Eli Wilner and Company Master Framers

Later Arts and Crafts Designs

Beaux continued to use a variety of Arts and Crafts frame designs throughout the remainder of her career. Frames of an unusual, spare, and dramatic design appear on four paintings in this study, dated 1894 to 1897: Mrs. Clement B. Newbold (Mary Dickinson Scott) (fig. 82), Mrs. Beaureau Borie and Her Son Adolf (1896; private collection), Sally Stretch Keen (ca. 1894; cat. 43), and Mrs. Alexander Biddle (1897; Philadelphia Museum of Art). The profile consists of a narrow fillet (flat section) at the sight edge, which then angles to a wide, canted, flat cove and flattens to another wide fillet at the knull edge.

This fillet is bordered on its inner edges by rows of small egg-and-dart castings or, in the case of Mrs. Alexander Biddle, by eggs and tiny berries. The cast motifs vary slightly from frame to frame. Other small cast motifs appearing on the frames include courses of beads on the outer edges of the wide knull fillet and gadrooning or meander patterns on the back edge of the frame. Softly gleaming, lightly burnished water-gilding over gray bole embellishes the cove and knull. The austerity of the geometric profile and the fineness of the castings relieve the great weight and width of these frames, which are equally well suited to bust-length or three-quarter-length works, and lend them a modern feel. The frames’ simple profile reflects an Arts and Crafts style entirely out of step with the more florid and luxurious Rococo Revival or Renaissance Revival designs.

Many Arts and Crafts frame designs in the early twentieth century allude to Italian and Spanish Baroque models of the seventeenth century, incorporating such motifs as large, scrolled, foliate carvings in the centers and corners of the frame members separated by unadorned “reposes” (panels). In Spanish Baroque frames, the surface is frequently “parcel-gilt,” with gilded scrolls and painted reposes. Black-painted reposes were most frequently associated with Spanish frames when they were mimicked in the twentieth century. Spanish frames often provided the inspiration for productions by Boston Arts and Crafts frame makers such as Foster Brothers (founded 1875) and Hermann Dudley Murphy’s firm, Carrig-Rohane (founded 1903); such frames, in gold or in black and gold, appear on many paintings by such artists as Edmund C. Tarbell (1862–1938), William McGregor Paxton (1869–1941), and other members of the Boston School. Beaux’s move to a summer studio in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1905 placed her within the circle of Boston framers.

A carved frame of Spanish Baroque inspiration, with large corner and center leaf scrolls, an unusual series of overlapping shield forms on its outer edge, and a course of spindles and beads on the sight edge, surrounds Beaux’s Mrs. Richard Low Divine ( Susan Sophia Smith) (fig. 83). The frame is gilded entirely over red bole. A cipher of “Fb” on its back suggests that the frame may have been made by Foster Brothers. A frame of similar design, parcel-gilt in black, appears on the portrait of Helena de Kay Gilder (cat. 75). Another parcel-gilt frame of Spanish design—with corner scrolls, center leaf carvings, and black-painted reposes with a rippled texture—appears on Marion Reilly, Dean of Bryn Mawr College (1907–1916) (fig. 84).

This frame bears a label on its back from the frame-making firm Copley Gallery of 103 Newbury Street, Boston. An exhibition label for the 114th Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy, filled out in Beaux’s handwriting, is also present on the reverse of this frame, indicating that it is contemporary with the portrait. Catherine (Eddy) Beveridge—Lady Primrose Portrait, painted at Gloucester in 1913, is also framed in a Spanish parcel-gilt frame with black reposes and gilded center and corner leaf carvings in low relief on a cushion profile. This frame also bears a Copley Gallery label.

The carving on the frame for Ada Louise Comstock of 1922 (fig. 85), with its abstracted, carved leaf forms on a spindle-like half-round knull edge, resembles that on the knull edge of a labeled Foster Brothers frame in the Julius Lowy collection. The Comstock frame is narrow, with the carving on the central part of the frame, whereas the Lowy frame has a wide, scooped profile with the carving on the outer knull edge.

