From Mansion to Museum: The Frick Collection Celebrates
Seventy-Five Years
Educational display on view from June 22 through September 5, 2010
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The Oval Room, c. 1935 (photo: The Frick Collection/Frick Art Reference Library Archives) |
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It was the desire of Henry Clay Frick (1849–1919) that his extraordinary art collection and magnificent home at 1 East 70 Street be opened as a museum following his family's period of residence. After the death of his wife, Adelaide, in 1931, the mansion, built in 1913–14 by Thomas Hastings (1860–1929) of Carrère and Hastings, underwent further construction in order to transform it into a space suitable as a public institution. Significantly and sensitively expanded by architect John Russell Pope (1873–1937), the resulting building opened to a fascinated public on December 16, 1935 as The Frick Collection. To commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of that occasion, a selection of elegant elevations, executed for Pope by artist Angelo Magnanti (1879–1969), will be on display in the Cabinet from June 22 through September 5.
Never before shown at The Frick Collection, these large-scale illustrations were a gift to the museum's first director, Frederick Mortimer Clapp (1879–1969). They offer insights into Pope's vision for the series of new rooms that have since become beloved galleries and contemplative spaces. Also included in the display will be a newly acquired pen and ink drawing by Vernon Howe Bailey (1874–1953) depicting the construction of the Frick Art Reference Library at 10 East 71 Street, designed by Pope in 1933. Bailey's drawing was commissioned by The New York Sun for its daily feature, "Intimate Sketches of New York City," and appeared in the April, 23, 1934, issue. A floor plan accompanied by archival and new photography will elucidate the most significant alterations to The Frick Collection's interior and, together with the drawings, will tell the story of the once-private mansion's transformation into a public museum.
This educational display is among the offerings created to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of The Frick Collection in 2010.
For more information, see: frick.org/anniversary.
Watteau to Degas: French Drawings from the Frits Lugt Collection
October 6, 2009, through January 10, 2010
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Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721), Woman Lying on a Sofa, c . 1717–18, red, black, and white chalk, 21.7 x 31.1 cm, Fondation Custodia, Paris |
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Frederik Johannes Lugt (1884–1970) was a Dutch art historian, connoisseur, and collector. His fame in scholarly circles derives from two pioneering publications, still in use today: his Les marques de collections de dessins et d'estampes, published in 1921, which identifies the collectors' marks found on Old Master prints and drawings, and the Répertoire des catalogues de ventes publiques intéressant l'art ou la curiosité, a comprehensive listing of nearly 90,000 auction catalogues from sales occurring between 1600 and 1925, published in four volumes between 1938 and 1987.
Frits Lugt, as he was known, was a born collector. By the age of eight, he had sold his shell collection to the natural history department of Amsterdam's royal zoo; at fifteen, he acquired his first drawing. In his thirties, he began to collect in a more serious and systematic way, specializing in Dutch and Flemish drawings and prints, always his chief interest. During the 1920s, the decade in which he made his most important acquisitions, he also bought fifteenth-century Italian drawings and eighteenth-century French sheets.
Lugt was among the founders and principal supporters of the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), the institute devoted to the study of Netherlandish art and artists, established in The Hague in 1930. In 1947, he created the Fondation Custodia in Paris, to care for and to add to his collection of 6,000 Old Master drawings and 30,000 prints.
The Frits Lugt Collection is widely regarded by specialists as one of the finest of its kind, but it is less well known to the general public. Curators at The Frick Collection were invited to select for the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue Lugt's finest eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French drawings, and the sixty-four works featured in the exhibition illuminate both Lugt's taste and that of his successors. Included are drawings and watercolors by well-known masters of the French School such as Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, David, Ingres, and Degas, as well as by important figures who are less familiar to the general public. This is the first time that a group of French master drawings from the Fondation Custodia has traveled to New York.
Principal funding for the exhibition is provided by Peter and Sofia Blanchard; Elizabeth and Jean-Marie Eveillard; and Melvin R. Seiden in honor of Jean Bonna and Eugene V. Thaw.
