Domenico Tiepolo (1727–1804): A New Testament
October 24, 2006, through January 7, 2007
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Domenico Tiepolo (1727–1804), Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane:The Second Prayer, Pen and wash, Private Indiana Collection on loan to the Indiana University Art Museum |
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The eighteenth-century Venetian painter and draftsman Domenico Tiepolo is best known for his drawn narrative cycles of the commedia dell’ arte character Punchinello and engaging scenes of everyday life in the Veneto. He reserved his greatest passion, however, for sacred subjects. This exhibition, organized by guest curator Adelheid Gealt, director of the Indiana University Art Museum, presented sixty key examples from Domenico’s New Testament cycle, his most extensive and least-known cycle of more than three hundred large finished drawings illustrating the events of early Christianity through the foundation of the Church. Shortly after the artist’s death in 1804, the drawings, which were executed roughly between 1786 and 1790, were divided into two groups. The first group stayed together in an album (now in the Musée du Louvre), while the sheets from the second group were widely dispersed. The works were not recorded in Domenico’s lifetime, nor did the artist leave any clues as to their order, or even provide titles for them. So far, no patron for this vast undertaking has been discovered, nor has any motive other than the artist’s personal interest and deep piety emerged. The Frick exhibition was the first to present these works to the public.
This exhibition coincided with the landmark publication by Dr. Gealt and George Knox, professor emeritus, University of British Columbia, of the catalogue raisonné of Domenico’s New Testament cycle — a monumental feat of art historical and biblical scholarship that brings together for the first time all 313 known drawings. Over the course of a decade, Gealt and Knox tracked down far-flung sheets, traced the scenes to their textual and visual sources, and assigned each drawing a place in the series, which is the largest-known sacred cycle created by a single artist. Together, the exhibition and publication restore Domenico’s lost masterpiece to its original context.
Domenico made use of a wide variety of compositional devices, gestures, and settings for his New Testament cycle, mining existing art — from early Christian to the art of his contemporaries — for inspiration. The cycle as a whole bears the strong imprint of the artist’s time and locale through references to familiar Venetian monuments and everyday life, as well as motifs from works by Titian, Veronese, and his father, Giambattista Tiepolo (1696–1770), whose virtuosic frescoes adorned the ceilings of many of the great villas and churches of eighteenth-century Europe.
While a number of works included in the exhibition displayed Domenico’s gifts as a storyteller and chronicler of his time, others revealed the depth of his piety and empathy. He approached his project as an interpreter and biblical scholar, drawing his own conclusions about the events from all the available, often conflicting, literary sources known to him, in order to infuse his cycle with a more complete and complex rendering of the Christian epic.
This exhibition was organized by guest curator Adelheid Gealt and coordinated for The Frick Collection by Susan Grace Galassi.
Principal funding for Domenico Tiepolo (1727–1804): A New Testament was provided by The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, with major support from the Homeland Foundation. Additional generous support was provided by Lawrence and Julie Salander, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Arthur Ross Foundation, The Helen Clay Frick Foundation, and the Fellows of The Frick Collection.
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The project was also supported, in part, by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art. |
Masterpieces of European Painting from The Cleveland Museum of Art
November 8, 2006, through January 28, 2007
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Andrea d’Agnolo del Sarto (1486–1530), The Sacrifice of Isaac, c. 1527, oil on poplar, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, Delia E. Holden and l. W. Holden Funds |
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For many years, The Frick Collection has offered its visitors the chance to view important Old Master paintings from American institutions outside the New York area. In keeping with this tradition, the Frick presented fourteen extraordinary works from the renowned Cleveland Museum of Art. Ranging in date from the early Renaissance to the mid-nineteenth century, the selection included canvases by artists represented in the Frick’s permanent collection alongside paintings by important masters not typically seen at the museum. This exciting opportunity was the result of the temporary closing of The Cleveland Museum, which was undergoing a major renovation and expansion of its site.
Like The Frick Collection, The Cleveland Museum of Art was established with funds bequeathed by wealthy individuals whose fortunes were made during the industrial boom of the Gilded Age. It opened to the public in 1916. Today, the institution is widely recognized as one of the premier encyclopedic art museums in North America. Besides paintings, its diverse permanent collection includes drawings, prints, photography, sculpture, and decorative arts from a wide array of geographic locations, spanning some six thousand years. Masterpieces of European Painting from The Cleveland Museum of Art will feature paintings selected to harmonize with the temporal and aesthetic boundaries established by the Frick’s founder, Henry Clay Frick. The show included works by Fra Filippo Lippi (1406–1469), Andrea del Sarto (1486–1530), El Greco (1541–1614), Annibale Carracci (c. 1560–1609), Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1573–1610), Frans Hals (c. 1581–1666), Georges de La Tour (1593–1652), Valentin de Boulogne (1594–1632), Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–1664), Diego de Velázquez (1599–1660), Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), and J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851).
