‘Pictures properly framed’: Degas and innovation in
Impressionist frames
by ELIZABETH EASTON, Center for Curatorial Leadership, New York, and JARED BARK, Bark Frameworks, New York
me he considered it an artist’s duty to
see his pictures properly framed’, recounted Louisine Havemeyer in Sixteen to Sixty: Memoirs of a Collector.1 Although a
seemingly simple statement, it does not precisely clarify
what Degas intended by ‘properly framed’. New evidence
has come to light that elucidates Degas’s choices for the presentation of his work. Additional research also pays tribute
to the particular sensitivity of Mrs Havemeyer, one of the
greatest collectors of Impressionist art whose collection at
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, contains one
of the most significant groups of original frames.
Degas, the great polymath of the Impressionist group,
embraced sculpture, print-making, poetry, photography and
frame design over the course of his career. Of all the artists in
the Impressionist circle, he was the most inventive and energetic frame designer; over forty profiles exist in his notebooks,
spanning several decades, from the 1850s until the 1880s, with
a concentration from the late 1870s until the mid-1880s.2
In Degas’s earliest sketches from the 1850s, the artist reveals
an observational interest in frames, cataloguing mouldings
with a familiar mid-nineteenth-century ornamental vocabulary (Fig.28). Rendered as frames around pictures, as the
viewer would see them on the wall, these drawings do not
yet indicate the innovative designs that he conceived in his
notebooks beginning in the late 1870s. By 1878–79 Degas
had progressed from observing and sketching a conventional
frame to originating a rich collection of frame forms, some
of which were different from any that had previously existed
or, indeed, that have been designed to this day. A page of
seven profiles from this later moment (Fig.30) reveals the
energy of his imagination and also the consistency of his
approach to frame design: there are no sketches of cartouches,
flowers, acanthus leaves or any of the references to the
natural world that were the requisite embellishments of
traditional French frames. All are straight-sided frames,
designed to follow the profile of the canvas without curves
‘DEGAS ONCE TOLD
The authors are grateful to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, for Elizabeth Easton’s Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship. Gary Tinterow, Engelhard Curator in Charge of Nineteenth-Century, Modern and Contemporary Art, generously
allowed her access to archival information relating to the Havemeyer bequest to the
Museum. Both authors acknowledge the important contribution of George Bisacca, Conservator of Paintings at the Metropolitan, throughout the project. He has
been instrumental in all the technical examinations of pictures at the Metropolitan
Museum and the Musée d’Orsay and has also helped to interpret the scientific
results. His insightful comments about our findings contributed much to our
understanding of frame construction and design. The Musée d’Orsay graciously
granted repeated access to the backs of their pictures. Isabelle Cahn, in her years as
documentaliste at the Musée d’Orsay, has done pioneering work on the subject of
Impressionist frames. Her book Cadres de peintres, many articles and her conversations with the authors over the past several years have formed the cornerstone
on which this article is based. Finally, the authors thank Judith Dolkart, Associate
28. Notebook 13 (Carnet 16), p.10, by Edgar Degas. 1858–60. Pencil on mediumweight smooth and white paper with a slightly greasy surface, 14.5 by 9.5 cm.
(Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris).
Curator of European Art at the Brooklyn Museum, and Fronia Simpson, for help
with the final stages of the manuscript.
1 L. Havemeyer: Sixteen to Sixty: Memoirs of a Collector, New York 1993, p.250.
2 Degas’s carnets are on deposit at the Cabinet des Estampes at the Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, Paris. Frame sketches appear in only eight of the thirtyeight notebooks. Degas was not the only member of the Impressionist circle
interested in frames; Camille Pissarro was also at the forefront of the frame
vanguard, and credited as such in criticism of the time. But while Pissarro addresses the subject of framing throughout his voluminous correspondence, there is
virtually no documentation that survives about what his frames looked like.
Sketchbook pages are identified here by the carnet numbers assigned by T. Reff:
The Notebooks of Edgar Degas: A Catalogue of the Thirty-Eight Notebooks in the Bibliothèque Nationale and Other Collections, 2nd ed., New York 1985. These numbers
are followed, in parentheses, by the Bibliothèque Nationale carnet numbers.
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29. Notebook 30 (Carnet 9), p.25, by Edgar Degas.
1877–83. Pencil on medium-weight smooth and
white paper, 21.4 by 17.5 cm. (Cabinet des Estampes,
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris).
