Frame

Retailer Buckingham and Moak, Co. (American, 1898 - 1928)

Datec. 1900

MediumWood, molded plaster, and gold leaf

DimensionsOverall: 33 1/4 x 41 1/4 in. (84.5 x 104.8 cm)
Window: 19 5/8 x 27 1/4 in. (49.8 x 69.2 cm)

ClassificationsART

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number95.8

DescriptionOrnamented chiefly with acanthus leaves interspersed with small flowers. The frame is mainly wood with molded plaster covered with gold leaf.

On View

Not on view

Collections

Decorative Arts

Copyright<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>.

Label TextFrames are a subject of growing scholarly interest. Issues of style, finish, construction, origin, conservation, and the suitability of a frame's decoration for a particular painting are being researched with increasing frequency. A frame can document the taste of the person who originally made or sold it, or the collector who purchased it. The museum is fortunate to have an extensive collection of frames from the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Most feature their original finishes and are still displayed with the pictures for which they were made. Several were designed, selected, or in some cases made by the artists whose works they ornament. An inscription on the back of this frame suggests that its original owner lived in Ilion, New York. A label indicates that the Utica firm of Buckingham and Moak sold it sometime between 1898 and 1928. This company either made the frame locally, or ordered it from a supplier in some other city. The frame features so-called "Barbizon School" decoration--a convex profile decorated with elaborate floral motifs and smaller design motifs on both the inner and outer edges. The Barbizon School was a group of nineteenth century French landscape painters who took their name from a small village on the outskirts of the Forest of Fontainebleau, near Paris. There is no evidence these artists had any special preference for this style frame, but it is associated with them because many of the Barbizon School paintings purchased by Americans in the late-nineteenth century had frames ornamented in this manner. PDS