A Segantini Sparks a Frame War
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| Before and after: Giovanni Segantini's Spring in the Alps, 1893 |
In April I noted that the Getty Museum had replaced the artist-designed gilt frame of Giovanni Segantini's Spring in the Alps with a white modern frame. In The Frame Blog, Lynn Roberts argues against the change: "it is a disgrace that its present owner (an otherwise reputable museum) should be so careless of its overall history and context as to remove what should be an inseparable element of the gesamtkunstwerk—the overall work of art, designed by the artist and decorated with motifs which expand upon the content of the painting."
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| Detail of narcissus blossoms on original frame |
The motifs in question are small reliefs of narcissus blossoms, suited to the title season and mountain range. While the narcissi are subtle, they relate to more sculptural botanical motifs in other Segantini frames of the 1890s, such as the Triptych of Nature in the Segantini Museum, St. Moritz.
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| Frame of Giovanni Segantini's Nature, 1897-99. Segantini Museum, St. Moritz |
Roberts links to my first post on the new Getty frame but is slightly confused—I have no connection with LACMA(!) LACMA's blog is called Unframed…
Making a surprise appearance in Roberts' case is Victorian fairy painter John Anster Fitzgerald, who imagineered hyper-weird twig frames for his paintings of fantasy subjects. Roberts cites Fitzgerald as an example of the late 19th-century interest in creative, artist-designed frames integral to the painting. Coincidentally, there's a Fitzgerald painting at the Getty now, in "The Fantasy of the Middle Ages." His Fairies in a Bird's Nest had a twig frame, and I was hoping to see it here. Instead it's being shown in a simple rectangular frame. Maybe the twig frame was too fragile to travel? The Fitzgerald is owned by the Legion of Honor Museum, San Francisco (which had the Segantini Spring in the Alps on loan for 71 years).
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| John Anster Fitzgerald, Fairies in a Bird's Nest, 1860, in original frame. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco |
Comments
At least the museum's trendiness didn't cause to cause the frame to be smaller or bust the Getty's budget.
Given that the Getty is not a democracy and we don't get votes, I'll tender my vote anyway: stick with the white-painted frame.
Segantini was a fine painter, but his frame designs, based on the trove of examples displayed in The Frame Blog, are mixed/spotty.
Yes, as the critic Lynn Roberts notes regarding the original gilt frame, "The motifs in question are small reliefs of narcissus blossoms, suited to the title season and mountain range." But the overall affect is still retrograde. There's certainly nothing revolutionary about the design...it's more incongruously 18th-Century French than it is late-19th Century Swiss.
Now, there is a galaxy's difference between his tired gilt frame for the Getty picture, and the quite brilliant one he made for his "Nature," of 1897-99 in the Segantini Museum at St. Moritz. That dandy has an Orientalist/Aesthetic style that is novel, modern and forward-thinking.
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I count John Anster Fitzgerald as a frame maker extraordinaire, with his twig frame for "Fairies in a Bird's Nest." It's stunningly beautiful. If I were the Legion of Honor, I wouldn't let that gem of a frame travel either.
But there were scads of late-19th Century painters who designed their own frames. One of my favorites is Franz von Stuck (German, Tettenweis 1863–1928 Munich).
His "Inferno" of 1908 at the Met has an understated and powerful frame, with a title-bearing predella:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/749639
Also, his frame for "Sphinx" of 1904 at the Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt is even more revolutionary:
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Franz_von_Stuck_Sphinx.jpg
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I wasn't aware until reading your report that Segantini's "Spring in the Alps" had been on loan to the Legion of Honor for 71 years before the Getty acquired it.
I am reminded of the decades I visited the Met with foreboding, when I never left the building without first seeing "An Eruption of Vesuvius" of 1824 by Johan Christian Dahl (Norwegian, Bergen 1788–1857 Dresden). It was on long-term loan for well over 25 years, and I always thought/feared that I would return to the Met and it would be gone.
Well, worried I am no more: the owner, Christen Sveaas, gifted it and many other Nordic masterpieces to the Met in 2019, in celebration of the Museum's 150th Anniversary.
WWWWWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/438159
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On the matter of long-term loans: at the Met there's a magnificent 19th-Century sculpture of "Sappho," ca. 1895, by Count Prosper d'Epinay (Port Louis, Mauritius,1836–1914 Paris). I've long admired it but never took the time to read the gallery card. Some of its details stuck out like a lightning bolt:
Credit Line: Lent by Count Prosper d'Epinay, 1897
Accession Number: O.L.97.IV [O.L. presumably means Old Loan (?)]
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/209017
D'Epinay died in 1914, so I surmise he forgot to pick it up.
Which begs the question, are the sculptor's heirs, if any, acceding to the continuing loan? If the inheritor trail has died out after 125 years, does the Met ever plan to seek to obtain full title, as the work could be claimed to be "abandoned"?
These are questions for the art lawyers.
> Which begs the question, are the sculptor's heirs, if any,
> acceding to the continuing loan?
That's kind of the flip side of where artworks, mainly from the distant past, now displayed in certain museums (such as the Getty) are being claimed as stolen from their ancestral homeland. Of course, there are also cases involving paintings or other objects grabbed by the Nazis in the 1930s-40s.
I'm sure if D'Epinay were a hotter name in the auction world and the artwork weren't so heavy, everyone and their uncle would be coming out of the woodwork and demanding they were the sculpture's rightful heirs.
Don't believe me. Visit for yourself the 19th Century collections in any gallery in Zürich, Geneva, Basel, Lausanne, Bern or Winterthur.
To a one, the frames' descriptor is plain, plain, plain.