Colin B. Bailey

The Frick Collection was the final American venue of a global tour of paintings from the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in The Hague, the Netherlands.

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.

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.

Memling’s Portraits, The Frick Collection’s special fall exhibition, offered the most comprehensive gathering to date of works in this genre by the celebrated Netherlandish artist Hans Memling (c. 1435-1494). Memling’s oeuvre comprises some one hundred paintings, of which thirty are portraits. Executed in Bruges between 1470 and the artist’s death some twenty-five years later, his portraits bear eloquent witness to “Memling’s exasperatingly seamless evolution,” as noted in 1998 by Memling scholar Dirk De Vos.