Custom-Replica Oil Paintings and Frames Commissioned by the Intercontinental Hotel Barclay, New York, May 2016.  Featured in the lobby are three large-scale Hudson River School paintings in elegant gilded museum frames. Each canvas is a faithful replica of a well-known 19th-century New York area landscape painting, recreated by Simeon Lagodich, a contemporary American realist painter who resides in New York City and the Hudson Valley.  The three original paintings hang in museums, but once graced the walls of private homes.  In choosing iconic, recognizable, American landscape paintings to grace the lobby, The Barclay sought to capture the appearance of an important 19th-century American art collection, passed down through generations of prominent New York families of discerning taste.  Each landscape is framed in elegant gilded period style that the original artists might have chosen at the time they completed their paintings. The frames are also museum-quality, period-correct, replicas created by the Manhattan atelier of Gill & Lagodich Fine Period Frames, of which Mr. Lagodich is a partner. 

ABOUT THE PAINTINGS:  Three well-known 19th-century landscapes by Samuel Colman, George Inness, and John Frederick Kensett were painstakingly recreated by Simeon Lagodich, a contemporary (21st-century) artist, who has visited and painted this scenery for over thirty years. His trio of landscapes, commissioned specifically by the Barclay, pay homage to the great American artists of the Hudson River School, America’s first indigenous school of painting.  Lagodich employs various traditional techniques of the Hudson River School painters —underpainting, glazes, and impasto to match the painterly execution of the original works. The paint ranges from transparent to opaque, creating depth and light in varying passages of the landscapes.  Over a canvas brushed with gesso made from a traditional recipe (incorporating rabbit-skin glue and chalk), he begins with monochromatic transparent paints and glazes to map out the underpainting in wide swathes of color. Then, thicker impasto develops opaque highlights and augments finer details such as objects reflecting sunlight and sharper outlines. Lagodich is uniquely qualified to create these works for the Barclay as his atelier also specializes in framing original Hudson River School masterpieces for museums across the country.

ABOUT THE FRAMES: The Barclay lobby frames are traditional museum-quality replicas of mid-19th-century American frames.  The elegant gilded frames were fabricated by Gill & Lagodich, a New York City firm that specializes in fine period frames and custom replicas for museums and collectors. Gill & Lagodich Fine Period Frame Gallery has been based in Lower Manhattan, TriBeCa, for over 30 years. They have framed hundreds of period American landscape paintings, including for those museums where original Hudson River School canvases hang.  The frame styles chosen by Gill & Lagodich match original patinas, gilding methods, and construction techniques of the nineteenth century originals in their collection.  Each frame style is appropriate to the date of the original landscape paintings. Similar original period and replica frames from Gill & Lagodich Gallery can be seen in museums across the country, including the Metropolitan, where the original John Frederick Kensett painting hangs in the American Wing.