The frame for Mrs. Addison C. Harris of 1917 (fig. 86) features a carved cushion profile with slightly curving, elongated laurel leaves, which lend it an Art Nouveau feel; the leaves emanate from central clasps on each frame member and terminate at the corners in an unusual motif of leaf-like scrolls covering small berries. The maker of this inventive frame is not known. The same design also appears on Agnes Irwin (1908; Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University Portrait Collection, Cambridge, Massachusetts). Another similar frame design with laurel leaves surrounds the large portrait of Mrs. Stephen Merrell Clement (1910–1911; Greater Buffalo Chapter, American Red Cross, New York), painted in Gloucester.

Four half-length portraits by Beaux were framed in identical carved Arts and Crafts frames in 1912 and 1913. They appear on Clement B. Newbold (see fig. 69), Congressman Sereno Elisha Payne (1912; Committee on Ways and Means, United States House of Representatives, Washington, D.C.), John Whitfield Bunn (1913; Bank One, Springfield, Illinois), and Margaret W. Cushing (1913; The Historical Society of Old Newburyport, Massachusetts). These simple but effective frames with a lightly toned gold finish have deeply scooped coves, quarter-round sight-edge moldings, and a raised thumbnail knull edge. The hand-carved moldings and cove show the softened gouge marks and slightly irregular contours characteristic of many Arts and Crafts frames.

The frames are almost geometric in their design, without a hint of naturalistic foliate carving. Their principal distinguishing feature is a series of shallow, carved, imbricated scales that radiate from the corners of the interior cove. The cove miters themselves are covered with a striated, shell-like motif that overlaps the beginning of each row of scales. Beaux painted the portraits in several different locations, including Philadelphia, New York, and Gloucester. A bill dated May 17, 1912, from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to Beaux for “express charges on frame for Mr. Newbold’s Portrait from the Copley Gallery, Boston,” indicates that Copley’s made these frames. The existence of this series of four identically framed works executed within such a narrow time frame is perhaps the best indication of Beaux’s taste in framing at a particular moment, as it is certainly no coincidence that they all bear the same frames, and no consensus to use identical frames can have been arranged by so diverse a group of sitters.

A simple molded frame appears on Beaux’s portrait of George Dudley Seymour, The Green Cloak (fig. 87), one of the latest paintings studied here. This modernist frame with a series of streamlined moldings on a narrow scooped profile expresses an Art Deco sensibility with its rounded corners. Although it may seem an unusual choice for Beaux, the presence of paint on the inner edges of the frame rabbet that matches the edges of the painting, and a label on its back for the 121st Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy in 1926, indicate that this is the picture’s original frame. The frame is labeled by the maker, V. Grieve Company of New York and London.

Canaletto Frames Some of Beaux’s later portraits are framed in distinctive moldings of medium weight with a quarter-round or cushion profile embellished with foliate carvings in low relief in the centers and corners alternating with unadorned reposes. These frames are based on Louis XIII models of the early seventeenth century and on British Baroque interpretations of these designs from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries—the so-called “Lely frames,” named after the English portrait painter Sir Peter Lely (1618–1680), on whose works they so often appear. For similar reasons, Venetian Rococo frames of the early eighteenth century are often called “Canaletto frames” after the Italian painter Canaletto (1697–1768). These frames also contain carved foliate-and-leaf corner and center panels in low relief between unadorned reposes on an ogee profile. Many Arts and Crafts frame makers designed frames that alternate low-relief foliate-and-leaf carving with reposes.

The carved and gilded frame on A Lady in Black (Mrs. Alfred du Pont) (fig. 88) is of this type. It is similar to a frame in the Lowy collection identified as being made by the Boston firm of Foster Brothers, except for its larger size and lack of ornament on its sight edge. The Lowy frame has a leaf design on its sight edge. Both frames share similar foliate-and-leaf carving in low relief, separated by reposes on a cushion molding. These frames also resemble a labeled Foster Brothers frame illustrated in The Art of the Frame. The designs recall eighteenth-century Venetian Baroque frames. Canaletto frames also appear on the three-quarter-length portrait Caroline B. Hazard (1908; Wellesley College, Massachusetts) and on Mrs. Marcel Kahle (1925–1926; Collection of Lois B. Weigl).

The frame for the large double portrait Portraits in Summer (Mr. and Mrs. Henry Sandwith Drinker) (fig. 89) is a variant on a Canaletto frame, with plain, centered, recessed panels following the profile of adjacent unadorned surfaces on a narrow molding of ogee profile. The date “1911” is carved into the bottom center, presumably to commemorate the couple’s wedding date. The frame has a dark, bronze-leaf finish over red bole.