Exuberant Grotesques: Renaissance Maiolica from the Fontana Workshop
September 15, 2009, through January 17, 2010
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Maiolica dish with The Judgment of Paris after Raphael, Fontana workshop, c. 1565, tin-glazed earthenware, The Frick
Collection, gift of Dianne Dwyer Modestini in memory of
Mario Modestini |
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Although it was not until 2008 that the first piece of maiolica entered The Frick Collection, it was an extraordinary debut: a large dish painted with a narrative scene, or istoriato, inspired by Marcantonio Raimondi's print after The Judgment of Paris by Raphael. This scene is surrounded by colorful grotesques delicately painted on a white ground, a specialty of the renowned workshop of Orazio Fontana in Urbino, to which the best pieces are usually attributed.
This new acquisition — a gift to The Frick Collection by Dianne Dwyer Modestini in memory of her husband, Mario Modestini — is the inspiration for a small focus exhibition on the Fontana workshop's highly decorative maiolica painted with delicate grotesques on a whitened ground. The Frick Collection's piece will be shown along with five related works on loan from The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The exhibition illustrates the technical and artistic excellence reached in the Fontana workshop in the third quarter of the sixteenth century. This presentation of pieces of different shapes will provide an opportunity for visitors to view the richness of table services made in maiolica for the Renaissance aristocracy.
The exhibition organized by Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow Charlotte Vignon is accompanied by a scholarly catalogue, including detailed entries and an essay on the history of collecting Renaissance maiolica.
The exhibition is made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.
The accompanying catalogue has been generously underwritten by the Robert H. Smith Family Foundation.
Masterpieces of European Painting from Dulwich Picture Gallery
March 9, 2010, through May 30, 2010
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Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606–1669), Girl at a Window, 1645,
oil on Canvas, 81.6 x 66 cm, © The Trustees of Dulwich Picture
Gallery |
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Dulwich Picture Gallery holds one of the world's major collections of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century paintings. The exhibition, which heralds the Gallery’s bicentenary in 2011, reintroduces American audiences to this institution’s collection through an exceptional group of works, to be shown exclusively at the Frick through May 30, 2010.
The signature masterpieces, many of which have not been on view in the United States in recent years, and, in some cases, never in New York City, are: Rembrandt van Rijn’s A Girl at a Window, 1645; Sir Anthony Van Dyck’s Samson and Delilah, c. 1619–20; Thomas Gainsborough’s Elizabeth and Mary Linley — The Linley Sisters, 1771–72; Sir Peter Lely’s Nymphs by a Fountain, c. 1650; Canaletto’s Old Walton Bridge, 1754; Gerrit Dou’s A Woman Playing a Clavichord, c. 1665; Antoine Watteau’s Les Plaisirs du Bal, c. 1717; Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s The Flower Girl — Spring, 1665–70; and Nicolas Poussin’s The Nurture of Jupiter, c. 1636–37.
The exhibition, in the Frick’s Oval Room and Garden Court, is co-organized by Colin B. Bailey, Associate Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator at the Frick, and Xavier F. Salomon, Arturo and Holly Melosi Chief Curator at Dulwich. A fully illustrated catalogue, written by Dr. Salomon, features an essay on the origins of the collection at Dulwich as well as comprehensive entries on the nine works.
Principal funding for the exhibition is provided by Christie's and Melvin R. Seiden.
Additional support is generously provided by John and Constance Birkelund, Mr. and Mrs. Walter A. Eberstadt, Fiduciary Trust Company International, Barbara G. Fleischman, Francis Finlay, and Hester Diamond.
The accompanying catalogue is made possible by Jon and Barbara Landau.
