By the mid-20th century, the House of Heydenryk was regarded as one of the world's most prestigious picture frame companies. Its clientele included the greatest museums in Europe, from the Tate and National Gallery in London to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Heydenryk worked with Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza and members of the Rothschild family, framing some of the most important private art collections in history.

In addition to restoring such 17th-century masterpieces as Rembrandt's The Night Watch, the firm chose and produced frames for many major Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings of the 19th and 20th centuries. Legend has it that a struggling young artist named Vincent van Gogh came into the showroom offering his drawings in exchange for a Heydenryk frame. Over 100 years later, the House of Heydenryk would supervise and provide all of the framing for the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Henry Heydenryk, Jr. (1905-1994)

As its success grew, the House of Heydenryk opened offices in London, the Hague and Brussels. Now established as one of Europe's premier picture framers, the company looked to the United States as the next logical step for its expansion.

Henry Heydenryk, Jr., representing the fourth generation of the family-run business, was the obvious choice to bring the firm's services to America. Although young Henry had worked in the Amsterdam shop learning carving, gilding and frame history, his first work experience after graduation was as a computer sales manager for Remington Rand. He was multi-talented and was able to speak and write in six languages. His assignments took him to Europe, Canada and the United States, where he eventually settled in upstate New York. Finally, in 1936, Henry Heydenryk, Jr. agreed to start a Heydenryk branch in Manhattan, but he would do so on his own terms.

In the beginning, Mr. Heydenryk imported frames from Holland and France, and sold them to the New York fine arts community. His vast knowledge of picture frames and their history proved invaluable as museums, collectors and galleries sought out his expertise. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston was one of his earliest clients.

Mr. Heydenryk amassed one of the largest antique picture frame collections in the United States. The House of Heydenryk continues to provide period frames for museums, galleries and collectors on a worldwide basis.

As his business increased, Mr. Heydenryk hired European craftsmen to produce his work in a rented workspace above a showroom. He decided not to limit himself to the set pattern of period frame reproductions, and instead would create new finishes and designs for developing artists in New York and the rest of the country. Up until the 20th century, picture frame styles were often governed by architectural trends and the selection was frequently a mechanical process. This situation reached its zenith in the 19th century, when bright gold and ornate compositional mould frames were routinely used on paintings with little regard for design or color.

Just as the Impressionist painters altered the finishes of picture frames to suit their palettes, Mr. Heydenryk revolutionized framing by designing alternative solutions based on aesthetic values. As a result, the artwork is enhanced instead of overpowered by the frame. In addition to inventing new mouldings, finishes and carvings, Heydenryk is credited with introducing the wormy chestnut frame in 1938. He used wood from trees destroyed by blight and applied new finishes, both painted and stained, that worked superbly with a wide variety of paintings, from primitive portraits to rural landscapes.

Mr. Heydenryk took a special interest in emerging young artists in the United States. He had a great eye for talent and would often encourage and support painters by lending custom-made frames on consignment for gallery exhibitions. In 1937, Mr. Heydenryk befriended the American modernist painter Marsden Hartley, who at the time could not afford to frame his own work and was using one-inch liners instead of real frames. When the Hudson Walker Gallery exhibited its first show of Hartley's in 1938, the House of Heydenryk designed and loaned out frames for the exhibition. The firm would be reimbursed if the works sold.

Down East Young Blades c. 1940, 30" x 40" oil on masonite by Marsden Hartley. Courtesy of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. In 1937, Mr. Heydenryk began designing new mouldings and finishes for his friend, the modernist painter Marsden Hartley. The hand-carved Model 385 frame was produced on wormy chestnut wood and was a particular favorite of Hartley's.

"It worked out beautifully," Mr. Heydenryk recalled later in an interview. "Hartley was very happy about the fact that his paintings looked fully dressed."¹ Hudson Walker would later maintain that the Heydenryk frames contributed greatly to Hartley's rise in reputation and sales in the 1940s.² Mr. Heydenryk and Hartley continued to work together until the artist's death in 1943.³ The frame designs created exclusively for Hartley are still made in the present-day shop, and the originals are now considered collectibles.

