News

Reframing Francisco de Zurbarán, Still life with lemons, oranges and a rose, 1633, Norton Simon Foundation

Posted: 29 Aug 2025 by PML

Zurbarán's painting is at once a masterly depiction of mundane items - a cup of water, a flower, piles of citrus fruit, a slightly worn table - and a piercing, hallucinatory vision of objects which have somehow become laden with a significance beyond the everyday.

Reframing CÉZANNE, Portrait of Antony Valabrègue, 1869–1871, The Getty Museum

Posted: 09 Apr 2025 by PML

The poet and art critic Antony Valabrègue was, like Cézanne, born in Aix-en-Provence and grew up alongside the painter (although he was five years younger). He sat for him in his twenties, the most notable early portrait pre-dating this one by three or four years, and bursting into the presence of the Paris Salon admissions jury with what must have been an extreme case of the shock of the new.

Reframing FRANZ ANTON MAULBERTSCH (attributed), study for The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, Cleveland Museum of Art

Posted: 04 May 2023 by PML

Franz Maulbertsch (1724-96) was a Viennese artist whose work was sought after for castles and churches across the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He had been particularly influenced by Venetian Rococo painting, and his wall, ceiling and easel paintings are all infused with the airy lightness of Tiepolo and Piazzetta ...

Re-framing Cardinal Maria Borghese

Posted: 08 Feb 2023 by PML

A painting is a window onto another world – of history or of the imagination - and we can only enter this world completely if there is a context to ease us in, and nothing to distract from the welcome of that opening window ...

The evolution of frames and their relationship to architecture, PART 1

Posted: 31 Mar 2020 by PML

With the help of the Paul Mitchell Photographic Archive, our two part essay explores the evolution of frames and their relationship to their architectural context, through time and across nationalities. Part 1 starts with their appearance in Egypt 3,500 years ago as the borders on wall paintings, and finishes with their opulence in France during the reign of Louis XIV.

FRAMING GAUGUIN: A short essay exploring the various frame styles chosen for works by Gauguin

Posted: 12 Nov 2019 by PML

Unlike Degas, a number of whose original frames have survived on the paintings they were made for, and whose sketchbooks containing profiles ...

Reframing PICASSO's Femme au béret et à la robe quadrillée (Marie-Thérèse Walter) (1937) for Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale

Posted: 28 Feb 2018 by PML

Paul Mitchell were pleased to offer a rare 19th century French Louis XV revival frame for the the star lot in Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on the 28th February 2018

FRAME WATCH: Framing the Impressionists, part 2

Posted: 15 Jan 2018 by PML

Following on from Part 1 'Framing the Impressionists', we continue to look at the various periods and styles of frames chosen for the works of the Impressionists

Reframing portraits by RUBENS, Circle of Rubens and EWORTH for a Private Collector

Posted: 14 Sep 2017 by PML

This was previously framed in a later French Louis XIV / early Regence model. This overpowered the portrait due to scale of section width, corner-&- centre cartouches and elaborate decorative ornament in the frieze. The original finish has been altered over the years ...