This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
The Spanish Manner: Drawings from Ribera to Goya
October 5, 2010, through January 9, 2011
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Jusepe de Ribera (c. 1591–1652), Head of a Man with Little Figures on His Head, pen and ink with brush and brown wash over black chalk underdrawing on prepared paper, 6 11/16 x 4 1/16 inches, Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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The greatest Spanish draftsmen from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century — Ribera, Murillo, and Goya, among them — created works of dazzling idiosyncrasy. These diverse drawings, which may be broadly characterized as possessing a specifically "Spanish manner," will be the subject of an exclusive exhibition at The Frick Collection in the fall of 2010. The presentation will feature more than fifty of the finest Spanish drawings from public and private collections in the Northeast, among them The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Hispanic Society of America, The Morgan Library & Museum, the Princeton University Art Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Opening the show are rare sheets by the early seventeenth-century masters Francisco Pacheco and Vicente Carducho, followed by a number of spectacular red chalk drawings by the celebrated draftsman Jusepe de Ribera. The exhibition continues with rapid sketches and painting-like wash drawings from the rich oeuvre of the Andalusian master Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, along with lively drawings by Francisco de Herrera the Elder and his son and the Madrid court artist Juan Carreño de Miranda, among others.
The second part of the exhibition will present twenty-two sheets by the great draftsman Francisco de Goya, whose drawings are rarely studied in the illuminating context of the Spanish draftsmen who came before him. These works, mostly drawings from his private albums, attest to the continuity between his thematic interests and those of his Spanish forebears, as well as to Goya's own enormously fertile imagination. The exhibition is organized by Jonathan Brown, Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Fine Arts, New York University; Lisa A. Banner, independent scholar; and Susan Grace Galassi, Senior Curator at The Frick Collection. It will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with entries by the show's organizers and by Reva Wolf, Professor of Art History, State University of New York at New Paltz, and author of Goya and the Satirical Print in England and on the Continent, 1730–1850, and by Andrew Schulz, Associate Professor of Art History and Department Head at the University of Oregon and author of Goya's Caprichos: Aesthetics, Perception, and the Body.
The exhibition is made possible, in part, by the David L. Klein Jr. Foundation, Elizabeth and Jean-Marie Eveillard, and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
The accompanying catalogue has been generously underwritten by the Center for Spain in America.
The King at War: Velázquez's Portrait of Philip IV
October 26, 2010, through January 23, 2011
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Diego Rodr’guez de Silva y Velázquez (1599–1660), King Philip IV of Spain,1644, oil on canvas, 51 1/8 x 39 1/8 inches, The Frick Collection, New York |
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Painted at the height of Velázquez's career, the Frick's King Philip IV of Spain (1644) is one of the artist's consummate achievements. Contemporary chronicles as well as bills and invoices in Spanish archives indicate that it was painted in a makeshift studio only a few miles from the frontlines of a battle, and that it was completed in just three sittings. The work, which shows its subject dressed in military costume, an atypical depiction, was sent to Madrid where it was used during a victory celebration. Displayed in a church under a rich canopy embroidered in gold, the painting embodied the contemporary idea of monarchy as the divinely sanctioned form of government.
In conjunction with a focus on Spanish art this fall, the Frick offers a dossier presentation on the portrait, which returned this winter from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, having been cleaned for the first time in over sixty years. The gleaming silver brocade covering the king's crimson cassock is executed in a shockingly free and spontaneous manner, which is almost unparalleled in the painter's production and can now be better appreciated. The treatment by Michael Gallagher, Sherman Fairchild Conservator in Charge of Paintings Conservation, revealed the dazzling original surface that had been veiled by a yellowing varnish. Additionally, the first technical studies of the painting were undertaken, involving microscopy, X-radiography, and infrared reflectography. Coordinated by Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow Pablo Pérez d'Ors, the Frick's presentation will place the restored masterpiece in the context of original research and findings resulting from its recent cleaning and examination. It will also shed new light on the function of the painting and the implications of presenting the king as a soldier, while addressing connections between the portrait and other paintings by the artist and his workshop. A thrilling mixture of Spanish Baroque art, politics, war, and religion will come alive at the Frick through examination of this masterpiece.
The exhibition is made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. |