Masterpieces of European Painting from The Cleveland Museum of Art was organized by Colin B. Bailey, Chief Curator of The Frick Collection, with the assistance of Margaret Iacono, Assistant Curator, in collaboration with The Cleveland Museum of Art. A fully illustrated catalogue, including an essay by Margaret Iacono comparing the collecting histories of the Frick and Cleveland museums, is available in the Museum Shop.
The exhibition was made possible, in part, by the generous support of Melvin R. Seiden in honor of Sherman Lee and by Mr. and Mrs. Walter A. Eberstadt in honor of Michael J. Horvitz. The accompanying catalogue was made possible, in part, by Lawrence and Julie Salander.
George Stubbs (1724 – 1806): A Celebration
February 14 through May 27, 2007
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| George Stubbs (1724–1806), Haymakers, 1785, Oil on wood, Purchased with assistance from the Friends of the Tate Gallery, the National Art Collections Fund, the Pilgrim Trust and subscribers 1977 |
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George Stubbs (1724 – 1806): A Celebration, an exhibition of approximately twenty paintings by the celebrated artist, came in early 2007 to The Frick Collection, its only North American venue. The exhibition marked the bicentenary of Stubbs’s death by presenting some of his greatest contributions to the tradition of British eighteenth-century painting, all notable for their originality and beauty. Furthermore, while Stubbs’s work is represented in many American collections, the exhibition at the Frick exclusively drew upon British-owned examples, some of which have never crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and thus offered an important viewing opportunity in this country. The exhibition tour began in the spring of 2006 in the artist’s native Liverpool at the Walker Art Gallery, and continues fall and winter of 2007 at Tate Britain, London, the city where Stubbs enjoyed his success as a painter, concluding at the Frick.
Stubbs (1724–1806) is renowned for the precise and noble treatment of animals in a style ordinarily reserved for the human figure, and he spent many years studying and documenting the anatomy of horses, dogs, and wild animals. His understanding of the physical structure of these animals provided him with the exceptional ability to convey accurately their beauty, strength, and dignity. Stubbs’s attention to nature, paired with an innate sense of design, balance, and restraint, enabled him to create lyrical and graceful representations that are unparalleled by other animal painters. The Frick showing will devote much attention to animal paintings and will also feature quintessential English landscape and genre scenes, representing nearly the full range of work in oil that Stubbs produced over the course of his career.
Important paintings were drawn from the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and Tate Britain, London. Many several seldom-seen works from private English collections were included in the exhibition. Some, such as the Walker’s magisterial portrait of the thoroughbred racehorse Molly Longlegs, were newly conserved for the exhibition. A revelatory presentation, George Stubbs emphasized the artist’s innovations in subject and makes a compelling case for understanding him as one of the most gifted oil painters of his generation. A related publication is authored by Alex Kidson, Curator of British Art at the Walker Art Gallery. Presentation of George Stubbs (1724–1806): A Celebration in New York was coordinated by the Frick’s Chief Curator, Colin B. Bailey and Associate Curator, Denise Allen.
Major funding for George Stubbs (1724–1806): A Celebration has been provided by The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation. Corporate support has been provided by Fiduciary Trust Company International. Generous support has also been provided by Francis Finlay, Melvin R. Seiden in honor of Colin B. Bailey, and by the Fellows of The Frick Collection.
This exhibition was supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities.
Special Loan
Through June 24, 2007
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Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906), Bouilloire et Fruits (Pitcher and Fruit), 1888-90, oil on canvas;
19 3/4 x 24 in. (50 x 61 cm),
Private Collection,
Photo: Michael Bodycomb |
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A magnificent late still life painting by Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906) entitled Bouilloire et Fruits (Pitcher and Fruit) has been lent from a private collection and will remain on view in the North Hall for approximately one year. Painted around 1888-90, it hangs with other Impressionist and post-Impressionist works in The Frick Collection including Claude Monet’s Vétheuil in Winter and Edgar Degas’s recently cleaned Rehearsal, both dating from 1878-79. The Cézanne loan coincides with the 100th anniversary of the artist’s death on October 22, 1906.
