A picture frame is, or should be, more than an adjunct to a work of art. If properly made, it is itself a work of art. And if properly conceived, it is a way of mediating between a picture and its surroundings. Historical examples illustrate the artistic potential of the frame. A late-fourteenth-century French Virgin and Child in the Frick Collection was painted on the same piece of wood from which the frame was later carved. The round frame for Michelangelo’s Holy Family of 1503, attributed to the artist, features carved heads that gaze inward to the figures of the painting, a kind of ready-made audience. By the late nineteenth century in America, however, the art of framing had fallen badly. Mass production had lowered manufacturing standards, and the unchecked influence of Continental aesthetics had resulted in a dominant framing style that was overripe and confused. The time and place were right for a distinctively American reformation. The Boston painter Hermann Dudley Murphy, through his Carrig-Rohane framemaking shop, did more than anyone else to bring one about.

Murphy was born in Marlborough, Massachusetts, in 1867 to an Irish immigrant father and a Yankee mother. He studied at the new Boston Museum School, worked as an illustrator, and in 1891, like so many young American painters of his generation, took off for a sojourn in Paris. It was here that he came under the influence of the painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler, whose own career as a framemaker dated back to the 1860s. Whistler believed that frame and painting should harmonize in color and in style and that the integrated unit should in turn harmonize with the room in which it was placed. These ideas had a profound impact on Murphy, who felt thwarted by the poor quality of frames then available. The young artist bought what materials he could afford, taught himself to carve and gild, and returned to Boston around 1897.

Boston was then in the grip of the Arts and Crafts movement, which favored strong, simple lines and durable construction. This reinforced Murphy’s new insights. He began to experiment with frames for his own paintings, stripping away the ornamental excesses of Continental style in favor of a cleaner look. By 1898 the first American reviews of his painting also commented favorably on his frames. An indifferent businessman, he nevertheless saw the need for a shop that would produce frames of high quality and strong, modern design. In 1903 he opened the frame shop Carrig-Rohane (Gaelic for “red cliff) in the basement of his Winchester home. Convinced that frames were worthy of attention as artworks, Murphy became the first American framemaker to sign and date his work.

Financial success was quick, and critical success followed. By 1906 Murphy