Renoir, love and frames
This is a brief look at the frames on Renoir’s paintings, based on those in the exhibition Renoir and love at the National Gallery, London, from 3 October 2026 until 31 January 2027 (previously at Musée d’Orsay from March to July 2026, and travelling to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in February next year).
Unlike Manet, Degas and Monet, who came from prosperous families, Renoir had a relatively modest background. He was the son of a tailor, who had moved from Limoges to Paris in pursuit of work when Renoir was four, and at thirteen he had himself to start work like his two older siblings, in order to help his family survive.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), decoration; Michel Lévy-Frères, porcelain manufactory, candleholder in the shape of a vase, decorated with a bacchante, c.1857, porcelain, bronze, 30 x 10.5 cm., no inv. 34635, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris © MAD, Paris/Cyrille Bernard
To the satisfaction of his father, looking back to the family’s life and Renoir’s birth in the ceramic centre of Limoges, he joined the porcelain atelier of Lévy frères, rue Vielle-du-Temple, in 1854, learning to decorate the borders of plates, and progressing to bouquets of flowers and birds, and finally to portraits of Marie Antoinette [1]:
‘…his employer’s wares… were copies of Sèvres and Limoges: vases adorned with delicate garlands, plates set off by fine arabesques, and always with a subject in the centre such as shepherdesses, Imperial Eagles, or historical portraits.’ [2]
His parents’ apartment in Paris was in a rackety 16th century building near the Louvre, which he visited in his lunchtimes. He
‘…knew the Louvre Museum well… His first enthusiasms were for Watteau and Boucher.’ [3]
Watteau (1684-1721), Embarkation for Cythera, 1717, o/c, 129 × 194 cm., Musée du Louvre
This is the influence which permeates the paintings in the exhibition. It flows from the pastorals of Watteau and his contemporaries, producing visions where lovers picnic beneath sun-filtering trees, naked girls lie around on the grass, women in swirling frocks wander through Cytherean parks or dance with their beaux, and Paris becomes an Arcadia of long, long lunches set around the Seine. It is fleshed out by the love of friends – artists meeting in homes and bars – and maternal love, with infants joining the pastorals.
And naturally, for someone self-educated in the lost world of the 18th century, the frames were part of the whole work of art:
‘…Renoir would tolerate only old frames carved in hard wood, “which showed the hand of the craftsman”.’ [4]
This is how artists have always started out: they have bought second-hand frames cheaply, adjusted them to fit a completed painting or acquired a frame-sized canvas on which to paint, titivated them, and finished with a work suited to enter in a Salon or (if necessary) to sell to a client. For example, at some point in 1827 Delacroix wrote to a friend:
‘I have finished an ‘animal’ picture for the General and I have found for it a Rococo frame which I’m going to regild and which will be marvellous.’ [5]
Speaking of regilding…
‘Renoir’s taste in frames, as indeed in everything, surprised people who prided themselves on having “good taste”. The expression annoyed him, and by way of defiance he would proclaim that he had “bad taste”. Bright colours are accepted nowadays in women’s clothes, thanks in part perhaps to Renoir, but in his day it was only country people who wore them – genteel people dressed in sober colours. The same attitude applied to picture frames and antique furniture – they were admired for their quality, but their colour and the golds, especially, had to be faded. My father pointed out that the frames had been new originally, and that they were therefore meant to shine “like gold”…’
Renoir (1841-1919), Jean Renoir as a hunter, 1910, o/c, 172.7 x 88.9 cm., Oklahoma City Museum of Art
‘…Several times he treated himself to having a favourite frame regilded with gold leaf; for instance, the frame for the portrait he did of me as a hunter. Regilded fifty years ago, it still shocks people of “good taste”. It is an Italian frame of the late 17th century. Renoir chose it himself in an antique shop in Nice. He felt that a massive frame was necessary to set off the picture properly, “especially in a drawing room in the Midi, where there is so much else to tempt the eye”.’ [6]
The high key of colour and light in the painting (and presumably the location of the canvas, in the south of France) may demand a brighter setting than usual – and more brilliant a finish than is often found on a 17th century Bolognese frame – but this is certainly not the art of the subtle. This portrait was probably framed the year it was painted, in 1910; but even before the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874 one feels that Renoir’s approach to the presentation of his work was different from that of his colleagues.