30. Notebook 31 (Carnet 23), p.9, by Edgar
Degas. c.1878–79. Pencil on thin smooth and
white paper with faint blue squaring, 16.7 by
11.1 cm. (Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, Paris).
or undulations, like simple architectural milled mouldings.
They do not articulate or draw attention to the centres or
corners of the frame, unlike established design precedents. In
this way, they allow the intentional distortions of the pictorial space in the artist’s canvases to be the focal point of the
viewing experience, neither contradicted nor complemented
by any emphasis contributed by the surrounding moulding.
Degas conceives of frames as moulding cross-sections,
which is rare in itself, and in some instances he renders fullscale drawings from which a moulding could be directly
milled. On a notebook page from 1877–83, his drawings
range from ten to eleven and a half cm. wide, corresponding
to the actual dimensions of a finished moulding. These are
not hypothetical jottings, but carefully considered renderings
to be made as drawn (Fig.29).
In these designs Degas envisaged a novel interplay of
volumes, planes and lines. His interest was not limited to
the face of the frame; in some instances he invented a surprisingly vigorous treatment of the side of the frame, at the
bottom right of the page (Fig.29). Until that time, the side
of the frame had been given only cursory attention; in fact,
anything other than the front of the frame has traditionally
been referred to as the back. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine
the impact of such a reeded side of a frame, since it has no
precedents. Light falling on the three reeds as he has drawn
them would enhance the physical reality of the picture in
subtle but innovative ways. Degas’s attention to the total
volumetric entity of the moulding takes into consideration
not just the experience of the picture head-on, but also the
physical reality of the work of art in its three dimensions,
including the perception of the picture as one approaches it
from the sides. Despite the fact that one speaks of a painting
as a two-dimensional object, it of course occupies space in
three dimensions. The canvas is stretched over a wooden
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31. Ludovic Halévy and Albert Boulanger-Cavé in the
wings of the Opéra, by Edgar Degas. 1879. Pastel (and
distemper?) on beige paper, 79 by 55 cm. (Musée
d’Orsay, Paris).
support, and the frame adds to that depth. By embellishing
the sides of the frame, Degas acknowledges the threedimensional integrity of a painting in a completely new way.
While his surviving frames are characterised by simple
fluted articulations in flat borders and convex cushion
shapes, Degas also designed unique combinations of coves
and ogees that convey dramatic syncopated volumes
(Fig.30). The profile at the bottom of Fig.30 combines three
simple coves that increase in scale from the inner edge of
the frame, the ‘sight edge’, to the middle of the frame and
balances them against a sweeping convex shape for the outer
half of the moulding. Although the shapes are not unfamiliar, nothing in the history of frame design offers such a play
of form and scale. But Degas’s imagination went far beyond
the recombination of standard frame forms; some of the
elements of his frame designs have never been seen before
or since on picture surrounds. Looking at the fluted ogees,
the little reeded outcroppings at sight edge and side, the
changing proportions and the directions and depth of
volumes, one can imagine the inventive play of light and
shade these mouldings would have had if made into frames.
Only a few of Degas’s designs survive today and it is not
known how many of his sketches were ever fabricated. Yet
Degas’s genius as a designer of frames is evident in these few
provocative pairings of image and frame, and from them we
can begin to understand the thinking behind the artist’s
intentions for the presentation of his art.
The reeded cushion at the top centre in Fig.30 evokes the
form of the contemporaneous Ludovic Halévy and Albert
Boulanger-Cavé in the wings of the Opéra at the Musée d’Orsay
(Fig.31). This straightforward frame consists of only one
element, a fluted cushion, with no slip or liner at the sight
edge and no extending step at the outer edge of the frame,
transitional elements that usually adorned similar frames of
DEGAS AND INNOVATION IN IMPRESSIONIST FRAMES
the late nineteenth century; Degas outlined this profile in
the second drawing on the same page (Fig.30, second from
top). Neither the cushion form nor fluted borders were
unique to Degas. Ford Madox Brown had used fluted frames
as early as the 1860s and on his advice Dante Gabriel Rossetti
switched from reeded to flat, fluted frames in 1867.3 J.A.M.
Whistler used a similar motif, building up a series of concentric cushions – reeded rather than fluted – and combined
with flat panels in his later frame designs. But Degas’s fluted
cushion is radical in its simplicity. He refined the shape to its
most austere, elemental form.
As in Degas’s other frame designs, the fluted cushion
frame has no ornament; visual interest is provided solely by
the play of light and shadow cast by the flutes cut into the
moulding’s surface, which is a simple section of a cylinder
and evokes the shape of an engaged column. Symmetrical, it
addresses the picture plane and the wall in the same way.
