FRAMING
OUR tastes change with our culture. After the Civil War, when the first large crop of millionaires was made, all ornamentation, whether in picture frames, furniture or wall decorations, assumed a garish and bizarre effect. Gold and brilliant colors were used liberally, and to this day, many pictures are so badly framed that the effect of the picture itself is lost.
Many painters have only one exhibition frame, in which they show their paintings to prospective buyers and others, and some painters will not sell a painting without a frame, believing that they know best the kind of a frame best suited for the painting. We are rapidly changing our views on this subject, fortunately, and we are going back to what the Dutch and Flemish did three centuries ago, of having dark frames with a little gold or silver insert. It must be obvious to everyone that a somber painting in a six or eight inch glaringly brilliant yellow gold frame, destroys the value of the painting, for the eye, at all times, lights on the brilliant frame first.
The best example of this is the method in which etchings are framed. You seldom see an etching in anything but a half or three quarter inch flat, dark frame. If an etching were placed in a three inch gold frame, both would be out of place. Frames should always be subordinated to the painting. A blue and white seascape should be framed in a bluish gray frame, which may have a dark bronze moulding on the outer and inner edge. If painters want only one frame to show their work, let that one frame be of somber hue; otherwise it will detract from the painting.
Proper framing is really a scientific study. If the general tone of a picture be yellow, like a golden sunset, the complementary color would be a bluish green, and therefore a bluish green, with some gray in it, offset by a narrow metal colored moulding, would be the proper frame for a painting of that kind. Nothing is so hideous as brilliant gold on all the paintings in a room, and many a museum is spoiled through the glossy, inharmonious effects of the conglomerate masses of frames, which detract from the color value of a painting. A little care and study on this subject will frequently enhance the work in question.