1997

An exhibition of two remarkable portraits of famous men lent by the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia: an oil on canvas representing Benjamin Franklin painted by Jean-Baptiste Greuze in 1777, and a marble bust of Nicolas de Condorcet executed by Jean-Antoine Houdon in 1785. Also on view was a small group of letters, manuscripts, and eighteenth-century publications relating to the history of the two portraits and the relations between the American statesman and the mathematician, philosopher, and revolutionary.

An exhibition of more than fifty Italian Old Master drawings selected from the Ratjen Foundation in Vaduz, Liechtenstein. Unfamiliar to American audiences, these drawings were assembled over three decades by Dr. Wolfgang Ratjen, who established the foundation to provide a permanent home for his collection. Works in the exhibition spanned some 250 years, beginning with Guilo Romano in the first half of the sixteenth century, continuing with a strong preference for baroque and rococo sketches, and ending with a few neoclassical studies from the late eighteenth century.

Sixty-six drawings and watercolors by the renowned eighteenth-century architect Robert Adam, his brother and partner James, and artists employed in their office were on view at The Frick Collection from December 16, 1997, through April 5, 1998. The works were selected from the 9,000 Adam drawings acquired by Sir John Soane in 1833, virtually all of the surviving sheets that were kept by Robert and James Adam themselves.