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.
Rembrandt and His School: Masterworks from the Frick and Lugt Collections
February 15, 2011, through May 15, 2011
When Henry Clay Frick (1849–1919) was asked whose talents he would most like to possess, he declared: "Rembrandt's." And as the largest individual railway stockholder in the world, Frick is reported to have said that "railways are the Rembrandts of investment." Like Frick, the Dutch art historian Frederik Johannes Lugt (1884–1970) was a great admirer and collector of works by the Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669); as a teenager he wrote a biography of the artist, illustrated with his own copies after Rembrandt's most famous works. In 2011 the Frick will present a selection of Rembrandt's works as seen through the eyes of these two renowned collectors, devoting three exhibition spaces to the work of this artist and his school.
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Rembrandt (1606–1669), Self-Portrait, Frowning: Bust, 1630, etching, 72 x 61 mm (sheet: 74 x 63 mm), Fondation Custodia, Paris |
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On display in the Oval Room will be five paintings from the Frick's permanent collection — four acquired by Henry Clay Frick between 1899 and 1919 and the fifth by the trustees in 1943 from the collection of J. Pierpont Morgan. Three of these works are unquestionable masterpieces by the artist — Nicolaes Ruts (1631), The Polish Rider (c. 1655), and the Self-Portrait (1658). Two of the paintings — Portrait of a Young Artist and Old Woman with a Book — were acquired by Frick as Rembrandts but are today attributed to artists in his entourage. This will be the first time that all five paintings have been united in a monographic display. The Cabinet will feature a selection of etchings and drawings by Rembrandt acquired by Henry Clay Frick at the end of his life. These works on paper, part of the founding bequest and therefore unavailable for loan, are rarely on display.
On view in the downstairs galleries will be a loan exhibition of 66 works on paper by Rembrandt and his school from the collection of Frits Lugt, now housed in the Fondation Custodia, Paris. Eighteen drawings by the artist as well as a group of his prints will be accompanied by 36 master drawings by his most prominent pupils and students, including Ferdinand Bol, Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, Carel Fabritius, Govaert Flinck, Jan Lievens, and Nicolaes Maes. The exhibition is organized by Colin B. Bailey, the Frick's Associate Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, in conjunction with Margaret Iacono, Assistant Curator, and Joanna Sheers, Curatorial Assistant.
Principal funding for the exhibition is provided by The Christian Humann Foundation, Jean-Marie and Elizabeth Eveillard, and Melvin R. Seiden.
Corporate support is provided by Fiduciary Trust Company International.
The exhibition is also supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
The catalogue is made possible by the Robert Lehman Foundation, Inc. It is also underwritten, in part, by public funds from the Netherlands Cultural Services and by the Netherland-America Foundation.
In a New Light: Bellini's St. Francis in the Desert
May 22, 2011, through August 28, 2011
One of the most familiar and beloved paintings at The Frick Collection, Giovanni Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert (c. 1480), is also deeply enigmatic. The artist has imagined this medieval saint alone in a stony wilderness, stepping forward from his simple shelter into a golden light that seems to transfigure him spiritually. For centuries, viewers of this masterpiece have puzzled over the meaning of Bellini’s composition and have sought explanations in a variety of pictorial and textual sources. Until recently, however, the artist’s practical conception and realization of this extraordinary vision have remained largely unexplored.
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Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430–1516), St. Francis in the Desert, c. 1480, oil on poplar panel, 49 x 55 7⁄8 inches, The Frick Collection, New York |
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In March 2010, St. Francis was sent to The Metropolitan Museum of Art for an unprecedented technical examination by a team of specialists led by Paintings Conservator Charlotte Hale. They employed infrared reflectography to create the first complete image of the underdrawing that guided the artist’s hand as he painted, and microscopy to study his exquisite manipulation of the oil medium. During a collaboration initiated by the Frick’s curator Denise Allen, an international group of conservators, curators, educators, and art historians assembled to interpret the results of the investigation and to address their implications for the painting’s meaning. These collective findings will be presented in the Frick’s upcoming dossier exhibition, which opens on May 22. The exhibition is organized by Susannah Rutherglen, Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow, The Frick Collection.
