Exuberant Grotesques: Renaissance Maiolica from the Fontana Workshop
September 15, 2009, through January 17, 2010
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Maiolica dish with The Judgment of Paris after Raphael, Fontana workshop, c. 1565, tin-glazed earthenware, The Frick
Collection, gift of Dianne Dwyer Modestini in memory of
Mario Modestini |
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Although it was not until 2008 that the first piece of maiolica entered The Frick Collection, it was an extraordinary debut: a large dish painted with a narrative scene, or istoriato, inspired by Marcantonio Raimondi's print after The Judgment of Paris by Raphael. This scene is surrounded by colorful grotesques delicately painted on a white ground, a specialty of the renowned workshop of Orazio Fontana in Urbino, to which the best pieces are usually attributed.
This new acquisition — a gift to The Frick Collection by Dianne Dwyer Modestini in memory of her husband, Mario Modestini — is the inspiration for a small focus exhibition on the Fontana workshop's highly decorative maiolica painted with delicate grotesques on a whitened ground. The Frick Collection's piece will be shown along with five related works on loan from The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The exhibition illustrates the technical and artistic excellence reached in the Fontana workshop in the third quarter of the sixteenth century. This presentation of pieces of different shapes will provide an opportunity for visitors to view the richness of table services made in maiolica for the Renaissance aristocracy.
The exhibition organized by Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow Charlotte Vignon is accompanied by a scholarly catalogue, including detailed entries and an essay on the history of collecting Renaissance maiolica.
The exhibition is made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The accompanying catalogue has been generously underwritten by the Robert H. Smith Family Foundation.
Watteau to Degas: French Drawings from the Frits Lugt Collection
October 6, 2009, through January 10, 2010
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Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721), Woman Lying on a Sofa, c . 1717–18, red, black, and white chalk, 21.7 x 31.1 cm, Fondation Custodia, Paris |
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An avid collector of works on paper from the age of fifteen, and an art historian whose scholarship continues to be cited today, Frits Lugt (1884–1970) played a formative role in the history of graphic arts. In 1957 Lugt established the Fondation Custodia, Paris, to care for and add to his collection of 6,000 Old Master drawings and 30,000 prints. Watteau to Degas: French Drawings from the Frits Lugt Collection features the collection’s most significant eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French works on paper exhibited in North America.
Selected by the curators of The Frick Collection, this exhibition of more than sixty works will include drawings and watercolors by well-known masters of the French School, including Jean-Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Jacques-Louis David, Eugène Delacroix, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and Edgar Degas, as well as important figures who are less familiar to the general public.
Colin B. Bailey, Associate Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator of The Frick Collection, and Susan Grace Galassi, Senior Curator at The Frick Collection, will author the catalogue, which will open with an introductory essay on Frits Lugt as a collector by Mària van Berge-Gerbaud, Director of the Fondation Custodia.
The exhibition is made possible through the generous support of Peter and Sofia Blanchard; Elizabeth and Jean-Marie Eveillard; and Melvin R. Seiden in honor of Jean Bonna and Eugene V. Thaw.
Masterpieces of European Painting from Dulwich Picture Gallery
March 9, 2010, through May 30, 2010
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Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606–1669), Girl at a Window, 1645,
oil on Canvas, 81.6 x 66 cm, © The Trustees of Dulwich Picture
Gallery |
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The Frick Collection is pleased to announce the loan of nine Old Master paintings from the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, one of the major collections of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century pictures in the world. The exhibition, which heralds the Gallery’s bicentenary in 2011, will introduce American audiences to this institution’s collection through an exceptional group of works, to be shown exclusively at the Frick from March 9 through May 30, 2010.
The signature masterpieces, many of which have not been on view in the United States in recent years, and, in some cases, never in New York City, are: Rembrandt van Rijn’s (1606–1669) Girl at a Window, 1645; Sir Anthony Van Dyck’s (1599–1641) Samson and Delilah, c. 1619–20; Thomas Gainsborough’s (1727–1788) The Linley Sisters, probably 1772; Sir Peter Lely’s (1618–1680) Nymphs by a Fountain, before 1640; Canaletto’s (1697–1768) Old Walton Bridge over the Thames, 1754; Gerrit Dou’s (1613–1675) A Woman Playing a Clavichord, c. 1665; Antoine Watteau’s (1684–1721) Les Plaisirs du Bal, most likely 1715–17; Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s (1618–1682) The Flower Girl, 1665–70; and Nicolas Poussin’s (1594–1665) The Nurture of Jupiter, mid-1630s.
The exhibition, to be installed in the Frick’s Oval Room and Garden Court, is co-organized by Colin B. Bailey, Associate Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator at the Frick, and Xavier F. Salomon, Curator at Dulwich. A fully illustrated catalogue, written by Dr. Salomon, will feature an essay on the origins of the collection at Dulwich as well as comprehensive entries on the nine works.
Principal funding for the exhibition is provided by John and Constance Birkelund, Barbara G. Fleischman, and Melvin R. Seiden.
The accompanying catalogue has been generously underwritten by Jon and Barbara Landau. |
