Giving frames their due

Past access articles have featured examples of projects completed by WAM conservators, including painting, paper, object, and armor conservation. The Museum's newest exhibition, Frontiers of Impressionism, presented a different challenge. With over 50 of the Museum’s paintings going on tour, making sure the frames looked their best became a priority. For several months in 2022, consulting frame and gilding conservator Andrew Haines conducted a thorough condition evaluation of every frame in the show, making repairs and improvements as needed. Here he answers some questions about the work he did.

access: Why are frames important to a work of art?

AH: Unlike the digital or printed images we see every day, paintings and other two-dimensional works of art exist in three-dimensional spaces. Therefore, the frame both supports the painting and creates a transition from the image to the physical world. The frame may be a wonderfully carved gilt baroque masterpiece, or as simple as an unfinished slab of wood. Framing tastes may change with each generation, but the need for a frame never goes away.

access: How did you approach conserving the frames in Frontiers of Impressionism?

AH: After observing a frame’s aesthetic and historic relationship to the picture, I looked to see what was broken, discolored, or missing from the overall design. Occasionally there is loose ornament that needs to be stabilized before it does harm to the frame or to the painting. Often the gilt surface is lifted or flaking, in danger of being lost. Preserving what is there is the first consideration.

Next, I looked to see if the frame had been altered from the original design. The group of paintings in this show includes several that were collected early in the Museum’s history, and label information revealed that many still have their original frames. Nevertheless, these objects were subject to the passage of time and changing tastes. Parts of frames have broken, bits of ornament were missing, and some old repairs to the frames were clumsy or had discolored with time. access: What techniques did you use to restore damaged frames? access: What happens if the existing frame is aesthetically not right for a painting?

AH: To replace missing ornament, I used a mold-making putty employed by dentists and faithfully replicated the missing elements, casting in two-part epoxy attached with liquid animal-hide glue. For lost gilding, I applied a similar technique, filling the losses with epoxy putty or a polyvinyl acetate (PVA) spackle. Once these fills were leveled, I in-painted or in-gilded with acrylic paint, using an alternative gilding technique of applying gold leaf to acrylic paint instead of using the traditional glue-based gilding. This way a future conservator could remove my work using solvents that do not disturb the original gilt surfaces remaining on the frame.

AH: It is important to determine who put the painting into the troubling frame and why—and to record the relationship of that frame to that painting in the object file for future reference. I look to see if there are early photos of the original frame in the Museum’s records or online and then “go shopping” in storage for something that is similar. For three of the paintings in Frontiers of Impressionism, we were lucky to find “uninhabited” frames of the appropriate period and correct size that suited the works much better. access: Was there a frame that was particularly interesting to work on?

AH: In the first half of the 20th century, “rottenstone” was commonly used on the frames seen on Impressionist paintings. One example of this is Mary Cassatt’s Mother and Child (1902–1903). Made from ground-up shale, rottenstone is typically used as a fine abrasive in jewelry or woodworking, as well as in gilding. In the case of the Cassatt frame, gray rottenstone was applied over the brightly gilt frame to dull the appearance, hide losses, and disguise repairs. Cleaning rottenstone from gilding can be difficult, but I was able to remove it from the French, “Louis” style frame. Dating from the time of the painting, it once had a very lively gilt surface, enriched with cast ornament, and burnished to match gilding applied over different recut background textures. Today, after the heavy wash of gray has been removed, we can see a surface that, although worn, resembles gold leaf polished to a mirror like appearance.