Rococo Exotic: French Mounted Porcelain and the Allure of the East
March 6 through September 9, 2007
In mid eighteenth-century France, mounted Asian porcelains were the height of faet into elaborate metshion. More Far Eastern porcelains were sal mounts in the period between 1740 and 1760 than at any other point in European history, and Paris was the center of this phenomenon. Commissioned by the Parisian marchands merciers, or luxury merchants, artisans produced exquisite gilt bronze confections to adorn imported porcelains and often modified the porcelains themselves in order to adapt them to the décor of French interiors. This exhibition explores the design and reception of such rococo luxury objects by focusing on a pair of mounted eighteenth-century Chinese porcelains in The Frick Collection. Purchased by Henry Clay Frick in 1915, the deep blue vases were cut down and the mounts added between 1745 and 1749. Ornamented with elaborate gilt-bronze imitations of natural forms such as shells, coral, pearls, and bulrushes, these costly items fuse a contemporary fascination with natural exotica, largely imported from the East, with the concurrent fashion for Far Eastern porcelains. Drawing on prints, books, and other objects, the exhibition will explore the convergence of the natural and the humanly wrought in the production of such elite wares and probe the fascination with the exotic that lies at the heart of the rococo.
Rococo Exotic: French Mounted Porcelains and the Allure of the East is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication that features an introduction by Chief Curator Colin B. Bailey as well as an essay by Andrew W. Mellon Fellow Kristel Smentek, catalogue entries, and a bibliography. It is available in the Museum Shop of The Frick Collection.
Fragonard Panels Placed in Skylit Illumination of East Gallery During Gallery Relighting and Refurbishment of Fragonard Room
Through October 15, 2007
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Fragonard panels in the East Gallery, The Frick Collection, New York, photo: Michael Bodycomb |
For the first time since their arrival at the Frick mansion in 1915, the principal panels of Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s Progress of Love series can be seen in dramatically different, partly-skylit illumination and outside of their long-standing gallery installation. These monumental works are a major attraction at the museum, and they have been temporarily placed on view in the East Gallery while the Fragonard Room undergoes its first major relighting and refurbishment in seventy-five years.
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Canapè by Nicolas Heurtaut showing Beauvais tapestry cover after Boucher. The Frick Collection, New York, photo: Michael Bodycomb |
The six panels currently on view in the East Gallery are accompanied by a remarkable set of seating furniture carved by one of the most important chairmakers of the eighteenth century, Nicolas Heurtaut (1720–1771). Not often on view, these four chairs and two canapés still bear their original Beauvais tapestry upholstery, the designs of which are after Oudry and Boucher. The frames and tapestries have been traced back to their creation in the 1760s for a client named Francois de Bussy, a career diplomat serving the French royal court. The panels are joined by two very important commodes — highlights from the Frick’s furniture collection — that are customarily on view in the Fragonard Room. On
the south wall stands a neoclassical mahogany veneered example by French Royal furniture maker Jean-Henri Riesener (1734–1806), an exact contemporary of Fragonard who was in great favor with Marie-Antoinette through the abolition of the monarchy (examples of his work for her can be found nearby in the South Hall of the Frick). The collaborative brilliance of royal ébénistes Gilles Joubert (1689–1775) and Roger Lacroix (1728–1799) is in evidence on the north wall of the East Gallery in the form of a commode created in 1769 for Madame Victoire, fourth daughter of Louis XV. Considered one of the finest in existence, it is a beautiful example of transitional furniture, displaying rococo features through its curvilinear form — a serpentine front and cabriole legs — and the forward-looking neoclassicism of its magnificent marquetry and gilt-bronze mounts.
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| Fragonard panels in the East Gallery, The Frick Collection, New York, photo: Michael Bodycomb |
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A newly acquired Oushak carpet covers much of the large oak floor, suggestive of the way the rooms of the mansion appeared in photographs taken in the 1920s. The large medallion carpet comes from the ancient village in western Turkey where it was most likely made in the middle of the nineteenth century. Oushak carpets, in particular, have a long-standing connection to European painting, as artists working throughout the Renaissance often included them in interior scenes (the Frick’s portrait of Thomas Cromwell by Hans Holbein shows a sixteenth-century Oushak carpet used as a table covering). Installed in the East Gallery this spring, the rug beautifully sets off the other four paintings currently on view in the room, the four full-length portraits by American expatriate artist James McNeill Whistler, who had an abiding love for the decorative arts of the East.