And, with no interstitial or transitional elements, it is a novel
design. Its unique symmetry simultaneously provides stasis
and dynamism, directing the viewer’s attention neither from
the edge of the picture out nor from the outside in. The
formal elements of the frame reinforce the relationship: the
flutes form a series of concentric rectangles, allowing the
subtleties of brushstroke and complicated pictorial space
of the painted composition to play against each other without competition from ornament in the frame. Picture and
moulding exhibit a parallel play of flatness and depth: just
as the assertive flatness of the right side of the pictorial composition is juxtaposed to the abstracted spatial recession on
the left, so too the convex form of the cushion frame offsets
the forceful stasis of its carved flutes.
Comparison with other works by Degas that are presented
in Louis XIV-style gilded frames highlights the impact of
different frames on his radical compositions. The array of
decorative elements on a Louis-style frame, with its emphasis
on the centre and corner axes, interferes with the compressed
nature of Degas’s compositions, with their cropped figures
and asymmetrical arrangement of forms.
The frame for Bather lying on the floor, possibly derived from
a sketch on the same sketchbook page from 1878–79, is more
complicated than the fluted cushion: the irregular profile
presents each rippling wave as distinct in depth and angle
from the one preceding it (Figs.32 and 33). Although no
drawing in any of Degas’s sketchbooks replicates this design
precisely, a resemblance can be seen in the sketch of a
descending wave form from 1878–79 (bottom left in Fig.30).
But a profile taken from the actual frame shows that the
angles are sharper both in the way they are cut into the frame
and project out from it (Fig.34).
The irregularities of the angles make the light catch each
outcropping in a different way. Consistent with all Degas’s
frame designs, it has neither applied ornament nor a curved
outer silhouette. Its ridges follow the straight edges of the
picture, allowing the composition to retain its focal energy,
fixing its borders without emphasis or interference. It also
shares with other mouldings of his design a sensitivity to the
play of light and shadow created by the agitated rhythm of
the shapes that run parallel to the canvas. This frame may
have been assembled from stock mouldings, as one of exactly
32. Bather lying on the floor, by Edgar Degas. 1880. Pastel on beige paper, 48 by 87
cm. (Musée d’Orsay, Paris).
33. Detail of Fig.32, upper right corner.
34. Profile from the frame on Fig.32, rendered by Jared Bark.
the same profile surrounds the Metropolitan Museum’s
pastel Woman with a towel of 1894 (Fig.35). The frames may
have been made in sections, or a die may have been made to
render the profile of a drawing Degas made for the framer.
Since the two extant frames of this form are intact, examination of the fabrication is difficult. However, a frame by the
3 I.M. Horowitz: ‘The Picture Frame, 1848–1892: The Pre-Raphaelites, Whistler,
Paris’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, Queens College, NY, 1974), p.69.
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35. Woman with a towel, by Edgar Degas. 1894 or 1898. Pastel on
cream-coloured woven paper with red and blue fibers throughout,
95.9 by 76.2 cm. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
36. Vincent van Gogh, by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. 1887. Pastel on
board, 57 by 46.5 cm. (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam).
same frame maker on a pastel by Toulouse-Lautrec of
Vincent van Gogh (Fig.36) combines the outer part of the
profile of this moulding with another one, unknown except
on this picture. Thus we can assume that either the frame for
Woman with a towel was assembled from a set of mouldings,
some of which were also used to fabricate the ToulouseLautrec frame, or else a moulding that the framer had made
up from Degas’s design was cut down and combined with
another for the portrait of Van Gogh.
One of the most notable of Degas’s frame designs exists as
a cross section on a page of its own in a sketchbook from
1879–82 (Fig.37). This frame, which surrounds The collector of
prints (Fig.38), has long been acknowledged to be an original
Degas frame. The Havemeyers decided to buy this picture,
which dates from 1866, more than a decade before the sketch
for the frame was made, when they visited Degas’s studio in
1891.4 That the artist delivered the picture in this frame,
almost four decades after he painted it and at least a decade
after he designed the profile, attests to Degas’s continuing
interest in the form and in the particular marriage of this
frame to this picture.
