Portraits, Pastels, Prints: Whistler in The Frick Collection
June 2, 2009 to August 23, 2009
Between 1914 and 1919, Henry Clay Frick acquired twenty works by James McNeill Whistler: five paintings, three pastels, and twelve prints, an ensemble that represents the breadth of Whistler's artistic activity and testifies to Frick's taste as a collector. The museum's four full-length portraits and single evocative seascape by Whistler were displayed in the Oval Room. During the exhibition, twelve etchings and three pastels from his Venetian sojourn of 1879–80 were brought together for the first time in more than twenty years and displayed in the Cabinet. Dating from 1866 to 1892, these works demonstrate the continuity of Whistler's aesthetic concerns across three distinct media.