A fine French oil painting on canvas featuring a still life of a vase of flowers in a Montparnasse frame.

The Montparnasse frame takes its name from the Parisian district where it was born, at the beginning of the 20th century.

Dethroning Montmartre, the Montparnasse district had by that time become the center of Parisian artistic life.

The artists of Paris began to install their workshops there and develop a new style of painting, freed from the shackles of academic painting.

This new painting, more expressive and colorful, needed a new type of frame to enhance it because the gilded stucco borders of the 19th century did not suit it.

The Montparnasse frames marked the return of carved wood in the frames. Their patina, often clear, and their deliberately coarse appearance add charm to modern and Impressionist works.