The exhibition is made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Turkish Taste at the Court of Marie-Antoinette
June 8, 2011, through September 11, 2011
France has long been fascinated by the Ottoman Empire, and for hundreds of years the taste for turquerie was evident in French fashion, literature, theater and opera, painting, architecture, and interior decoration. Turquerie, a term that came into use in the early nineteenth century, referred to essentially anything produced in the West that evoked or imitated Turkish culture. It was during the late eighteenth century at the court of Marie-Antoinette that the Turkish style reached new heights, inspiring some of the period’s most original creations, namely boudoirs or cabinets decorated entirely in the Turkish manner.
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French, eighteenth century, Small Console Table with Supporting Figures of Nubians (one of a pair), c.1780, gilded and painted wood and marble slab, 34 1/8 x 34 3/4 inches, The Frick Collection, New York; photo: Michael Bodycomb |
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In 1776 and 1777, several operas and plays with Turkish themes were performed at the French court, increasing the nobility’s interest in Turkish style. Soon thereafter, three interiors à la turque were created for the comte d’Artois, Louis XVI’s younger brother, and Marie-Antoinette commissioned boudoirs turcs for her apartments at Versailles and Fontainebleau. Since these retreats were intended for private entertaining, interior decorators were allowed more freedom than was permitted for the official, more public apartments at court. The highly theatrical rooms featured furniture and wall panels decorated with turbaned figures, camels, palm trees, and other Turkish motifs, but their form and function remained essentially French. Created for the royal family and wealthy aristocrats, the objects were always of the highest quality, made by the best artists and craftsmen of the day.
This summer, The Frick Collection will present a dossier exhibition featuring several pieces made in the Turkish manner for members of the French court, including a pair of console tables acquired by Henry Clay Frick in 1914, that illustrate a particularly inventive aspect of French eighteenth-century decorative style. The exhibition is organized by Charlotte Vignon, Associate Curator of Decorative Arts, The Frick Collection.
Picasso's Drawings, 1890–1921: Reinventing Tradition
October 4, 2011, through January 8, 2012
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) is generally acknowledged to be the greatest draftsman of the twentieth century. The Frick Collection, New York, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., have co-organized an exhibition for 2011–12 that will look at the dazzling development of Picasso's drawings, from the precocious academic exercises of his youth in the 1890s to the virtuoso classical works of the early 1920s. Through a selection of more than fifty works at each venue, the presentation will examine the artist's stylistic experiments and techniques in this roughly thirty-year period, which begins and ends in a classical mode and encompasses the radical innovations of Cubism and collage. The show (which opens at the Frick in the fall of 2011 and moves on to the National Gallery of Art in February of 2012) will demonstrate how drawing served as an essential means of invention and discovery in Picasso's multifaceted art, while its centrality in his vast oeuvre connects him deeply with the grand tradition of European masters. Indeed, the exhibition will bring to the fore his complex engagement with artists of the near and distant past and will explore the diverse ways he competed with the virtuoso techniques of his predecessors and perpetuated them in revitalized form. Picasso's Drawings, 1890–1921: Reinventing Tradition will feature loans from important public and private collections in Europe and the United States and will be accompanied by a full-length catalogue of the same name. It is being organized by Susan Grace Galassi, Senior Curator, The Frick Collection, and Marilyn McCully, Picasso expert, in conjunction with Andrew Robison, Mellon Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery.
Comments Galassi, "Over the past decade several exhibitions organized both in the United States and abroad have explored Picasso's art in relation to Western and non-Western traditions. The show focuses on this fundamental aspect of his work, specifically in relation to his drawings, where his interaction with artists of the past often first emerged. Our project aims to take a fresh look at Picasso's drawing practice from his early training to maturity."
Major funding for the presentation in New York is provided by Bill and Donna Acquavella, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, and the late Melvin R. Seiden.
Additional support is generously provided by Walter and Vera Eberstadt, Agnes Gund, the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, the Thaw Charitable Trust, Mr. and Mrs. Julio Mario Santo Domingo, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The exhibition is also supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
The accompanying catalogue has been underwritten by the Center for Spain in America and The Christian Humann Foundation.
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