Wandering Renoir Returns (with Frame)

Impressionist pictures were often framed by dealers and collectors in ornate frames like this one, even though many of the Impressionists–especially Degas, Pissarro, Cassatt and Morisot–rejected them. A Rococo frame such as the one above, on a Degas, would have seriously annoyed the artist.

But, we would be wrong in assuming that such a frame would have met with Renoir’s disfavor. Alone among the Impressionists, Renoir valued old, carved frames–he appreciated them for their craftsmanship. The son of a tailor, and a porcelain painter himself as a boy, Renoir’s background as a member of the artisan class was unique among the Impressionists. It is therefore understandable that he had no interest in the austere framing experiments of his colleagues in the late 1870’s. He was, after all, a trained artisan, and these frames made no particular use of the craft, skill, and experience of an artisan.

Furthermore, Renoir admired 18^th c. French painting, and his use of 18^th c. frames may have served, for him, as a bridge between his work and the work of 18^th c. masters.

Jean Renoir wrote that his father “would tolerate only old frames carved in hard wood, ‘which showed the hand of the craftsman.’ Renoir’s taste in frames, as indeed in everything, surprised people who prided themselves on having ‘good taste.’ The expression annoyed him, and by way of defiance he would proclaim that he had ‘bad taste.’ Bright colors are accepted nowadays in women’s clothes…but in his day it was only country people who wore them–genteel people dressed in sober colors. The same attitude applied to picture frames and antique furniture -they were admired for their quality, but their color and the golds, especially, had to be faded. My father pointed out that the frames had been new originally, and that they were therefore meant to shine ‘like gold.’ Several times he treated himself to having a favorite frame re-gilded with gold leaf; for instance, the frame for the portrait he did of me as a hunter. Re-gilded 50 years ago, it still shocks people of ‘good taste.’ It is an Italian frame of the late 17^th century. Renoir chose it himself in an antique shop in Nice. He felt that a massive frame was necessary to set off the picture properly, ‘especially in a drawing room in the Midi, where there is so much else to tempt the eye.'”

To a viewer who knew that Impressionists were well-known for simple, painted frames, the 18th c. frame on the Renoir at the Baltimore Museum of Art might look like a gaudy anachronism. But the artist himself almost certainly would have approved.