The frame itself, with a broad, flat panel bordered by a
raised outer rail, is a particularly felicitous surround for a
painting of a print collector, as it resembles the traditional
presentation of a work on paper: a drawing or print surrounded by a mount and framed in a narrow moulding. This
frame type is often referred to as a ‘passepartout’, the French
word for mat. Although a mount would not have been
appropriate for the presentation of a picture made with oil
on canvas, the flat panel creates an area of repose for the
viewer’s eye, and the raised fluted panel directs the viewer’s
attention to the composition within. The frame enhances the
balance in the canvas between areas of detail – the portfolio
of prints in the foreground, the random sheets on the table
behind him and the framed composition on the background
wall – and areas of predominantly solid colour.
The basic form of this frame was not invented by Degas nor
even used exclusively by him; the Pre-Raphaelites, especially
Rossetti, had used it extensively in the 1860s, and the NeoImpressionists were to use versions of it in white in the 1890s.
But whereas Rossetti, for example, had articulated the rail
with decorative squares and circles and had also taken advantage of the pattern of the wood grain by using gilded oak,
Degas kept an assertive, austere plainness to his design.
Belying conjecture that this frame was originally white, examination under a microscope reveals that it has always been
gold leaf over white ground and bole: another layer of gilding
over white ground exists under the dark patinated one we
see here.5 Despite the radicalism of the form of this frame,
Degas had it finished in the conventional way.
Technical examination further helps to clarify the ways
in which frames that appear alike while hanging on a wall tell
4
5
‘Another visit which is sharply engraved upon my memory was the occasion when
we bought The Designer of Prints (now entitled Collector of Prints), a transaction that
cost Degas Miss Cassatt’s friendship for a long time [. . .] Well, on this memorable
visit, Degas sold us a small oil painting called The Designer of Prints. . .’; Havemeyer,
op. cit. (note 1), pp.252–53.
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Thanks to Silvia Centeno, Julie Arslanoglu and Mark Wypyski of the Department of Scientific Research of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for their technical examination of samples from three of the frames in the Metropolitan,
Woman with a towel, The collector of prints and A woman ironing, as well as samples
from the Bather lying on the floor from the Musée d’Orsay. Analyses were conducted
DEGAS AND INNOVATION IN IMPRESSIONIST FRAMES
37. Notebook 32
(Carnet 5), p.20,
profile for a
passepartout frame,
by Edgar Degas.
1879–82. Blue crayon
on thin smooth and
white paper with blue
squaring, 14.4 by
9.3 cm. (Cabinet
des Estampes, Bibliothèque Nationale de
France, Paris).
very different stories from the verso. From the front, for example, the frame of A woman ironing (Fig.39), echoes the profile of
The collector of prints. Only when the backs of the frames are
examined can a significant difference in their construction be
determined (Figs.40 and 41). The back of The collector of prints
indicates that it is made along the lines of traditional European
frame fabrication. The corners are joined with a spline, a long,
narrow strip of wood embedded in the back of each mitred
corner, and minor cracking indicates that the raised rail has
been glued to the panel in the manner of traditional Italian
cassetta frames. The back of A woman ironing, by contrast,
reveals a structure more typical of American manufacture. The
rail is not attached to the panel from the front as it is in The
collector of prints; rather, the panel and outer rail are made as two
separate frames. The rail is rabbeted to receive the panel, and
the corners are not splined. In addition, all the dimensions are
close to whole inches or simple fractions of inches, which is
not the case with The collector of prints, which was designed
using metric measurements. Basswood, the structural material
of A woman ironing, points also to its American origins.
A third Havemeyer picture at the Metropolitan Museum
in a similar frame is Degas’s portrait of Berthe Morisot’s sister,
Yves Gobillard (1869; Fig.42).6 Until now thought to be
original, the frame is in fact of the same kind of American
construction as that of A woman ironing. Again, all the dimensions are close to whole inches or simple fractions of inches,
by optical microscopy, energy-dispersive X-radiograph spectrometry (SEM-EDS)
and Raman spectroscopy.
6 E. Mendgen et al., eds.: exh. cat. In Perfect Harmony: Picture & Frame, 1850–1920,
Amsterdam (Van Gogh Museum) 1995, p.134.
38. The collector of prints, by Edgar Degas. 1866. Canvas, 53 by 40 cm. (Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York).
39. A woman ironing, by Edgar Degas. 1873. Canvas, 54.3 by 39.4 cm. (Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York).
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40. Detail of frame verso, The collector of prints (Fig.38), demonstrating the spline
inserted at the mitred joints.
