Drawings

Goya’s understated portrait of the woman known as María Martínez de Puga, acquired by Henry Clay Frick in 1914, was the inspiration for The Frick Collection’s special exhibition Goya’s Last Works. It was the first show in the United States to concentrate exclusively on the final phase of Goya’s long career — the years of the artist’s voluntary exile in Bordeaux from 1824 to 1828. Fifty-one examples of Goya’s final production were borrowed from public and private European and North American collections.

Featuring approximately seventy drawings, Poussin, Claude, and Their World: Seventeenth-Century French Drawings from the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, included outstanding masterpieces by Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain, as well as lesser-known masters such as Sébastien Bourdon, Simon Vouet, Noël Coypel, Charles Le Brun, Eustache Le Sueur, and others. Selected by Emmanuelle Brugerolles, Curator of Drawings at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, and Colin B.

In celebration of the publication of the ninth and final volume of the series of comprehensive catalogues of The Frick Collection, a selection of works on paper were placed on view in the Cabinet. Although Henry Clay Frick was interested primarily in paintings, he did periodically acquire drawings and prints throughout his collecting career. Following his death in 1919, the museum has continued to purchase, on occasion, important examples of graphic art; its collection of works on paper, though small, is one of high quality.

A survey of five centuries of draftsmanship by Italian, Flemish, Dutch, British, French, and German artists, this exhibition brought together seventy-three works on paper culled from the National Gallery of Scotland's premier collection of some fourteen thousand sheets. Spanning the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, The Draftsman's Art included examples by masters such as Leonardo, Raphael, Rubens, Boucher, Blake, Ingres, and Seurat. Guest Curator Michael Clarke's selection featured drawings little known in the United States, providing a rare viewing opportunity.