A portfolio of paintings [antikvár]

INTRODUCTÍON Aithough The Frick Collccrion contains sculpture, fúrni ture, enamels, porcelains, and rugs of the highest quality, it is best known to the public for its paintings. "Painting for painting," a distinguished art histórián has recendy written, "The Frick Collection is quite siniply the greatest in the world. Hardly a single work in this dazzling array of Old Master paintings can be considered less than a masterpiece." The problem of selecting just twenty-fonr paintings to represent the Collection has therefore been difficult. The paintings chosen are anionig the most important and the most popular in The Frick Collection, and they alsó represent a rangé of national schools-italian, Dutch, Flemish, Spanish, French, Germán, and English. This portfolio is presented to give more faithful reproductions of the originals than any we have had in the past. It is issned with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., as the first part of a series of publications relating to the collections. After this there will be volumes devoted to all the major works in each of three areas: paintings, sculpture, and the decorative arts. The material in these books will then be incorporated into one volume which will include a history of the collections and the great building in which they are housed. The Frick Collection was founded by Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919), who was a pioneer in developing the coke and steel industry of Pittsburgh. He came from a rural community in southwestem Pennsylvania, and there is nothing in his background or in his brief formai education to account for his keen interest in art, which was already commented on when he was in his early twenties. At that time he could have had few opportunities to see pictures of any kind in the Pittsburgh area, except, perhaps, for the work of local artists; it is most likely that his knowledge of art was acquired from reproductions in books and from engravings. He took his first trip abroad at the age of thirty, after having already made at least a millión dollars; for several months he travelled tlirough Europe with three friends (among them Andrew Mellon), and this trip no doubt helped to lay the foundations of collecting which resulted both in The Frick Collection and in The National Gallery. Shortly thereafter Mr. Frick began to buy pictures. In 1881 he married Adelaide Howard Childs, and in the next decade they established themselves at their home Clayton, in Pittsburgh. His fortune grew rapidly, and in 1889 he became especially involved in the steel industry as Chairman of the Board of Carnegie Brothers; but he is not known to have acquired many paintings in those years. ha the five years from 1895 to 1900, however, he bought on the average of two pictures a month. These were for the most part contemporary works, principally by French painters. After 1900 he turnéd more to English eighteenth-century portraits and the Dutch seventeenth century; he alsó bought paintings by Turner and Monet. In 1905 he purchased his first Van Dyck, his first Italian Renaissance picture-the portrait oíPietro Aretino by Titian-and El Greco s Saint Jerome. In the autumn of that year, he and Mrs. Frick rented the former Vanderbilt residence at 640 Fifth Avenue, New York, where they lived for the next ninc years. lt had a large picture gallery where they could show their rapidly expanding collection. Nőne of the pictures reproduced in this portfolio was bought before 1905, but seven of those selected for this group were collected in the years when the Fricks resided in the Vanderbilt house. The house at Seventieth Street and Fifth Avenue, now The Frick Collection, was constructed in 1913-14 on the former site of the Lenox Library. It was designed by Thomas Hastings of the firm of Carrére and Hastings, who were alsó the architects of the building for The New York Public Library at Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. The Fricks1 house was planned as a setting for the collection of paintings (which was enlarged all through World War I) and, eventually, as a public gallery. The idea of giving it to the public had been inspired by an early visit to The Wallace Collection in London. Ten of the paintings illustrated in the portfolio were purchased in the years 1915-19; the last acquisition, Vermeer s Mistress and Maid, was the only one recorded for 1919, the year of Mr. Fricks death. During those five years, he had alsó bought superb Renaissance bronzes and other sculpture, Limoges enamels, porcelains, furniture, and a few drawings and prints. The paintings were therefore shown in a setting of great elegance and distinction, comparable to the extraordinarily high standard of the paintings, which eventually ranged in date from the early fourteenth to the very end of the nineteenth century. After his death, Mr. Frick bequeathed in trust his residence and works of art to establish a gallery for the purpose of "encouraging and developing the study of the fine arts," to be known as The Frick Collection, "for the use and benefit of all persons whomsoever." Mrs. Frick lived in the house until her death in 1931, but the Trustees continued to add to the Collection (the Duccio and the Ingres illustrated here were bought in 1927). Today, more than a quarter of the paintings in The Frick Collection were purchased by the Trustees from the endowment provided by the founder (five of the paintings in this portfolio were purchased in the years 1936-66). Before the museum opened to the public on December 16, 193 5, rooms were added and various architectural changes were made by John Russell Popé, who later designed The National Gallery. Subsequent expansion to meet the needs of a larger public and to provide a new garden on Seventieth Street was completed in 1977. The accession number of each of the paintings (including the date of purchase) may be found in the captions on the back of the plates. Further information concerning these works, and all of the paintings in The Frick Collection, may be found in Volumes I and II of The Frick Collectioti: An Illustrated Catalogue (1968) and in The Frick Collection: Handbook of Paintings (latest edition, 1985). Charles Ryskamp Director