41. Detail of frame verso, A woman ironing (Fig.39).
unlike the frame for The collector of prints. Whereas the frame
for A woman ironing copies in form and finish that of The collector of prints, Madame Théodore Gobillard is in a more modest
frame. It is not gilded but finished in a bronze paint. Its pale
surface balances the soft, almost summary way Degas has
painted the canvas itself. The frame’s simple, flat profile
echoes the serenity of the layered planes in the composition,
from the cropped frame and doorway in the middle ground to
the succession of doorways and windows that manage to
recede into space at the same time as they float on the surface.
It is likely that Mrs Havemeyer put the present frames on
A woman ironing and Madame Théodore Gobillard. A photograph of a 1915 exhibition at Knoedler & Co., New York,
of Mrs Havemeyer’s collection shows A woman ironing
already in its current frame. ‘The first thing I did to many a
Degas that we purchased from amateurs’, she recalled, ‘was
to remove the atrocious heavy gold frame which the
owners probably thought gave the picture more importance
and to restore it to its original frame when possible, or
provide it with one Degas could approve’.7 Whereas the
Havemeyers purchased The collector of prints directly from the
artist (through Durand-Ruel) after seeing it in his studio,
they were not the original owners of the other two pictures.
They purchased Madame Théodore Gobillard from the estate
of the collector Michel Manzi, in 1916, and A woman ironing
they bought in 1894 from Durand-Ruel, New York
(Durand-Ruel having owned the picture on and off since
1873). This might account for the American construction of
these mouldings in the Degas style.
Indeed, Degas’s was not a completely independent framing
enterprise. Degas had in Louisine Havemeyer a sympathetic
patron who understood and respected his wishes regarding
the presentation of his art. She honoured his intentions by
keeping the frames on pictures she bought directly from his
studio and replacing those on works that had previously been
owned by other collectors. She recounts the story of visiting
the National Academy of Design to see how her first purchase of a picture by Degas (in 1877), Rehearsal of the ballet
(1876; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City), looked
in the company of American art of the 1880s: ‘We finally
found our pastel skied upon the wall of a small room and
alack! and alas! the delicate gray and green frame had been
generously treated to a thick coating of brilliant gold bronze
[. . .] With infinite pains I had the frame restored . . .’.8
Ambroise Vollard recounts a vivid tale of Degas repossessing one of his pictures from collector friends who had had the
temerity to replace his frame with a gold one. He was not the
only one, however, to mention Degas’s insistence on maintaining his frames on his pictures. The American painter
Theodore Robinson recorded in his diary what he learned
about Degas’s thoughts on frames from Monet, with whom
he spent a great deal of time at Giverny in 1892:
7
9
8
Havemeyer, op. cit. (note 1), p.250.
Ibid, p.251.
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Monet said he valued Degas’s drawing only, and said it
was a common trick of his (Degas’s) to make the frame
assist and complete the picture. Thus the light in the
pastel falling on the figure and clothing lying near, was
low-toned and grey, which passed by the help of the
frame, for which he searched a good while to find the
particular shade necessary, of satin, which covers it. It is a
very cold grey slate-color, throwing by contrast light into
the picture and making particularly rich a lot of red tones
on the walls. The picture was sold [to] Monet with the
stipulation [from Degas] that the frame be kept.9
Original frames tend to survive around pastels on paper
because the inherent fragility of the medium and the support
leads owners to retain the frames. Oil paintings are often
reframed by each subsequent owner of the work – indeed, it
is often by means of the framing that the collector can declare
ownership. One of Degas’s most important French patrons,
Isaac de Camondo, bequeathed his collection of more than
thirty works by the artist to the Louvre after his death in 1911
10
New York, Frick Art Reference Library, Diaries of T. Robinson, 6th July 1892.
The most comprehensive information about Cluzel is to be found in F. Destremau:
DEGAS AND INNOVATION IN IMPRESSIONIST FRAMES
42. Madame Théodore Gobillard (Yves Morisot, 1838–1893), by Edgar Degas. 1869.
Canvas, 55.2 by 65.1 cm. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
43. At the café-concert des Ambassadeurs, by Edgar Degas. 1885. Pastel over etching,
26.5 by 29.5 cm. (Musée d’Orsay, Paris).
in a distinctive moulding with single or stepped panels
that reflected the artist’s design for his passepartout frame.
