2001

The Greentree Foundation generously lent to The Frick Collection for a period of one year six master paintings from the former collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney. The group included Corot's Cottage and Mill by a Torrent (Morvan or Auvergne), 1831; Manet's Racecourse at the Bois de Boulogne, 1872; Degas' Before the Race, 1882-88, and Landscape with Mounted Horsemen, c. 1892; Picasso's Boy with a Pipe, 1905; and Redon's Flowers in a Green Vase, c. 1910.

In summer 2001, visitors enjoyed two eighteenth-century tapestries woven by the Brussels workshop of Peter van den Hecke (c. 1752). On display in the Music Room, these rare hangings are important for their state of preservation, the significance of their design, their royal provenance, and the evidence regarding the identity of their maker and manufacture. They depict scenes from Cervantes' novel Don Quixote de la Mancha, which proved to be an important literary source in the fields of fine and decorative arts for over two hundred years.

The Frick Collection's St. Jerome and Purification of the Temple comprised the core of this special exhibition, which was shown in the Oval Room. Together with five loan paintings — all replicas or versions of the two Frick canvases — these works revealed different aspects of the master's recycling of his own compositions. Although El Greco was a highly original painter, he frequently made replicas or related versions of his works, at a time when few if any other major artists did so.

In honor of the spring 2001 exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art,Vermeer and the Delft School, The Frick Collection installed its three paintings by the artist in a special manner. For the first time in over fifty years, the works by Johannes Vermeer (1632-75) Mistress and Maid, Officer and Laughing Girl, and Girl Interrupted at her Music were hung together in one gallery at the Collection, the South Hall, offering visitors an opportunity to consider these treasures side by side.