The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Design for a picture frame, Baltimore Museum of Art

Design for a picture frame is on the last (fourth) side of a letter to George Aloysius Lucas (1824-1909) on 18 October 1862.

It is fully catalogued in MacDonald 1995 (cat. rais.) [more] (cat. no. 308).

Images

Subject

Description

Design for a picture frame, Baltimore Museum of Art

The sketch is on the verso of a letter written on 18 October 1862 in which Whistler asked G. A. Lucas to order picture frames in Paris for his oil paintings:

'Now I want the assistance of your good taste - I am painting a couple of pictures and wish on my arrival in Paris to have frames ready for them - Will you have the great kindness to order them for me from your frame-maker? - The first is for a sea piece of deep tone, and I should like it to be something like the one I had for the painting I brought from Brittany last year (which you remember) richly carved, and bold - deep and rather broad; massive but not cumbersome, and well finished.

Not dear though, mon cher, if possible.

The canvass [sic] is one of the regular French dimension, "toile de soixante" - The second is a "toile de vingt" for which I want a very pretty frame, highly finished, brilliant and rich - deep also, and rather broad. This is an order and will hang in a drawing room, so that the finish must not be neglected -' ¹

Technique

Frame

Design for a picture frame, Baltimore Museum of Art

A 'toile de soixante' is a canvas stretcher for a marine painting measuring 130 x 81 cm. A 'toile de vingt' is a canvas stretcher measuring either 73 x 60 cm (for landscape paintings) or 73 x 50 cm (for marine paintings). Lucas ordered the frames at Dutocq's on 21 October and went with Whistler to see them on 2 December 1862. ² The paintings have not been identified.

History

Provenance

• 1862: sent on 18 October to George Aloysius Lucas (1824-1909), Paris;
• 1909: bequeathed to the Maryland Institute, and later deposited on loan at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Exhibitions

It was not exhibited in Whistler's lifetime.

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 (cat. no. 308) as 'Design for a picture frame'.

Websites

• The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler, 1855-1903, edited by Margaret F. MacDonald, Patricia de Montfort and Nigel Thorp; including The Correspondence of Anna McNeill Whistler, 1855-1880, edited by Georgia Toutziari. Online edition, University of Glasgow. (GUW #09187).

Unpublished

• Parkerson, Sarah Lawrence, Variations in Gold: The Stylistic Development of the Picture Frames used by James McNeill Whistlers, PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2007.