Every picture by Degas, and only pictures by Degas, from
the Camondo collection bears this signature frame. Other
works in the Camondo bequest, by artists such as Manet,
Monet and Cézanne, were framed much more conventionally. As In the café (Absinthe) (Fig.44) demonstrates, the
frames for the oil paintings are all gilded, while the pastels
such as At the café-concert des Ambassadeurs feature a white
panel at the sight edge of the picture (Fig.43). With a flat
panel and raised outer rail, the form follows that of the frame
around The collector of prints. However, the resemblance
ends there; a ribbon-and-stave ornament replaces the simple
fluting of the passepartout frame. In small works such as At
the café-concert des Ambassadeurs, the ribbon-and-stave twists
in one direction all around the frame. For larger pictures,
such as In the café (Absinthe), the decoration meets at the
centre of each side. This directional punctuation mark is
at odds with the artist’s own desire for mouldings that followed the boundaries of the canvas without articulation at
the centre or corner. Given that Camondo’s collection
included important eighteenth-century French furniture
and Asian objects, perhaps the decision for the ribbon-andstave, a remnant of eighteenth-century drawing frames, was
considered a transitional element between modern pictures
in an environment otherwise filled with antiques.
Whether or not the design of the Camondo frame was a
collaboration, Degas’s primary framer during this period
deserves some mention, as he was perhaps the most innovative frame maker in Paris when the Impressionists were
charting a new course for frame design. Pierre Cluzel began
an apprenticeship after the Franco-Prussian War with a
framer on the left bank (rue de Seine). He opened his
shop in 1880 in the ninth arrondissement, at 33 rue Fontaine
St Georges, the same street in which Degas, Louis Anquetin
and Toulouse-Lautrec also lived.10 There he worked until
his death at the age of forty-four in 1894 (Fig.45). The years
that Cluzel was in business coincided with Degas’s greatest
‘Pierre Cluzel (1850–1894), encadreur de Redon, Pissarro, Degas, Lautrec, Anquetin,
Gauguin’, Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de l’Art français (1995), pp.239–47.
44. In the café (Absinthe), by Edgar Degas. 1875–76. Canvas, 92 by 68.5 cm. (Musée
d’Orsay, Paris).
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45. Verso of The collector of prints (Fig.38), showing Cluzel label.
pink’.14 Pissarro and Mary Cassatt were known to have
exhibited their works in frames of complementary colours,
but none survives, and we can only imagine the effect the
frames would have had on these pictures.15
Indeed, the break with traditional, academic models of
framing, which in France derived primarily from the great
styles of the eighteenth century and complied with the strict
rules of the official Salon, came in 1877, when Pissarro and
Degas exhibited their pictures at the third Impressionist exhibition in white frames.16 The choice of white, which was
believed to heighten the tone of the colours in a picture,
derived from the writings of the chemist and colour theorist
Eugène Chevreul.17
Colour plays into Degas’s considerations as well: a notation
in his hand on the right side of his page of sketches from
1878–79 reads ‘or ou couleur’ (‘gold or colour’; Fig.30).18 Thus,
in spite of a consideration of colour for his frames, Degas did
not discard gold as a viable option. Louisine Havemeyer
recounted Degas’s preferences for coloured frames in her
memoir:
interest in frame design. Artists developed mouldings for
their works in consultation with the framer – Pissarro alludes
in his correspondence to the fact that Cluzel modified some
of his designs.11 If Cluzel modified some of Degas’s frames,
this might explain why some interesting mouldings remain
on pictures by Degas for which profiles do not exist in
his carnets.
Reviews of the early Impressionist exhibitions often mentioned framing as one of the group’s significant innovations.
As one observed in 1881: ‘The most original aspect of these
revolutionaries is the surrounds of their works, which are
white. Gold frames are left to old painters, tobacco-chewing
daubers, opponents of light paintings’.12 Critics often
remarked on the central role colour played in Impressionist
frames, some advocating that the colour of the frame echo
that of the painted composition: ‘It is not enough to show
nature in a new fashion: one must frame her as she deserves:
green frames for landscapes, vermilion frames for dramatic
scenes. Gold is a chimerical metal which ill accords with
the simplicity of certain scenes; a pale grey frame marvelously suits the representation of a woman, and for scenes
of country customs a good frame of rough wood is still the
best thing’.13 The critic Georges Lecomte, on the other
hand, championed the Impressionists’ use of complementaries: ‘for a red sunset, a greenish frame, for a violet canvas
a matte yellow frame, a greenish spring scene framed in
So, although Degas might consider gold for his frames –
and we know he chose gold for the passepartout frame
on The collector of prints – he nonetheless advocated a restrained design for the overall structure. Only two coloured
frames survive, both green, and both on pictures by Degas
in the Musée d’Orsay: the fluted cushion frame around
Ludovic Halévy and Albert Boulanger-Cavé in the wings of the
Opéra and the wave-profile moulding that surrounds Bather
lying on the floor.
