Photoarchive

The cornerstone of the Frick Art Reference Library's collections is its photoarchive. Begun in 1920, the archive was inspired by Sir Robert Witt's collection of photographs of European art, now part of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Today the Library’s photoarchive comprises more than one million reproductions of works of art.

Negative Collection

Between 1922 and the early 1960s, Miss Frick sponsored numerous photographic expeditions throughout the United States and Europe, gaining entry to churches, historic monuments, and private collections, to photograph works of art. Field trips in the United States were the Library’s earliest and most important means of acquiring photographs of paintings. Photographers McKillop, Moore, Juley, Pach, and Cleveland contributed to the Library's negative collection.

Photographic expedition in Virginia, 1922

The largest group of negatives in the Collection was taken by staff photographers Ira W. Martin and Thurman Rotan. The firm of A. C. Cooper photographed paintings in auction houses and exhibitions in London producing more than 9,000 negatives for the Library. Italian photographer Mario Sansoni photographed paintings and frescoes throughout Italy creating more than 10,000 glass plate negatives. In some cases, the prints from these negatives are the only means of studying works of art that are unavailable to the public, that have been subsequently destroyed, or whose whereabouts are unknown.

Helen Clay Frick Foundation and The Frick Collection Archives’ Negative Collections

The Conservation Department cares for negatives related to the history of the institution and the Frick family.

Digital Image Collections

Digitizing images from the photoarchive and negative collections has resulted in more than 55,000 scanned images; 2,500 images are added each month. To prevent accidental loss of the collections, digital files are backed up on CDs and hard drives.