In perfect harmony

According to Vincent van Gogh, a painting was not really finished until it was framed; unmounted it was still 'in the raw'. He and many of his contemporaries regarded picture and frame as an aesthetic whole and chose or designed their own frames. Chapters on Historicism, the Victorians and Pre-Raphaelites, the Secessionist movements (Art Nouveau, Symbolism), Impressionism, and early Modernism examine the relationship between picture and frame in the years 1850 and 1920. Hundreds of works have been illustrated for the first time with their frames - paintings by Arnold Bocklin, Franz von Stuck, Gustav Klimt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Frederic Lord Leighton, James McNeill Whistler, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Georges Seurat, Vincent van Gogh, Jan Toorop, Fernand Khnopff, Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, and many others.