In addition to Hartley, some of the major American artists of the 20th century visited the Heydenryk showroom to frame their original paintings. Edward Hopper was a loyal customer for 20 years, from 1947 until his death in 1967. Other painters who framed their artwork at the House of Heydenryk include John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, Stuart Davis, Andrew Wyeth, Milton Avery, Charles Sheeler, Philip Evergood, John Sloan, Romare Bearden, Max Weber, Jacob Lawrence and Raphael and Moses Soyer.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Mr. Heydenryk simplified and modified his designs to meet the needs of the Abstract Expressionists. He supplied picture frames for early gallery exhibits by such artists as Robert Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb and William Baziotes.

Mr. Heydenryk's influence was not limited to American artists. From 1945 until 1965, Mr. Heydenryk worked closely with Samuel Kootz, one of the only American art dealers who was allowed access to Pablo Picasso's studio in Europe. In 1947, the first postwar exhibition of Picasso in America was presented in Heydenryk frames. In the late 1950s, Mr. Heydenryk created a series of hand carved frames designed specifically for Picasso's last exhibitions in the U.S. before his death. In 1969, the firm sold a frame directly to Picasso. The House of Heydenryk also framed the Kootz Gallery's inaugural exhibition of paintings by Fernand Léger, who lived in Manhattan during the 1940s.

Mr. Heydenryk worked regularly with the world's leading art dealers and made frames for gallery exhibitions of premier works by Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Joan Miró, Balthus, Jean Dubuffet and Yves Tanguy as well as Latin American artists including Wifredo Lam, Rufino Tamayo, Roberto Matta and Leonora Carrington. In later years, the House of Heydenryk built mouldings for masterworks by the Mexican painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

Salvador Dalí and Mr. Heydenryk collaborated on numerous framing and other art-related projects during the 1950s and 1960s. Many of the frames that were designed for Dalí are based on 16th- and 17th-century motifs and are still made in the present-day shop.

Mr. Heydenryk would create a design or finish that would suit a painter's particular style and then name the moulding after the individual who inspired the frame. These artists include Georges Rouault, Maurice de Vlaminck, Paul Klee and Piet Mondrian, a fellow Dutchman who was a representational landscape painter when he first visited the Amsterdam offices to frame his work. When Mondrian moved to Manhattan in 1940, Mr. Heydenryk developed a modern frame that was more suitable for his abstract paintings.

Salvador Dalí was a frequent visitor to the shop in the 1950s and 1960s. He would enter the showroom with a new original painting in one hand and a leashed ocelot on the other. Dalí purchased Renaissance-period frames or custom-made Heydenryk originals that enhanced his surrealist imagery. In 1958, the Owen Cheatham Foundation sponsored the unique, once-in-a-lifetime collaboration between Mr. Heydenryk and Dalí in which the two masters created lighted shadow boxes for 28 Dalí-designed jewels.

Mr. Heydenryk continually searched for period frames across the United States and Europe, and gradually built up one of the largest collections in the nation. Museums, dealers and private collectors sought his advice in choosing and locating historically accurate antique frames for their artwork.

Mr. Heydenryk was an early champion of the American picture frame at a time when many period frames that had been made in the U.S. were being dismissed or even discarded. In 1980, the House of Heydenryk purchased the entire antique frame inventory from the Colonel Edgar W. and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch estate, which included the most important private collection of American folk art in the world.

By the end of the 1950s, Mr. Heydenryk had assembled an international work force of the finest gilders, carvers, carpenters and consultants available. As the staff and frame inventory increased, the firm eventually moved its quarters to a five-story building on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. The House of Heydenryk continued its relationship with the European branch, but the New York office was now a separate entity, creating and building frame designs that were exclusive to the United States.

1963 caricature of Henry Heydenryk, Jr.

By the 1960s, the House of Heydenryk had its own antique and reproduction picture frames hanging in nearly every major museum in the country. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Frick Collection, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Georgia Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Chrysler Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the St. Louis Art Museum, the Kimbell Art Museum, the Norton Simon Museum, Seattle Art Museum, the Smithsonian Institute, the Cleveland Museum of Art and many others used Heydenryk to frame some of the greatest masterpieces in art history. In the 1970s, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. appointed Mr. Heydenryk as the official frame consultant to their collection.