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Fragonard panels in the East Gallery, The Frick Collection, New York, photo: Michael Bodycomb |
Comments Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Colin B. Bailey, "This summer, we seized upon the opportunity to place these remarkable masterpieces by Fragonard on view in a way they’ve never before been seen at the Frick. The result is stunning, in fact, even beyond our own level of anticipation, and we hope the public will also take this unprecedented opportunity to enjoy these paintings in their temporary setting between now and the end of September. Without exaggerating, they are Fragonard’s masterpieces, and indeed count among the greatest paintings produced in eighteenth-century Europe. The impact on the visitor entering the East Gallery is truly inspiring." The relighting and refurbishment project was made
possible through the generosity of the members of the Director’s Circle and an anonymous donor.
Click here for the full press release in PDF format.
Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (1724–1780)
October 30, 2007, through January 27, 2008
This fall, The Frick Collection will present an exhibition devoted to the art of Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, one of the most original and innovative French artists of the Enlightenment. The fruit of many years’ research by curators on both sides of the Atlantic, the exhibition is the first major Saint-Aubin retrospective in more than eighty years and the first ever to include works from both European and North American collections. It is also the first such collaborative effort between The Frick Collection and the Musée du Louvre, where the show will be on view from February 27 to May 26, 2008.
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Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (1724–1780), Sheet of Studies Including a Portrait of Mademoiselle Clairon, 1773, Black chalk, brush and colored washes, 22.9 x 16.8 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris, Département des Arts graphiques, Livre des Saint-Aubin, fol. 21 |
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The exhibition will include a prime selection of Saint-Aubin’s prolific and varied oeuvre, comprising some fifty drawings and a small but exceptional sample of his most memorable paintings and etchings. These selections will demonstrate the artist’s achievement in a variety of thematic areas, ranging from ancient history to portraiture to the decorative arts, while highlighting the representations of contemporary Paris for which he is best known. Several fine examples of a unique aspect of his work—the small art sale and exhibition catalogues that he filled with hand-drawn illustrations in the margins of the printed texts—also will be on view.
Gabriel de Saint-Aubin never left his native Paris. Born in 1724 into a family of skilled craftsmen, he was, by the age of twenty-three, teaching figure drawing in a school of architecture. He studied at the prestigious Royal Academy but failed to win the coveted Prix de Rome that would have provided him a scholarship to study at the French Academy in Rome. He is often said to have reacted to this disappointment by throwing aside all hopes of a traditional artistic career and hastening out into the thoroughfares of Paris to sketch everything in sight, living an errant, bohemian existence and succumbing increasingly to an obsession with drawing. In fact, despite his personal eccentricities, he was employed as an illustrator all his life.
It was through a combination of contributing forces, rather than one guiding motivation or lifelong obsession, that Paris became the dominant theme of Saint-Aubin’s formal and informal production. Unlike certain genre painters of the period, he was not a specialist who produced repeated versions of a few proven ideas. Instead, he drew on every aspect of his richly varied artistic background to express a more immediate fascination with things going on in Paris that were attracting differing degrees of local, national, and—sometimes—international attention. Developing an almost reportorial sense of current events, Saint-Aubin took it upon himself to record for posterity memorable occurrences such as calamitous fires, the appearance in Paris of foreign dignitaries, public courses on scientific subjects designed for the instruction and amusement of sophisticated laymen, theatrical performances, and lavish entertainments presented at fashionable pleasure palaces. Saint-Aubin’s most original contribution was to capture in paintings, finished drawings, and thumbnail sketches the art exhibitions and sales of his day, both as great events in the life of Paris and in all their fascinating documentary detail. Through his unusual professional background and the matchless power of his pictorial imagination, Saint-Aubin created a new and intensely personal way of portraying the city that was his world. The Frick’s exhibition will give viewers an opportunity to glimpse Paris as Saint-Aubin saw it some two hundred and fifty years ago.
Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (1724–1780) was organized for The Frick Collection by Colin B. Bailey, Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, and Kim de Beaumont, Guest Curator; the curators at the Musée du Louvre are Pierre Rosenberg, President-Director Emeritus, and Christophe Leribault, Chief Curator in the Department of Drawings.
The accompanying catalogue will be available, in both English and French, in the Museum Shop.
Major funding for Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (1724–1780) has been provided by The Florence Gould Foundation. Additional generous support has been provided by The Christian Humann Foundation, the Michel David-Weill Foundation, and The Grand Marnier Foundation.
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The project is also supported, in part, by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. |
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