Although critics and historians have attributed the Impressionists’ commitment to painted frames as an indication
of their impoverished beginnings, the artists clearly preferred
a coloured frame to a gold one for reasons that go beyond
economics.20 The Impressionists attempted to create with
11 ‘. . . j’ai fait faire des bordures dans le genre anglais par Cluzel, mais, toujours, Cluzel
a eu la fantaisie d’ajouter à ses bordures en chêne mat une marge blanche en relief. . .’;
Camille Pissarro to his son Lucien, 1st March 1894, cited in J. Bailly-Herzberg:
Correspondance de Camille Pissarro, Paris 1988, III, p.435.
12 ‘La plus grande originalité de ces révolutionnaires consiste dans la bordure de leurs œuvres qui
sont blanches, les cadres d’or étant abandonnés aux barbouilleurs au jus de chique, ennemis des
peintures claires’; J. Claretie: ‘La vie à Paris’, Le Temps (5th April 1881), cited in I.
Cahn: ‘Degas’s Frames’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 131 (1989), p.289; also cited
in idem: exh. cat. Cadres de peintres, Paris (Musée d’Orsay) 1989, p.85, note 52.
13 J. Champfleury quoted in Cahn 1989, op. cit. (note 12), p.69.
14 ‘. . . pour un soleil couchant à la dominante rouge, un cadre vert, pour une toile violacée,
un cadre de ton jaune mat. . .’; G. Lecomte: ‘Camille Pissarro’, Les Hommes d’aujourd’
hui 336 (1890), cited in Cahn 1989, op. cit. (note 12), pp.69–70.
15 In the sixth Impressionist exhibition of 1881, Pissarro exhibited twenty-eight
works, of which fifteen were gouaches, the majority presented in frames of different colours ranging from ‘lilas pale au vert le plus criard, selon qu’il faut soutenir apaiser
ou exalter la tonalité générale de [la] toile’; A. Michel: ‘Exposition des artistes indépendants’, Le Parlement (5th April 1881), p.3. L’Art Moderne railed against Pissarro’s
practice, sneering at ‘l’indépendence [de Pissarro] qui consiste à barbouiller [smear, blur,
daub] ses cadres de saumon, d’orange, de vert-émeuraude, de rouge vif ’; ‘Nouvelles artistiques parisiennes. Le Salon des indépendants’, L’Art Moderne (24th April 1881),
pp.62–63. For these contemporary comments on Pissarro’s framing choices, see
A. de Buffévent: ‘A Painter and his Age: Biography and Critical Reception’, in J.
Pissarro and C. Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, eds.: Pissarro: Critical Catalogue of Paintings,
Paris 2005, I, p.171. Cassatt presented her portraits in the fourth Impressionist
exhibition in either red or green frames; E.R.: ‘Les Impressionnistes’, La Presse
(11th April 1879), cited in Cahn 1989, op. cit. (note 12), p.69.
16 Pissarro was the first to exhibit his works in white frames, presenting twenty-two
pictures at the third Impressionist exhibition, of 1877, in white surrounds.
Lecomte, op. cit. (note 14), remarks: ‘À l’Exposition de 1877, M. Pissarro, appliquant
dans sa rigoureuse logique la loi des complémentaires, sertit ses toiles dans des cadres blancs
qui, sans influence sur les couleurs, laissent aux tons leur valeur exacte’.
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The Répétition de Ballet [Rehearsal of the ballet] was most
appropriately framed by Degas, in soft dull gray and green
which harmonized with the decorations of the scenery and
the gauzy gossamerlike dresses of the ballerina. I mention
this for two reasons. First, because Degas once told me he
considered it an artist’s duty to see his pictures properly
framed, and that he wished the frame to harmonize and to
support his pictures and not to crush them as an elaborate
gold frame would do.19
DEGAS AND INNOVATION IN IMPRESSIONIST FRAMES
paint and brush the luminosity of nature. By painting on
canvases primed in white or on pastel grounds and allowing
their brushstrokes to float independently on the canvas,
without blending into a continuously uninterrupted surface
of paint, the Impressionists tried to achieve a simulacrum of
the colour spectrum that existed in the realm of light. Their
practice followed the noted psychophysiologist Hermann
Ludwig von Helmholtz’s observation that the painter must
imitate ‘the action of light upon the eyes’ and not merely
choose pigments that most nearly reproduce the colours
of nature.21 Gilded frames, whose gold surfaces flicker and
glow with reflected light, would diminish the effects the
Impressionists were attempting to achieve with pigment.
