In Perfect Harmony: Picture and Frame 1850-1920

Large format hardback, cloth over boards with a sewn binding. 3.75 pounds; 278 pp; color illustrations throughout. According to Van Gogh, a painting was not really finished until it was framed; unmounted it was still "in the raw." He and many of his contemporaries regarded picture and frame as an aesthetic whole and chose or designed their own frames. Chapters on Historicism, the Victorians and Pre-Raphaelites, the Secessionist movements (Art Nouveau, Symbolism), Impressionism, and early Modernism examine the relationship between picture and frame in the years 1850 through 1920. Hundreds of works have been illustrated for the first time with their frames--paintings by Arnold Bocklin, Franz von Stuck, Klimt, Rossetti, Frederic Lord Leighton, Whistler, Degas, Pisarro, Seurat, Van Gogh, Jan Toorop, Fernand Khnopff, Kandinsky, Picasso, and many others.