowers and leaves on a textured background.
The trailing floral pattern, which reflects Japanese decoration, is commonly seen in Aesthetic design. The casts are highlighted with different colors of bronze paint, producing a rich effect; a textured yellow-gold background serves as a foil to the pale lemon-gold leaves and orange-brown flowers with brown centers and buds. Such low-relief floral patterns with copper-colored flowers are also found in Aesthetic silver. Furniture by Herter Brothers of New York in the Aesthetic style employed similar patterns of floral motifs in the form of inlaid wood.
A worthy, and probably original, period frame complements Beaux’s exquisite early portrait A Little Girl (Fanny Travis Cochran) of 1887 (fig. 71). Its wide reverse molding is ornamented with a series of composition castings that are accented with burnished gold leaf. The profile and its rich cast motifs recall Italian Renaissance and Baroque design and give the frame an individual character that distinguishes it from other contemporary Renaissance Revival or Barbizon frames. A most striking feature is the series of large lobes of burnished gadrooning (a row of angled ovals) that rake from the centers along the outer edge. Other motifs include an interior cove with palmettes and courses of large egg-and-dart patterns. The half-round knull (upper) edge, with its pattern of small flowers enclosed by straps, is especially Aesthetic in feeling. The richness of the surface and complexity of the design both mark this frame as a work of high quality and reflect Beaux’s taste for contemporary Aesthetic design.
Frames with Renaissance Revival motifs also appear on four Beaux portraits of Philadelphia bankers painted in the 1890s, now in the collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The frames on two of these portraits, Joseph Townsend and Israel Morris (fig. 72), are similar in design and bear labels on their backs from the important Philadelphia frame makers and dealers Earles’ Galleries of 816 Chestnut Street. The other two portraits, T. Wistar Brown and James V. Watson, have frames with wide, canted, flat coves surmounted by large scrolling leaf casts on their knull edges.
An 1893 installation photograph of the Sixty-third Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy shows Beaux’s The Dreamer (cat. 39), painted the same year, in a wide gilded frame with a scooped profile and edge ornamentation with Renaissance motifs. The painting is now in a narrower carved frame in the later Arts and Crafts style.
The frame for Les derniers jours d’enfance (cat. 9) was altered from its earliest complex Aesthetic design to its present simple twentieth-century form, probably decades later, after damage and loss to its cast composition ornament. Its nearly triangular profile and underlying carcass were left intact, but the frame was “modernized” by removing most of its original cast composition ornament. An early photograph of the artist seated before the painting (see page 84) shows the original ornamentation on the outer cove of what appear to be thistle plants alternating with acanthus leaves, with delicate floral castings and ribbon spirals on a torus (half-round) profile on the knull edge. The original gilded-oak interior cove is also visible in the photograph. This cast ornament was removed from the outer cove, leaving the gilded oak of the inner cove bordered by a course of beads and spindles at the sight (inner) edge. The outer cove was replaced by a broad molding that is painted black, and the knull received a small, gilded, half-round molding.
Gilded oak was popular with many artists from the 1870s to the 1890s, especially devotees of the Aesthetic Movement, for the subtle texture provided by gilding directly on the coarsely figured grain without an intervening gesso layer. The gilded-oak frieze was frequently associated with the English painter George Frederic Watts (1817–1904), who used it on a flat cassetta (Italian for “little box”) profile bordered with castings of leaves, beads, spindles, and other motifs for many of his works from the 1860s onward.
The frame on Harold and Mildred Colton of 1887 (fig. 73) is an elaborate version of this gilded-oak type, with a wide reverse profile. The canted frieze of gilded oak is flanked on its inner edge with cast spindles and a large laurel-leaf-and-berry design on a cushion (flattened half-round) profile and on its outer edge with a pattern of large cast eggs alternating with elongated beads. The miters of the frame corners are hidden by large cast acanthus leaves. Ernesta (Child with Nurse) of 1894 (cat. 44) is also framed in gilded oak. Its triangular profile is severely geometric, with an inner liner leading to a wide, angled, flat section and a stepped outer edge. The frame for Beaux’s portrait of Travis Cochran of 1897 (fig. 74) is of a reverse profile with a gilded liner and fluting in its interior, a shallow scoop of gilded oak at the center, and an outer edge of “Dutch ripple” design in cast composition.
The frame has a bright gilt surface overall. Similar reverse profiles with shallow outside scoops also appear on the frames for Mother and Daughter of 1898 in the photograph of the Sixty-ninth Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy (see fig. 68) and on Gertrude and Elizabeth Henry (1898–1899; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia).
The frame for the large, full-length portrait of Cecil Kent Drinker of 1891 (fig. 75) is composed of a wide bolection (convex) molding ornamented with naturalistic oak leaves and acorns in cast composition on a torus molding. This frame’s complicated and impressive design also incorporates corner straps and three crossed ribbons spaced over the oak leaf and acorn casts on each frame member. The cast composition is gilded over gray bole.
A large and imposing frame with a complex series of Renaissance Revival motifs appears on Beaux’s portrait of George M. Troutman of 1886 (cat. 13). The elaborate series of composition castings includes beads, spindles, and reels on the interior of the frame, an inner cove ornamented with a rich pattern of overlapping acanthus leaves, and a knull edge with large leaf spirals.
The American expatriate painter James McNeill Whistler, who designed many of his own frames, was an important and influential figure in both the English and American Aesthetic movements. Reeded frames appear frequently on many of Whistler’s works from the 1870s onward; his designs of stepped bundles of reeding were popular with late-nineteenth and early–twentieth-century artists, including Beaux. Ethel Page of 1884 (National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.) is in a reeded frame of cast composition and bright gilding. Mrs. Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes (Edith Minturn) of 1898 (cat. 59) appears in a 1902 installation photograph of the Seventy-first Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy in the wide, reeded frame that is still with the painting today.
The frame is brightly gilded in pale gold leaf over red bole (fig. 76). The reeding appears on a wide cushion near the liner and is bordered on the outer edge with a small frieze and an astragal (bead) molding. The portrait’s long, narrow format recalls some of Whistler’s portraits, as does Beaux’s inclusion of Japanese prints in the background. The frame is labeled by its maker, George F. Of, who had a shop at 4 Clinton Place in New York in these years. The frame is surrounded by its original protective “shadow box,” an outer frame of black-stained oak that is visible in the installation photograph. Protective outer frames of this type are frequently seen on delicate frames of the period.
Frames of simple unadorned moldings also appear on some of Beaux’s paintings- for example, on the full-length double portrait Dorothea and Francesca (The Dancing Lesson) of 1899 (cat. 55). This painting is framed in a simple, narrow, gilded molding that appears to be original, owing to its appearance on the painting in an installation photograph of the Sixty-eighth Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy in that year (see fig. 34). The molding exhibits a small concave scotia in its inner cove, a wide “thumbnail” knull edge, and a hollow outer cove. It stands in contrast to the more elaborate frames that Beaux generally favored in this period.
