Raising the Edge: A Scrutiny of Historic Frames at the Art Gallery of Ontario

by Eric Birkle   

An edge, a border, an ornament, a container—even a fitting—these are various ways in which picture frames have been described, studied, and understood over time. The notion of the frame as a work of art—as either a standalone object or a crucial component of an interdependent whole—is a less familiar concept. I have been immersed in this discourse since September 2024 as the Marie Zimmermann Curatorial Fellow in European Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), a position made possible by generous funding from the Decorative Arts Trust. The two-year fellowship is designed to assist the AGO with the investigation, exhibition, and publication of its historic frames collection, which bridges the gap between fine and decorative arts.

In order to situate my work into a broader context, a brief history of frame studies is in order. A nascent field in the late 20th century, pioneering work occurred at several major museums during the 1980s and 1990s, including the National Gallery, London, where Paul Levi and Nicholas Penny undertook the first complete survey of frames in that museum’s collection, and, in Canada, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, where Janet M. Brooke championed interest and research in original frames and Sacha Marie Levay catalogued the museum’s frames for the very first time. At the AGO, one of the earliest considerations of the vital relationship between paintings and frames was the concerted sourcing of period frames and simultaneous conservation of original frames for a 1983 exhibition curated by Marta Hurdalek titled The Hague School: Collecting in Canada at the Turn of the Century. In 1994, a major gift of European frames was made, followed by an even larger gift from the same private collection in 1997. Totaling over 1,200 frames—which range in style and date from the late 16th through the early 20th centuries and include Dutch, French, English, Spanish, Italian, and other examples—these gifts constitute the vast majority of what is now considered the AGO’s historic frames collection. In 2023, Hubert Baija, the retired Senior Frames Conservator from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, carried out an ambitious survey of the collection with the help of Julia Campbell-Such, the AGO’s Assistant Conservator of Frames.

Along with Adam Harris Levine, Associate Curator of European Art, Julia and I form the Gallery’s current frames team (figure 1). We operate collectively, with each colleague contributing their expertise and insight into a myriad of historic frames-related projects. I received essential training during the first month of the fellowship. For two weeks in September 2024, I was enrolled in a course at Beloit College that provided a survey of the history of picture frames from the Gothic style to the Italian and Northern European Renaissance, through the Dutch Golden Age and French frame styles into the 19th- and 20th-century. It further provided guidance and tools for distinguishing styles and periods of frame manufacture. This training was immediately followed by robust engagement in the current scholarship on historic frames through the AGO’s conference Many Lives: Picture Frames in Context, which brought together 23 frames experts from across the globe in an online symposium. Topics ranged from the variation of European Renaissance frames to recent re-framing campaigns by museums in North America.

Following the conference, I familiarized myself with the AGO’s historic frames collection and spent several months compiling research to inform an internal publication for the Gallery, which will function as a concentrated guidebook featuring short essays on primary frame types, images and illustrations pertaining thereto, and an extensive glossary of terms. This publication is a capstone project for the fellowship, and progress has paralleled our review of catalogue data for all accessioned frames. Once the data has been vetted, it will be shared with the Collections Department for updating and, for the first time since the frames’ acquisition, made accessible to the public online. Configured on the AGO’s website as a “Collection in Focus,” completion of this project is anticipated for mid-2026. I have suggested modified data for frames that, until now, have been little researched, such as Bourbon Restoration frames and 18th-century English moulding frames, fashioned for prints in the so-called Hogarth style.

Concurrently, I assisted in a major project to select an appropriate frame for the AGO’s Jeremias Schultz painting Portrait of a Lady Holding an Orange Blossom and its conservation and installation. The painting entered the collection in 2020 with an ungilded, faux-distressed wood frame, which only accentuated the unintended darkness of the composition (figure 2). Drawing upon my familiarity with architecture and interiors of the late 18th and 19th centuries, I advocated for a gilded Louis XVI Revival-style frame with festoons in our collection, which is more stylistically appropriate to the period of the painting, provides a dignified setting for the sitter, and complements the subject matter (figure 3). As part of the selection process, I consulted with the Head of Documentary Studies and a Curator at the Château de Versailles, whose collective feedback supported the dating and analysis the AGO team developed. The frame was cleaned, new and old gilding was toned, and the broken floral components were recast in a conservation-grade epoxy material and attached with reversible adhesive.

