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
Beaux may have developed a taste for antique frames late in her career, perhaps inspired by the example of Sargent and others. Three Beaux paintings in this study are framed in what appear to be period seventeenth-century Italian Baroque examples. The asymmetrical placement of what were once centered cartouches and evenly spaced reposes reveals that these antique frames have been cut down to fit Beaux’s paintings. A regilded Italian Baroque frame with acanthus-leaf carving appears on The Portent (ca. 1914; Art and Archaeology Collection, Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania). A black and dark-gold parcel-gilt bolection frame of probable Italian Baroque origin, with carved leaf-spiral patterns alternating with reposes, houses Ernesta (1914; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). The painting appears in this frame in an installation photograph of the gallery of American paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from July 1918.
Another Italian Baroque frame with a carved spiral-leaf design on a bolection profile appears on Flora Whitney (fig. 90). A variant on Beaux’s use of antique frames appears in a large reproduction frame on her portrait Mrs. Elizabeth M. Howe (1903; private collection), in which the vigorously carved design on a wide profile also recalls Italian Baroque design, but the machined marks on the back of the wood carcass reveal its modern manufacture (fig. 91).
Beaux’s paintings appear in a wide variety of distinctive, high-quality frames at all points in her career; their changes in design parallel the development of her aesthetic taste. If we consider only those frames that appear on her paintings in the installation photographs of the annual exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, we would have to conclude that Beaux customarily selected stylish frames for her works. The study of other frames that appear to be original to her pictures further suggests that she chose the style of a frame based partly on the work’s size and subject and partly on the latest design trends. We are fortunate to have so many of Beaux’s paintings in their original frames to document her changing taste and to reveal the care she took in presenting her art to the public.