The House of Heydenryk produced and/or provided antique and reproduction frames for seminal works by artists ranging from Old Masters such as Vermeer, Rembrandt, Van Eyck, Rubens, Ruisdael, Raphael, Titian, Botticelli, Veronese, Mantegna, Bronzino, Pontormo, Giorgione, Tiepolo, Velázquez, El Greco, Ribera, Watteau, Boucher and Chardin to such 19th-century painters as Ingres, Corot, Courbet, Manet, Degas, Turner, Eakins, Whistler, Sargent, Cassatt and Homer.

Mr. Heydenryk had an extensive relationship with the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and worked directly with the co-founder Mrs. Cornelius J. (Mary) Sullivan, the director Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and the senior curator Dorothy Miller on numerous projects. The House of Heydenryk created picture frames for some of the most famous images in the museum's permanent collection by artists including Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Claude Monet, Henri Rousseau, Amedeo Modigliani, Jackson Pollock and Andrew Wyeth.

Interior design provided another outlet for Mr. Heydenryk's endless creativity. He collaborated with some of the leading decorators in American history, including Sister Parish, Albert Hadley, Melanie Kahane and William Pahlmann, who wrote the foreword to Mr. Heydenryk's second book. Heydenryk frames are highlights in the most beautiful homes in the country and are featured in such landmarks as the White House, the Metropolitan Opera House, the Pierre Hotel and Tavern on the Green.

Royalty such as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and such Hollywood icons as Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Hepburn, Lauren Bacall and even the reclusive Greta Garbo frequented the store for framing advice

In 1961, when the Kennedy administration ushered in an era of grace and style, the Smithsonian Institute called upon Mr. Heydenryk to reframe many paintings in the White House. He designed new frames for a collection of artwork by George Catlin, the 19th-century painter of American Indians.

In 1962, the Eastman Kodak Company commissioned Mr. Heydenryk to produce 52 custom-made frames for the United Nations, placing each ambassador's photographed portrait in a design suited to his/her country's origin.

In 1963, The New Yorker magazine sent a reporter to the House of Heydenryk to complete a feature on picture framing. The writer and editorial staff were so impressed by the firm's workspace and history that they decided to feature an unprecedented 17-page profile about Mr. Heydenryk and his contribution to the art world.

Mr. Heydenryk was the author of two landmark books on picture framing, The Art and History of Frames (left) in 1963, and The Right Frame in 1964 (both published by James H. Heineman, Inc.). The Right Frame is pictured in both its original cover (center) and its reissued version (right) in 1993 (published by Lyons and Burford).

Henry Heydenryk, Jr. was now regarded as the preeminent authority and maker of picture frames in the United States. In 1963, he wrote The Art and History of Frames: An Inquiry into the Enhancement of Paintings (James H. Heineman, Inc.), the acknowledged and definitive reference book on the subject. Mr. Heydenryk followed this with The Right Frame: A Consideration of the Right and Wrong Methods of Framing Pictures (James H. Heineman, Inc.) in 1964, which became the essential guide to choosing the correct picture frame for artwork. He promoted the book by giving an extensive lecture tour, appearing at museums across the country and on television programs such as The Today Show.

In 1973, the U.S. Dept. of the Interior selected the House of Heydenryk to restore and supply over 100 antique frames for the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence that was to be held in Philadelphia in 1976.

In the mid-1970s, Mr. Heydenryk retired from picture framing and was succeeded by his protégé Charles Schreiber, who is currently president and manager of the firm. The House of Heydenryk continues to produce many of the vintage designs that made its reputation as well as create new frames for the changing art scene.

Mr. Heydenryk painted landscapes and traveled with his beloved wife Rigmor in his later years, where he marveled at the widespread use of his frames in art exhibitions throughout America and Europe. On June 23, 1994, Henry Heydenryk, Jr. died at The Mary Elizabeth Nursing Home in Mystic, Connecticut. The New York Times paid tribute to his many accomplishments and called him "the concertmaster of his trade."⁴ His legacy can still be seen in museums, galleries, private collections and most of all, at the House of Heydenryk headquarters in New York City, where artisans realize his vision and continue to influence the worlds of fine arts and interior design.

Thanks to: F.A. van Kempen, Margit Rigmor Heydenryk, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, Steven Kornhauser, Natalie Russo), Boyce Benge, Laura Mitchell

Special thanks to William Adair for his support and scholarship.

Note: the original Dutch spelling of the firm is Heijdenrijk. The New York branch uses the American version, which is spelled Heydenryk.