Anne Vallayer-Coster: Painter to the Court of Marie-Antoinette
January 22, 2003 through March 23, 2003
This was the first retrospective exhibition for the eighteenth-century French still-life painter Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744-1818), a highly regarded artist who was one of the favorite painters of Marie-Antoinette. Through a selection of approximately forty of her paintings, the exhibition demonstrates Vallayer-Coster's artistic development as one of the foremost still-life artists of her generation. Accompanying the exhibition is the first catalogue to present the majority of Vallayer-Coster's known oeuvre in full color.
Anne Vallayer-Coster: Painter to the Court of Marie-Antoinette was organized by the Dallas Museum of Art. The exhibition made its debut at the National Gallery of Art in Washington (June 30, 2002, through September 22, 2002) and was presented at the Dallas Museum of Art (October 13, 2002, through January 5, 2003) before opening at The Frick Collection, its third North American venue. Subsequently, it traveled to the Centre de La Vielle Charité in Marseilles, France.
Chief Curator Colin B. Bailey coordinated the New York presentation of this exhibition.
This exhibition was made possible through the support of Mrs. Charles Wrightsman and the Fellows of The Frick Collection.
Whistler, Women, and Fashion
April 22, 2003 through July 13, 2003
Marking the centenary of the death of James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), The Frick Collection presented Whistler, Women, and Fashion — the first in-depth exploration of the artist's lifelong involvement in fashion as an essential aspect of his work. The Frick Collection was the sole venue for the exhibition, which featured eight magnificent full-length oil portraits of women by Whistler and sixty other works, including oils, his finest prints and drawings, pastel studies for paintings, costume designs by the artist, and portrait etchings and watercolors, as well as fashion plates and period costumes.
The exhibition was organized by Susan Grace Galassi, Curator at The Frick Collection, and the leading Whistler scholar, Margaret F. MacDonald, Principal Research Fellow at the Centre for Whistler Studies at the University of Glasgow; Aileen Ribeiro, Head of the History of Dress Section at the Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London, was the costume consultant for the exhibition. The three scholars, joined by Patricia de Montfort, Research Fellow at the Centre for Whistler Studies, are the authors of a fully illustrated accompanying book published by Yale University Press. The publication is the first venture between art and dress history that places fashion at the center of a great artist's work. The book includes new biographical material about Whistler's sitters, among them artists, actresses, society women, and members of his family, and their roles in his life and work. Spanning the three central decades of the artist's career, the paintings, prints, drawings, and costumes illuminated Whistler's participation in the lively interchange between art and fashion in the second half of the nineteenth century. At the heart of the exhibition are ten oil portraits, eight of which will be displayed in the museum's Oval Room. Three stunning portraits from The Frick Collection are joined by works on loan from national and international collections, including the Tate Britain, London; the Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the Honolulu Academy of Arts.
In connection with the exhibition, a one-day conference was held on June 7, 2003, to explore the role of costume in European art from the Renaissance to the end of the nineteenth century. At the Conference on Dress and Art nine speakers — art and dress historians among them — gave talks that focused on such artists as Holbein, Titian, Van Dyck, Velázquez, Gainsborough, David, and Whistler, all of whom are represented in The Frick Collection. This conference was made possible through the generosity of the Arthur Ross Foundation.
Whistler, Women, and Fashion has been made possible through the generosity of The Henry Luce Foundation, The Samuel H. Kress Foundation, The Howard Phipps Foundation, The Helen Clay Frick Foundation, Melvin R. Seiden in honor of Susan Grace Galassi, The Ahmanson Foundation, Joseph Koerner, and Raymond and Margaret Horowitz, with additional support from the Fellows of The Frick Collection. It is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities.
From Pisanello to Whistler: Works on Paper in The Frick Collection
A Celebration of the Publication of Volume IX
April 29, 2003 through June 1, 2003
In celebration of the publication of the ninth and final volume of the series of comprehensive catalogues of The Frick Collection, a selection of works on paper will be on view in the Cabinet. Although Henry Clay Frick was interested primarily in paintings, he did periodically acquire drawings and prints throughout his collecting career. Following his death in 1919, the museum has continued to purchase, on occasion, important examples of graphic art; its collection of works on paper, though small, is one of high quality. Among the Frick's drawings are exceptional works from the fifteenth through the nineteenth century by artists such as Antonio Pisanello, Claude Lorrain, Thomas Gainsborough, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. The print collection, dating from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century, includes outstanding examples by Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Charles Meryon, and James McNeill Whistler. Owing to the fragile nature of these works, they are seldom on view to the public.