In addition, the innovations in lighting employed by the
Impressionists in their exhibitions also challenged the need
for gold frames.22
The frame for Bather lying on the floor (Fig.32) is more
unusual in its colour and more striking in its form than the
cushion moulding for the Ludovic Halévy and Albert
Boulanger-Cavé in the wings of the Opéra (Fig.31). Close examination of the frame of the former reveals three different
layers of paint, each a distinct colour – grey, dark olive
and a brighter green (Fig.46). Although it is not possible to
conclude when the colours were applied, a terminus post
quem can now be determined. While the preparatory layer
of gesso, composed of calcium carbonate, may be original,
all subsequent layers of paint contain the pigments titanium
white and phthalocyanine green, dating them to no earlier
than the 1930s.23 Even given the complexity of the profile,
it is probable that all the original pigment was removed
before the new paint was applied, so the original colour of
this frame may never be known.
The surface of the same type of frame at the Metropolitan
Museum on Woman with a towel (Fig.35) is not painted a
colour; despite its mottled surface, the frame actually consists
of two layers of gilding. Traces of brass paint were found
only at the outside edges of the frame.24 This comparison
offers an opportunity to assess the same form presented in
two ways, one with a painted and another with a gilded
surface. The green border heightens the predominantly red
tone of the composition of Bather lying on the floor, in keeping
with the Impressionists’ desire to surround their work in
frames of complementary colours, while the gilded tones of
the frame on Woman with a towel balance the golden hues of
the red-haired nude against the yellow background.
The mouldings of Degas’s design were every bit as radical
as the canvases they framed, and unlike anything that had
previously existed in the genre. Indeed, these frames served
a very modern role for the pictures they surrounded: they
were specifically concerned with presenting the picture,
with scant regard for the traditional role of the frame as
adornment or as mediator between the canvas and its architectural setting. In the frames that he painted, Degas bound
picture and surround together, further isolating the canvas
from its environment. These were not the traditional ‘windows’ through which the viewer could look into another
world but rather, striking forms that enhanced the paradoxical flatness and depth that the canvases celebrated.
17 M.-E. Chevreul: De la loi de contraste simultané des couleurs, Paris 1839, was also
summarised in Charles Blanc’s Grammaire du dessin, published in Paris in 1867,
which was a standard text used by the Impressionists. M. Ward: ‘Impressionist
Installations and Private Exhibitions’, Art Bulletin 73, 4 (1991), pp.599–622,
provides a thorough overview, along with the inclusion of much contemporary
criticism.
18 This is discussed by I. Cahn: ‘Edgar Degas: Gold or Color’, in Mendgen et al.,
op. cit. (note 6), pp.129–38.
19 Havemeyer, op. cit. (note 1), p.250. The Rehearsal of the ballet, Mrs Havemeyer’s
first modern acquisition, was purchased with Mary Cassatt in 1877. It is now in the
collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, and its original frame
has been removed.
20 ‘Dans les premières expositions, les Impressionnistes (Monet, par exemple) ont employé
le cadre plat, blanc ou teinté. Des considérations d’économie étaient en jeu, sans doute, car
le moment difficile passé, ces peintres se parèrent des cadres traditionnels’; F. Fénéon: ‘Les
cadres’, Bulletin de la vie artistique (1st February 1922), cited in Cahn 1989, op. cit.
(note 12), p.85, note 58.
21 H. von Helmholtz: ‘On the Relation of Optics to Painting’, in D. Cahan, ed.:
Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays, Chicago 1995, p.293. This
lecture was first delivered in 1871, and translated into French in 1878.
22 Martha Ward contextualises Charles Blanc’s discourse on the impact of a gold
frame, and why it was no longer pertinent for Impressionist paintings; see Ward,
op. cit. (note 17), p.610, note 40.
23 N. Eastaugh, V. Walsh, T. Chaplin and R. Siddall: Pigment Compendium: a
dictionary of historical pigments, Oxford 2004, pp.298–99 (phthalocyanine green)
and 364–65 (titanium white); the authors would like to thank Marco Leona of
the Department of Scientific Research at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for
bringing this reference to their attention.
24 Several samples from different parts of the frame were analysed with different
results. Some have two layers of gilding while others have bronze paint under a
layer of gesso, over which there is red bole, gilding and another layer of bronze
paint.
46. Side view of
Bather lying on
the floor (Fig.32),
demonstrating
paint layers.
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