Renoir (1841-1919), Mother Antony’s tavern, 1866, o/c, 194 x 131 cm., Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. Photo: courtesy of Michael Jones
One of the earliest paintings in the exhibition is the scene in the inn run by ‘Mother Antony’, Le Cabaret in Fontainbleau, which includes two of Renoir’s brother artists, Jules Le Coeur and Sisley. The painting seems to have been left at the inn, possibly in payment for food and drink, and almost certainly without a frame, and may have remained there until Le Cabaret closed in 1880. It resurfaced in 1905, when it was purchased by Adrien-Aurélien Hébrard, a Parisian bronze-worker, and although its current frame dates from some time in the 20th century, its revival style would probably not have been the choice of the artist. In fact, all the frames on show at the National Gallery which have a rectilinear frame and are not Baroque in style look vaguely wrong on Renoir’s paintings.
Renoir (1841-1919), Woman with a parasol and small child on a sunlit hillside, c.1874-76, o/c, 47 x 56.2 cm., MFA Boston. Photo: courtesy of Michael Jones
Renoir (1841-1919), Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise (The rowers’ lunch), 1875, o/c, 55 x 65.9 cm., Art Institute of Chicago
These two, for example, 18th century NeoClassical and 19th century NeoClassical revival/Second Empire fluted frames, are somehow not what the viewer expects to see on a soft-focus Renoir. Did he really follow his peers when they began to frame their work in white architrave frames – probably from 1873, and certainly in the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877? [7]
Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Danseuse au repos, 1879, pastel & gouache on paper, 59 x 64 cm., in original frame; private collection. Photo courtesy of Jed Bark
He would certainly have wanted to spend as little extra as possible on presenting his work (in the 1860s he was occasionally too pressed even to be able to afford the paints he needed); but the sort of rectilinear white frame which, for example, Degas favoured – although made from decent wood and finished with polished gesso – must have jarred with his sensibilities. Perhaps from the beginning he just bought the cheapest second-hand gilded frames he could find, or accepted cast-offs from his wealthier friends.
Renoir (1841-1919), Le Pont des Arts, 1867-68, o/c, 60.9 x 100.3 cm., The Norton Simon Foundation. Photo: courtesy of Michael Jones
The frame now on this early landscape of the promenade along the Seine, painted when he was twenty-six or -seven, is probably what he would have most aspired to, given the compositional similarities of his painting to Watteau’s Embarkation to Cythera. It may have been adapted for the canvas at several points in the international progress of Le Pont des Arts from Durand-Ruel’s gallery in 1875-77 – possibly during its brief possession by Paul Cassirer? It’s a very nice Louis XIV ogee frame with projecting corners and centres, carved with shallow relief Bérainesque strapwork and scrolling foliage, cross-hatched on the ground and diapered in the corners and centres, with a sanded frieze and acanthus-&-bud sight edge; some of the original gilding still clings to its soft and fluid ornament. It has been cut down to fit the painting, and has combined with the latter to produce possibly the world’s nicest Renoir.
Renoir (1841-1919), The Grands Boulevards, 1875, o/c, 52.1 x 63.5 cm., Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo: courtesy of Michael Jones
Another similar style of frame on another early Renoir, but with a much harder effect, with decoration like cast iron, and any small remnants of gilding failing to soften the obtrusive and unrelenting brownness, which the artist would almost certainly have hated.
Renoir (1841-1919), At the milliner’s, 1878, o/c, 32.9 x 24.8 cm., Fogg Museum (Harvard Art Museums). Photo: courtesy of Michael Jones
The slightly threadbare provenance of this little thing, which trails behind it a paradoxically vast number of exhibitions in which it has taken part since 1932, gives little idea of who could have found such an enchanting frame for it; nor of what vandal could have slathered the frame with grey paint. The gilding glows out undimmed from the central hollow, in exactly the way anyone might be expected to see echoed fortuitously by the hair of the central figure; – perhaps one day Harvard will wipe its collective eyes, and call in the conservators. It must have been cut down, but has been done fairly sensitively, so possibly not by the paint vandal. This is a really charming Louis XIV pattern, with convex profile, scallop shell corners and reversed shell centres, scrolling strapwork and leaf buds, which might well be much happier with other contents.
