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249

(53) 

May 22, 1894.

Dear Church:

Your story in last week’s Harper’s gave me much pleasure, but my brother Will says it is no good. He is a competent critic and of course I accept what he says without question. I believe he wrote you a note last Sunday. Sorry you have let this story of yours be the [[?]] of landing you that job on his farm.

Now as to frames for pictures, it is pretty hard to describe my ideas. Briefly, I would say that the old style of frame with elaborate crude ornamentation are not adapted to the best of modern paintings. As a rule, they are too crude and the ornaments project too far beyond the canvas, and the general construction as well as the design of the frames is defective. I believe that for delicate creations, such as the best of your own work and that of Dewing and Tryon in particular, the designs of Stanford White are altogether the best in existence. Years ago Whistler learned that his best pictures appeared hideous in conventional frames and designed three new [[?]]his, consisting generally of two flat surfaces,  one slightly higher in relief than the other, relieved with straight lines varying in number from four to twenty in each member, the outer edge of the frames being in very much lower relief than those previously made. The ideal frame to my fancy is one whose edge is very thin with the thickness gradually increasing towards the center of the picture, the width of the frame and thickness being determined by the size of the canvas, and the ornamentation of the frame governed entirely by the subject. For some pictures [[?]] the surface of the frame covered with delicate designs, such as co[[?]]v[[?]] flowers in very low relief. For others I would have the surface entirely covered with fine parallel lines of various [[?]]ths. Others I would have more or less covered with classic members selected from the best Greek forms.

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---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-09-09 14:13:54