During the first year of the fellowship, I also assisted with the soft launch of the AGO’s frame lending program, which is intended to aid accredited peer institutions in pairing paintings from their collections with appropriate frames from the AGO’s collection. When museums contact us for assistance reframing their paintings, I conduct a review of the AGO’s holdings, considering factors such as period, style, condition, sight size, profile, and ornament (i.e. the prospective complementarity of a frame to a painting’s subject matter and composition). I then prepare a short list of frame options for each painting. After consultation with the frames team, which involves a discussion of conservation treatments required prior to exhibiting the frames, we offer a proposal to the borrower. The Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, TX, is the first institution to participate in the program and will receive three frames on loan in early 2026.

Furthermore, in notable fulfillment of my own research interests—yet beneficial to the AGO’s knowledge of its institutional history—I have dedicated time to investigating a number of mystery frames in various storage spaces. These may be unidentified frames in the collection, frames that remained behind after a painting was deaccessioned, or frames divorced from the paintings they previously housed (wherein both remain at the AGO). An example is the original (or a very early) frame that accompanied a painting included in the aforementioned Hague School exhibition, Dutch artist Willem Bastiaan Tholen’s The Arcade at the Hague (figure 4). Through documentative and photographic research in the AGO’s library and archives, I have been able to track the frame in place and time and hope to confirm the details of its origin through further research in the archives at the National Gallery of Canada, which contains Tholen’s correspondence with art dealers in London and Montreal.

Particularly exciting to report is my discovery of two original frames: one for a work by the mid-19th-century American landscape painter Robert Seldon Duncanson titled A River with Rapids and the other for a work by Canadian painter James Wilson Morrice titled Gibraltar. The frame for the Duncanson painting (figure 5) was made by Augustus James Pell, who was active in Montreal while the artist lived there. According to archival and curatorial records, the frame for Gibraltar (figure 6), was not acquired at the same time the painting was accessioned in 1989. Rather, former curators were made aware of it in 1993, by which time a new frame had been custom-built. The museum decided not to reunite the original frame with the painting.

These discoveries quickly caught the attention of the Canadian Society of Decorative Arts (CSDA), who approached me with an interest in my adventitious research on the history of Canadian frames. Ensuing discussions resulted in an offer to give a talk through the CSDA’s Young Professionals & Creatives Lecture Series in April 2025, which I titled “Victorian Picture Frames in Canada: Stylistic and Institutional Histories.” This lecture considered the stylistic development of 19th-century eclectic and Revival-style frames in Canada, examining them in Canadian institutional contexts, both historic and current. It featured several case studies from the AGO, including the Barbizon-style Tholen frame and a Neoclassical Revival-style frame (figure 7) made by Henry John Matthews, who established a picture framing business, H.J. Matthews, in Toronto in 1861.

During the remainder of the fellowship, I am eager to see the internal guidebook and online catalogue through to fruition. As well, I am thrilled to be co-curating, with Adam and Julia, an installation of frames from the collection in the AGO’s Leonard Rotunda. The installation, currently slated to open in the fall of 2026, will be only the second of its kind at the AGO and will follow in the footsteps of, but also distinguish itself from, important exhibitions of frames at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1990), the J. Paul Getty Museum (2015–16) and the Louvre (2018).

Through all of these objectives, the mission of the Decorative Arts Trust—to promote and foster the appreciation and study of the decorative arts—along with the AGO’s vision—to lead global conversations from Toronto—will be the guiding forces in my continued work with and study of historic frames.

Eric Birkle is the Marie Zimmermann Curatorial Fellow, European Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario. 

A print version of this article was published in The Magazine of the Decorative Arts Trust, one of our most popular member benefits. Join today!