2017

This year-long installation in the Portico Gallery was inspired by the generous gift of fourteen pieces of Du Paquier porcelain given to the Frick in 2016 by Paul Sullivan and Trustee Melinda Martin Sullivan. Although in operation for only twenty-five years, the Du Paquier manufactory left an impressive body of inventive and often whimsical work, forging a distinct identity in the history of European porcelain production. The exhibition featured about forty tureens, drinking vessels, platters, and other objects produced by Du Paquier between 1720 and 1740.

Celebrating the largest acquisition in the Frick’s history, a gift of approximately 450 portrait medals from the incomparable collection of Stephen K. and Janie Woo Scher, the exhibition explored one of the most important artistic inventions of the Renaissance. The selection showcased superlative examples by masters of the medium — many of whom were also celebrated painters, sculptors, and printmakers — from Pisanello in the Italian Renaissance to Pierre-Jean David d’Angers in nineteenth-century France, honoring medals as integral to the history of portraiture in Western art and as a triumph of sculpture on a small scale.

Joseph Mallord William Turner, Britain’s greatest land- and seascape painter of the nineteenth century, explored the theme of the port throughout his career. This exhibition centered around the Frick’s Harbor of Dieppe and Cologne, uniting them with a closely related yet unfinished work from Tate, London, that depicts the harbor of Brest, in Brittany. The trio was accompanied by more than thirty of Turner’s oil paintings, watercolors, sketchbooks, and prints.