Although the exhibition will focus on works on paper, Volume IX catalogues not only the museum's entire collection of drawings and prints but also later acquisitions of paintings, sculpture, and examples of decorative art that have not been published previously. Volumes I through IX are available in the Museum Shop.
Willem van Tetrode (c. 1525-1580): Bronze Sculptures of the Renaissance
June 24 through September 7, 2003
This was the first exhibition devoted to Willem van Tetrode, the Northern sculptor who brought the tradition of the classically inspired Italian Renaissance bronze home to the Netherlands. During almost twenty years in Italy, Tetrode studied and restored antique marble sculpture and worked for celebrated artists such as Benvenuto Cellini. From these experiences Tetrode invented expressive small bronzes showing the male nude in poised or violent motion. These heroic nudes transformed the Renaissance bronze statuette into a powerful Northern idiom. Tetrode's work initiated a passion for collecting small bronzes in the North and inspired the muscular classicism in the work of younger artists such as Hendrick Goltzius.
Curated by Frits Scholten of the Rijksmuseum and co-organized by Denise Allen of The Frick Collection, Willem van Tetrode presented almost forty of Tetrode's bronzes, along with examples of his marble sculpture and reliefs. Also included was a selection of prints, lent to the Frick by the Hearn Family Trust, by Goltzius and other graphic artists who were influenced by Tetrode's sculptures. Willem van Tetrode was on view at The Frick Collection concurrently with The Metropolitan Museum of Art's showing of Hendrick Goltzius, Dutch Master (1558-1617): Drawings, Prints, and Paintings.
The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue that presents new research by internationally recognized scholars. It is available in the Museum Shop.
This exhibition was made possible through the generosity of Henry R. Kravis, Melvin R. Seiden, Charles Hack and Angella Hearn, J. Tomilson Hill, Robert H. Smith, Julie and Lawrence Salander, Daniel Katz, Christie's, Cyril Humphris, Jon Landau, the Strong-Cuevas Foundation, and Patricia Wengraf, with additional support from the Fellows of The Frick Collection.
The Drawings of François Boucher
October 8 through December 14, 2003
Celebrating the tercentenary of the artist's birth, this exhibition was the first survey of François Boucher's (1703–1770) drawings in more than twenty-five years. Featuring approximately eighty sheets — few of which have ever been on view in the United States — the exhibition provided a new understanding of Boucher's prolific output of works on paper and demonstrated his extraordinary technique and style as a draftsman. The artist's wide variety of subject matter was revealed with his depictions of pastoral scenes and landscapes, various conceptions of mythology, religious narratives, historical events, representations of literature and allegory, and contemporary scenes. The Drawings of François Boucher, which was organized by the American Federation of Arts and curated by Alastair Laing, Advisor on Paintings and Sculpture to the National Trust, London, made its debut at the Frick and then traveled to the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth (January 17 through April 18, 2004).
A fully illustrated catalogue accompanied the exhibition and features an essay by Alastair Laing exploring Boucher's development as a draftsman, his range of subjects, contemporary appeal, and innovations in technique. Pierre Rosenberg, former director of the Musée du Louvre, Paris, discusses Boucher in the broader context of eighteenth-century French drawings.
The exhibition was organized by the American Federation of Arts and made possible, in part, by grants from the Grand Marnier Foundation, the Fino Family Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and the Pfizer Foundation. Additional support was provided by the Benefactors Circle of the AFA.
Presentation of the exhibition in New York, which was coordinated by Chief Curator Colin B. Bailey, was made possible through a major grant from The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation with additional support from Jean A. Bonna and the Fellows of The Frick Collection.
Two Tapestries Reinstalled
November 26, 2002 through January 26, 2003
During the winter of 2002 to 2003, visitors enjoyed two eighteenth-century tapestries woven by the Brussels workshop of Peter van den Hecke (c. 1752). On display in the Music Room on a half-year rotational basis, 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's novel Don Quixote de la Mancha, which proved to be an important literary source in the fields of fine and decorative arts for more than two hundred years.
Each tapestry retains a separate linen rectangle sewn to its reverse and inscribed with an inventory number corresponding to the French royal registry. That registry reveals that these were two of several hangings of this subject belonging to Louis XV. Henry Clay Frick bought them in Spain in 1909 and later gave them to Childs Frick, his son, who bequeathed them in 1965 to The Frick Collection. The tapestries remained in storage at the Frick until 1999, when they were cleaned and treated at the Textile Conservation Laboratory of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in Manhattan. |