Renoir (1841-1919), Marie-Thérèse and Jeanne Durand-Ruel, 1882, o/c, 81.3 x 65.4 cm., Chrysler Museum of Art. Photo: courtesy of Michael Jones
One more Louis XIV convex frame, with shell corners and fanned lambrequin centres; perhaps with the sight edge replaced, or partially replaced, and the frieze surprisingly lemony in tone. The frame has been cut down to fit the painting, with the Bérainesque decoration of the convex rail jigsawed together, but quite inventively – so that, for example, the replacement of the strapwork in the lower left-hand corner of the vertical element is barely noticeable, and the slightly random sprigs of florets don’t appear too much out of water. The gesso has been infilled and recut, and then infilled, smoothed over and patched with gold, so that the strata of incised or blank grounds lie above each other, like different eras of the city of Troy.
Watteau (1684-1721), Heureux age: age d’or, c.1716-20, o/c, 20.3 x 23.6 cm., Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth
In spite of its battle-scarred decoration and surface, the frame blends perfectly with this portrait of Durand-Ruel’s daughters, fresh, young and dappled with sunlight on their garden bench, set against a leafy background of saplings which, like the foreground grass, is also dappled with scattered light and shade. Frame and painting blend in much the same way that Watteau’s children, innocently recreating his visions of adult fêtes galantes, are complemented, enlarged and set off by their own wide, carved border of ornament, like dull gold lace (much larger in area than the painted canvas). The remains of gilding and the more sympathetic patination of both frames are successful in marrying with paintings from the early 18th and later 19th centuries, as the frames of The Grands Boulevards and At the milliner’s cannot be with their present paintings.
Renoir (1841-1919), La promenade, 1870, o/c, 81.3 x 64.8 cm., Getty Museum. Photo: courtesy of Michael Jones
La promenade emerged into art historical awareness at the sale in 1898 of the collector Gustave Goupy (who may have framed it), and seems to have been exhibited first by Durand-Ruel in 1901. There is no indication that it was exhibited earlier by Renoir himself, who in any case would not presumably, at twenty-nine, have been able to afford a 19th century Salon frame – for this is what it has acquired – until later in his career, and might also have preferred something rather more antique. Salon frames were, however, beautifully made of cast plaster: sharply detailed, but less brassy and brittle than compo, and a fair alternative to carved giltwood if there were not time nor money enough for the latter. They date from the 1850s onwards, and can be seen (for instance) on Millet’s Gleaners, exhibited in 1857, Manet’s Olympia, exhibited in 1865, and Meissonier’s Self-portrait of 1875 . The profile is similar to a mid-17th century Louis XIV convex acanthus frame with Louis XIII influence, but the ornament is more sculpturally insistent. As a modernized version of a Louis XIV frame on a Watteau, it works extremely well on these Second Empire lovers.
Renoir (1841-1919), Confidences, c.1874, o/c, 81.3 x 60.3 cm., and detail, Portland Museum of Art. Photo: courtesy of Michael Jones
One of the more precious and beautifully crafted frames in the exhibition is this, from the next stylistic group – a French Régence frame, its wide, gentle hollow decorated with panels of enriched diapering and delicate strapwork, and its shell corners holding posies of tiny leaf buds. The ground of the corner ornaments is punched, and the narrow frieze is sanded; the slender convex moulding at the sight edge has a chain of small C-scrolls holding flower buds, and their ground is either hatched or punched. This gives a great variety of textured surface, which would have caught and diffused the light when the surface retained its original gilding. Most of this has unfortunately gone, leaving it a rather sad biscuit colour, and the frame has been cut and patched together on either side of the centre ornaments, but it can still be seen for what it started out as: the sculptural border of some early 18th century courtier’s portrait, by Hyacinthe Rigaud or one of his peers.
Renoir (1841-1919), Maternité, 1885, o/c, 92 x 72 cm., Musée d’Orsay. Photo: courtesy of Michael Jones
Another Régence frame has been used for the later Maternité, and fitted to it with a gilt inlay. This frame is gilded overall; the highlights are burnished, and the strong contrasts these create with the darker tone of the rest of the gilding have an unhappy effect on the pale, fresco-like painting. Renoir would almost certainly have admired this frame, but he would never have used it to such devastating ends on this particular work (and he would have regilded it to White House levels).
