#clarice smith

[psikonauti]

Clarice Smith (American, b. 1933)

Floral (Orange and White Lilies in Glass Vases), 1985

Oil on canvas

[psikonauti]

Clarice Smith (American, b. 1933)

Last of Summer

Oil on canvas

[gold-leaf-studios]

A Painting Four Ways, Part III: The Kuehne Frame

     The work of Max Kuehne (1880-1968) defies categorization. He was one of the rare artists who successfully worked both in the fine and decorative arts with equal authority. Beginning as a painter, his time spent in Spain proved to be the catalyst for his expansion into other areas of artistic production, including frame making, where he was inspired by the country’s rich history of decorative arts.

This frame is a cassetta frame with an oxidized silver leaf patina. The red hue comes from the leaf being water gilded over red bole, which is then burnished before oxidizing. The floral pattern is scratched by hand through the leaf into the underlying gesso, creating the white lines.

The rustic luminosity of the frame’s finish and the simple, fleeting beauty of its design are striking; it suits the painting’s elegant subject, whose mind seems adrift yet keenly focused. The frame also conveys a new sense of historic influence and offers a nice contrast to strictly European style frames. On top of Spanish aesthetics, Kuehne’s design was based on those by Charles Prendergast and heavily inspired by Persian miniatures (see our Persian miniature post from a few weeks ago!).

This frame is a replica made by our studio, based on Kuehne’s original design and made with the same techniques.

[gold-leaf-studios]

A Painting Four Ways, Part II: The Whistler Frame

      James McNeill Whistler (1834 – 1903) was more inspired by Degas frames than probably any other artisan of their period, adopting and simplifying the style to suit his own works. He even claimed to have been the first to use colored frames as early as 1870. 

This frame is made of milled wood with cutting shaper machines, which was then cut and finished with brass leaf. Also known as metal leaf, brass leaf is not real gold, but it gives a convincing impression at a fraction of the cost and is often employed in its place. Both this and the Degas frame were mass produced moldings, in contrast to the hand-carved frames we will see in the next two days.

Like the Whistler frame from a few weeks ago, you can identify this frame by its simple reeds and flutes with no ornamentation and a small angled fillet at the sight edge. 

More importantly though, see how it effects your reception of the painting as compared to yesterday’s frame. This frame very much grabs your attention, almost trapping your eye in the picture, while the stylistically worn and abraded metal leaf adds a historic, antiqued regality. Compare this with the passive, naturalistic presentation from our last post, which looks as if the painting and frame had grown out of the same artistic topsoil.

[gold-leaf-studios]

A Painting Four Ways, Part I : The Degas Frame

Apologies for the hiatus! But we're back in business. As previously discussed, everyone remembers the paintings, but not often enough do we remember the frames. Everyone knows “Whistler’s Mother,” but no one could tell you the frame she sat in. And the big question, I suppose, is: “Does it matter?”

Well, it would be an admitted exaggeration to claim that there would be no “Whistler’s Mother” without an accompanying Whistler frame, but the truth is that a frame drastically effects your perception of the painting. For the next few posts, we framed a painting four different ways. The painting, inspired by "Whistler's Mother," is by Clarice Smith and was reproduced by David Adamson of Adamson Gallery.

Here, we are asking you to focus on the frame in relation to the painting.

      First up we have a Degas frame, named after the artist who designed it. Edgar Degas (1834 – 1917) was a lifelong proponent of frame making, whose notebooks are filled with sketches showing variations of his signature reeded frames, a style heavily influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite artists and frame makers Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 – 1882) and Ford Madox Brown (1821 – 1893).

Degas was on the forefront of the artist-designed frame movement in France, and stated that, “It is the artist’s duty to see his painting properly framed, in tune with the coloring of the work, and not with a harsh gold frame.” With the impressionists, he made radical changes in both the profile and color of frames, adopting white and colored frames inspired by the optical theories of French chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul (1786 - 1889).

Degas once famously sold a painting to a friend and, having been invited to dinner at the friend’s house, saw that the painting had been reframed in a gold frame. He took the painting off the wall and out of the frame, walked off with it under his arm, and never talked to the friend again.

The painted white frame became a symbol of modernity. Today, any reeded frame or one having a large flat slip from this period is referred to as a Degas frame.

Considering it's relationship to this painting, it matches the cloudy, autumnal atmosphere to a fault, its fluted column-inspired design offering a classical ease. It works expertly in containing the viewer's eye within the context of the painting, blocking out any distractions beyond the picture. 

This particular frame has been reused many times, and has developed a patina over the years as a result of heavy use. It has a scumbled finish that is generally referred to by framers as a dacapé finish. To produce this frame, the carved wooden molding lengths are covered with an extruded gesso technique, where the molding is placed through a hopper on wheels and hot gesso is extruded onto the surface. As metal templates push the mold through, the gesso adheres to the surface in one smooth, mechanical motion, leaving you with a very clean gessoed finish.