NEW YORK, NY.- As a part of their museum grant and gifting program, Eli Wilner and Company offered to restore original period frames or create period frame replicas for artworks in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Seattle Art Museum.

The painting selected by the Guggenheim’s curatorial and conservation staff to be reframed, Vincent van Gogh’s Landscape with Snow, is a serene depiction of Arles in mid-February, 1888, in which Van Gogh beautifully articulates earth and grass emerging beneath the wintry snow-melt in his signature, expressive brushwork. The Guggenheim team requested to have a replica made of a carved and painted 18th century European period frame in the Eli Wilner collection for this painting. The profile of the frame was carefully determined to appropriately match the scale of the painting, and, at the request of the museum, the surface was slightly distressed and the sight edge of the frame was subtly gilded. This painting is currently on view at the museum through September 6th as part of the exhibition Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim.

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts selected a painting by Thomas Anshutz, The Tanagra, for which they proposed that the frame, original to the painting, should be restored. The Tanagra is a full-length portrait that depicts Rebecca Whelan, the daughter of a former president of the Academy, who was a favorite subject of Anshutz’s. In 1909, this painting won the Walter Lippincott Prize, one of the Academy's greatest honors. The frame was determined to be original from nail marks on the stretcher that corresponded to those on the frame, however, it was found that its original corner straps were missing. Eli Wilner & Company artisans re-created these elegant straps and removed the worn and oxidized surface finish. They then re-gilded the frame with thoughtful consideration of the color palette used for the painting and with reference to similar period frames.

The Seattle Museum of Art proposed reframing a John Marin watercolor from their collection. After removing the watercolor from its previous frame, it was discovered that Marin had drawn a precise frame profile for this artwork on its verso, including instructions for the type of finish that was to be applied, and a note that a charcoal-colored mat should be used. Marin had been known to make framing notes of this kind on the back of his artworks in the past. It remains unknown as to whether the original frame was lost or if the frame existed only in concept. Eli Wilner & Company master artisans precisely created the profile design from Marin’s notations. A distinguishing characteristic of this artist-designed frame is that it features both silver-gilded and painted sections. To recreate the colors of these distinct surfaces accurately, master finishers referred to images of original Marin frames and painted and silver-gilded American period frames from within the Eli Wilner & Company collection.

Eli Wilner and Company specializes in European and American period frames and frame restoration, boasting an inventory of over 3,500 frames spanning the 15th century to the present. For over 40 years, Eli Wilner and Company has been entrusted with historically appropriate framing of over 10,000 artworks for museums and private collectors.