62 
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“The Flower 
Girl”, by the 
late J. Alden 
Weir, in a 
frame designed 
for it by Her¬ 
man Dudley 
Murphy 
When The Frame Fits The Picture 
(Continued from page 38) 
always worn his hair rather long, as 
Paderewski, for example, being put in 
the close-fitting uniform of our army. 
You would laugh at the incongruity, 
and feel the need of clothes of a dif¬ 
ferent shape, or else the close cropping 
of his hair. 
“Would you have all the women do 
their hair alike and dress in the same 
clothes? Would the clothes of your 
mother of sixty be becoming to your 
daughter of eighteen, or vice versa? 
Why not? 
“Do you think it a mere matter of 
fashion that a quiet, refined old lady 
looks her best in dignified black or sil¬ 
ver gray, with white lace repeating the 
note of her white hair? Not at all! 
Every individual finds some clothes 
more becoming than others. The more 
pronounced the personal characteristics 
are, the more necessary is it that the 
clothes shall best set off those char¬ 
acteristics. 
“You may spoil absolutely the effect 
of a fine picture by an unsuitable frame, 
just as you may make an almost poor 
one look distinguished by a proper set¬ 
ting. Put a delicate, subtle Whistler 
nocturne in a glittering, heavily orna¬ 
mented frame and hang it on a wall 
with a lot of other pictures and you 
will never see it. Put a simple flat 
frame of parallel lines upon a sumptu¬ 
ous Venetian subject of the style of 
Titian or Veronese and it would at once 
cheapen the picture and make it look 
almost tawdry. 
‘But it must not be forgotten that it 
requires an expert properly to harmon¬ 
ize frame and picture. The choosing 
of a frame to bring out the best quali¬ 
ties of a picture is a matter requiring 
the personal attention of a man trained 
in this particular field of art. For this 
reason it is possible for a person to 
choose one of the new style of frames 
and still have the effect turn out to be 
as incongruous as if he had employed 
one of the tawdry frames of the past. 
The copies that are made of frames 
designed for particular pictures bear the 
same relation to the originals as copies 
of Corots, Rembrandts - or Titians bear 
to the originals. However, to those who 
do not know the difference between an 
original Corot and an auction room fQrg- 
ery they pass very well, though they 
often cost more than the real thing with 
the personal attention of the designer.” 
because for so many years frames have 
been considered almost solely from the 
architecture viewpoint. A man who 
wanted a house decided whether he 
would have Tudor architecture, Co¬ 
lonial, French chateau, or what not. 
And when it came to a painting he de¬ 
cided whether to give it a Renaissance, 
Florentine, Flemish or some other sort 
of frame. These different styles got 
their architectural features from deco¬ 
ration and furniture of the periods of 
the same name. You can see how 
utterly lacking in individuality this 
method was. It was likely enough to 
put an ornate, decadent Renaissance 
frame on an impressionist landscape or 
a Louis XIV frame on a Winslow 
Homer marine. 
However, in very old pictures there 
really can be an historical appropriate¬ 
ness about frames, and in many cases 
it is absolutely necessary to follow his¬ 
torical precedent. This precedent is 
usually artistically correct. An old 
Florentine painting certainly looks right 
in a paneled and architectural Floren¬ 
tine frame, and it would not look right 
in any other sort of frame. Just so an 
old Spanish picture looks at its best in 
a frame of old Spanish design, full of 
broad effects and color. But these are 
very exceptional cases and have nothing 
to do with the thousands of modem 
and contemporary pictures that in 
homes outnumber the old masters. 
Separating Picture and Wall 
The Purpose of Frames 
The original trouble with picture 
framing the primal misconception— 
seems to have been that paintings 
needed a house to live in, rather than 
a mere dress. This figure is made apt 
If* framing the great mass 
it is first necessary to rec 
the frame is merely a space < 
tion between the picture and 
which it hangs. In times c u it\ 
when pictures were painted 
walls a marginal line sufficed lu nem in 
the composition, as can be seen in the 
ruins of Roman residences at Pompeii 
and on the walls of Egyptian temples 
of 3,000 years ago. The frame, per¬ 
forming this function of demarkation, 
should relate the picture to the wall and 
make an easy transition from the one 
to the other. If, however, it attracts 
attention to itself because of its garish¬ 
ness or its ornateness, it is a failure and 
a register of bad taste. If it attracts 
no- attention to itself, it is a success; 
and if, without attracting attention to 
itself, it can set off and enhance the 
qualities of the picture, as a gown does 
the beauty of a woman, it becomes an 
artistic triumph. 
Besides Herman Dudley Murphy, 
other artists, with the aid of sympa¬ 
thetic frame-makers, have achieved this 
result in America. Notably among them 
('Continued on page 66) 
