Reading List: Explore Frick Artists Online
August 27, 2024
Our renovated historic buildings reopen April 2025. Explore online!
August 27, 2024
"Up and Down the Garden Path: Secrets of La Promenade Revealed," by Colin B. Bailey, The Frick Collection, and Charlotte Hale, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saturday, May 5, 2012. The Frick's Promenade is the most important Impressionist painting acquired by Henry Clay Frick. In researching this well-known work for the exhibition Renoir, Impressionism, and Full-Length Painting, many technical and documentary discoveries were made.
There is a long tradition in Western European art of the full-length format. The Frick's Colin B. Bailey examines the sort of art Renoir was looking back to when, during the 1870s and early '80s, as a founding Impressionist, he chose this format to paint some of his most joyful and ambitious pictures of everyday life in the metropolis.
"Renoir and the Woman of Paris," by Anne Distel, independent scholar, March 7, 2012. In characterizing Renoir's art, Cézanne once said that his old friend had "painted the woman of Paris." Cézanne's insight provides the point of departure for this lecture, which takes a closer look at Renoir's female figures.
Between 1874 and 1885 Renoir—unlike other Impressionists—produced large-scale works in both full-length and horizontal formats in which he explored the grandeur of Parisian life, leisure, and fashion.
Listen to Clinton Luckett, Ballet Master at the American Ballet Theatre, discuss Renoir's The Dancer.
Listen to Colin Bailey, Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator at The Frick Collection, discuss Renoir's series of dancing couples.
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