NEW YORK, NY.- Eli Wilner & Company announced the creation of a new replica frame for Claude Monet’s The Palazzo Ducale, Seen from San Giorgio Maggiore (Le Palais Ducal vu de Saint-Georges Majeur, 1908, oil on canvas, 25 9/16 x 39 9/16 inches, on view in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Wilner began the frame selection process based on a reference image provided by the Guggenheim Museum that indicated the general aesthetic approach they recommended for the Monet painting. The staff at Wilner consulted their own extensive inventory of period frames to locate an original frame that could act as a primary physical study. Due to ongoing Covid-19 related restrictions, the usual in person reviews of the frame suggestions were limited, but the Wilner and Guggenheim project teams were able to settle on some early decisions through individual profile and gilding samples in addition to digital mockups. As the project progressed over the course of several months, the subtleties of the gilded finish samples were reviewed under a variety of lighting scenarios. The final approved frame profile is a replica of a 19th-century shaped and gilded frame, with additional specifications created in order to allow the painting to be fit under protective glazing and be securely encased within the frame’s rabbet.
As of January 2022, the Monet painting has been paired with its new frame and is now back on view in the Guggenheim’s Thannhauser Gallery.
Claude Monet’s “The Palazzo Ducale”
This work debuted in a major Monet memorial exhibition that the art dealer Justin K. Thannhauser organized with Georges Clemenceau in Berlin in 1928. Thannhauser kept the painting in his collection throughout his life and it came to the Guggenheim as a bequest from Hilde Thannhauser, his widow. Today it figures among the most important works on extended display in the dedicated Thannhauser Gallery at the Guggenheim.
This portrayal of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) is one of six variations of this view, all painted in autumn 1908 during Claude Monet’s only visit to Venice. By this time the artist’s idiom was evolving, as the titan of Impressionism essayed more abstracted compositions. Here his pictorial language is minimal, and dense mist tempers the strong character of the Palazzo’s ornate Gothic facade and the vertical of St. Mark’s campanile. Although following in the footsteps of so many artists before him, Monet captured the magic of Venice in his own remarkable way, allowing the city’s atmospheric conditions and the luminosity of the water to transform its prominent architecture into ethereal forms.
Eli Wilner & Company
Eli Wilner & Company has completed over 10,000 framing projects for private collectors, museums, and institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and 28 projects for The White House. In 2019, Wilner was honored by the Historic Charleston Foundation with the Samuel Gaillard Stoney Conservation Craftsmanship Award, for their work in historic picture frame conservation.