Renoir (1841-1919), Self-portrait, c.1875, o/c, 39.1 x 31.6 cm., Clark Art Institute, Williamstown
Renoir (1841-1919), Dance at Bougival, 1883, o/c, 181.9 x 98.1 cm., MFA Boston
One of the smallest paintings and one of the tallest on display in the National Gallery both have straight-edged Louis XV frames with enriched corners (and centres, in the case of the second). Strangely, however, the Dance at Bougival seems, when at home in Boston, to be presented in vary plain scotia frame.
François Boucher (1703-70), L’enlèvement d’Europe, 1747, o/c, 160.5 x 193.5 cm., Musée du Louvre
The straight-edged Louis XV frame with a plainish ogee profile and opulently carved corners could be used practically, to economize on carved and recut decoration along the length of each rail, whilst achieving the greatest impact in focusing the viewer’s attention on the painted composition, particularly in a large-scale work such as this by Boucher.
Courbet (1819-77), Une après-dinée à Ornans, 1849, o/c, 195 x 275 cm., Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille
A revival of the style frames Courbet’s After dinner at Ornans, which treats an everyday meal of friends on the scale of an 18th century Olympian feast: this painting won a prize at the 1849 Paris Salon, and was bought by the French state; it is supposed to have influenced Renoir’s own early work, Mother Antony’s tavern.
The Dance at Bougival is another scene of unaristocratic enjoyment: full of the spirit of a fête galante, but rooted firmly in the lives of ordinary people. It spent three years going back and forth between Durand-Ruel and the artist, probably left in the dealer’s hands as an unframed canvas, and may have been given one of Durand-Ruel’s own frame patterns. The frame it has now has undergone both insertions and shortening to produce its tall, narrow shape, including an inlay on three sides at the sight edge; the result is one which Renoir might have approved, at a distance – although he would probably have wanted this, too, to be regilded.
Renoir, Self-portrait, c.1875
His self-portrait, notes The Clark, was made at a time when ‘his paintings were bringing in little income’, so this may be another case where he used a second-hand frame – and the very much cut-down Louis XV pattern which now presents it so strikingly to the world is an upgrade from a junk shop frame to a grander antique. Cutting down a very large frame to fit a small portrait gives a proportionately wider rail and over-sized corner ornaments, resulting in a very tight focus on Renoir’s rather gaunt features, and a concentrated sense of recession which is denied by the shallow space of the painting. The tension between this optical perspective and flattened space also helps to catch the eye.
Renoir (1841-1919), Bouquet in a theatre box, c.1878-80, o/c., Musée de l’Orangerie. Photo: courtesy of Michael Jones
Here is another Louis XV ogee frame; this one really very beautiful, but chopped about and scoured of gilding and much of its bole or gilder’s clay (which only remains on the bare reposes). What a way to treat a fabulous piece of carving, one might think, especially for a painting whose only virtue seems to lie in its signature. The little cornucopiae of flowers, springing from the roses à tiges in the strapwork at each side of the corners, have much more charm than the painted roses for which they have been sacrificed; so too has the miniature chain of undulating strapwork, flower and leaf buds carved with such rhythm and detail along the smaller ogee at the sight edge. Some other philistine has added a bright white inlay beside it, and at least it can be said for Renoir that he would be equally outraged by both assaults on this frame.
Renoir (1841-1919), Nymph by a stream, 1869-70, o/c, 66.7 x 122.9 cm., National Gallery. Photo: courtesy of Michael Jones
The Nymph by a stream, another product of Renoir’s twenties and far removed from his late pink blancmange period, has acquired a British Rococo frame from the 1750s-60s with pierced rocaille corners and centres, and fragile sprays of florets with incised detail in the hollow. It is the kind of frame which could be imagined on a Suffolk-period Gainsborough of a small woman in silks and stays, sitting slightly more decorously by a stream in a pastoral setting, or on one of his later landscapes [8]. It suits Renoir’s porcelain nymph very well, in both delicacy and colouring.
Renoir (1841-1919), Le printemps, 1876, dimensions unknown, private collection
The most sculptural setting in the whole exhibition is this extraordinarily three-dimensional, layered and pierced flamboyant Rococo frame. The back edge and the top edge are built of elongated S-scrolls which cross and re-cross each other at different levels, the top edge floating above the back, hardly tethered to it by the cut-out, flamelike hollow, and entwined by wandering festoons of florets. The corners and centres are defiantly asymmetric – fragmenting shells, rocailles caught in C-scrolls, and double shells which look more like cupped chrysanthemum petals. It may have started out turned 90º to the left, on a landscape or another fête galante, perhaps. It is a virtuoso demonstration of the fluid and plastic possibilities of carved wood. Sadly it too has been given a bright white inlay, but at least no-one has tried, in the face of its complete impermeability, to change its size. It must have been thought appropriate for this Renoir, but it might be better to separate them, remove the inlay and display the frame by itself, producing two works of art out of one collision of classes.
Renoir (1841-1919), At Renoir’s home, rue St-Georges, 1876, o/c, 46 x 38.1 cm., Norton Simon Museum. Photo: courtesy of Michael Jones
Finally – this image of a group of Renoir’s friends gathered in his Montmartre studio has a Transitional frame, from the overlap between the decline of the Rococo in the late 1750s and the dawn of the goût grec in the 1760s and onwards. Like a Louis XV frame, this style has prominent corner (and potentially centre) ornaments and a straight or S-scrolling top edge; it is symmetrical on both axes, and uses small running classical mouldings to define the back and sight edges.
This example looks much wider than it should, having a gilt inlay to fit it to the canvas. Its design, with a narrow guilloche at the back, emphatically rounded corners with projecting floral cabochons set in little garlands, and leaf sprigs or rinceaux running from the corners down the hollow: these are all features of Transitional frames from the workshop of Jean Chérin [9]. Chérin was a menuisier-sculpteur – a master woodcarver, rather than a carpenter or cabinetmaker – who was admitted to the Académie de Saint-Luc in 1760, and supplied the Royal Household and the court with frames.
Nicolas Lancret (1690-1743), Dance before a fountain, c.1724, o/c, 97.8 x 130.8 cm., Getty Center, Los Angeles
He was one of the maîtres amongst carvers who was entitled to stamp his name on the back of the frames he made; and examples of these are found, in the same way as Rococo patterns, on works by Pater, Boucher, Fragonard and Lancret: often on paintings of idealized social gatherings, which are – in spirit if in no other way – remote cousins of the very masculine, artistic and literary gathering in Renoir’s studio.
The exhibition, Renoir and love, has, in all, some really beautiful frames on show amongst its roster of paintings – frames which Renoir himself would probably have wanted very much to be able to use, and to fit his canvases to. However, the only one for which there is any evidence that he bought it for a particular picture is the Bolognese frame – with its over-gilded hyper-burnish – on the portrait of his son, Jean. This combination is a demonstration, in its way, of several sorts of love: Jean’s, for his father, his dog, and the hunt; the artist’s, for his son, and for framing his art as he thought it deserved.
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I am very grateful to Michael Jones for his kindness in letting me use his photos from the exhibition. You can find Michael on Flickr.
You can find the books referred to on that excellent resource, The Internet Archive (please consider donating to it, to keep knowledge free):
Jean Renoir, Renoir, my father, transl. Randolph & Dorothy Weaver, 1962
Ambroise Vollard, Renoir: an intimate record, transl. Harold Van Doren & Randolph Weaver, 1925; republished by Dover, 1990
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[1] Christie’s, Paris, 14 April 2021, Lot 132; Jean Renoir, Renoir, my father, transl. Randolph & Dorothy Weaver, 1962, p. 57; Internet Archive. Lévy frères et Compagnie were still in operation at the turn of the 20th century, this set of 25 dessert plates, c. 1900, being sold by Sotheby’s, 11-19 December 2023, Lot 1115
[2] Renoir, op.cit., p. 59
[3] Ibid., p. 68
[4] Ibid., p. 273
[5] The exact date, name of the correspondent and work where the letter was recorded have sadly been mislaid. The painting was probably Still life with lobsters and prizes of hunting and fishing, 1826-27, Musée du Louvre, commissioned by Général Charles, comte de Coëtlosquet
[6] Renoir, op.cit., p. 273
[7] See ‘How Pre-Raphaelite frames influenced Degas and the Impressionists‘
[8] See Jacob Simon, ‘Thomas Gainsborough and picture framing‘
[9] See Paul Mitchell, ‘A signed frame by Jean Chérin‘