In the summer of 2021, The Frick Collection announced the largest and most significant acquisition of drawings and pastels in its history, the generous promised gift of Elizabeth “Betty” and Jean-Marie Eveillard. This promised gift of twenty-six works (eighteen drawings, five pastels, two prints, and one oil sketch) has inspired the museum’s major fall 2022 exhibition, which will be accompanied by a lavishly illustrated catalogue and complementary public programs.
Over the past forty-five years, the Eveillards have assembled an outstanding collection of works on paper, ranging in date from the end of the fifteenth century to the twentieth century and representing artists working in France, Britain, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United States. The Eveillards’ landmark promised gift draws upon some of their finest European acquisitions. Along with preparatory figurative sketches, independent studies, and portraits are two vivid landscape scenes. Fittingly for the Frick, artists represented in the gift include François Boucher, Edgar Degas, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Thomas Lawrence, and Jean-François Millet. The group also introduces to the Frick’s holdings works by artists not previously represented in the museum’s permanent collection, including Gustave Caillebotte, Maurice Quentin de La Tour, Jan Lievens, John Singer Sargent, and Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun.
Each of the twenty-six works—selected for their beauty, quality, and condition—either appreciably deepens the Frick’s current holdings of familiar artists or brings to the institution a work by an artist who is not—but should be—represented within the museum’s core areas of European Old Master art. In adding five pastels and an oil sketch, the gift also strengthens the Frick’s holdings in these media. Betty and Jean-Marie Eveillard have been deeply involved with the Frick for many years, both having served as Trustees. Betty is currently the Board’s Chair.
The exhibition and accompanying catalogue were organized and written by Giulio Dalvit, Assistant Curator of Sculpture; Curator Aimee Ng; and Xavier F. Salomon, Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator.
Major funding for the exhibition is provided by the Estate of Seymour R. Askin Jr. and by The Gilbert & Ildiko Butler Family Foundation, Inc. Additional support is generously provided by The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Kathleen Feldstein, the David L. Klein, Jr. Foundation, Jane Richards, Mrs. A. Alfred Taubman, Hubert and Mireille Goldschmidt, and Chips and Liz Moore.
Edgar Degas, Adelchi Morbilli, ca. 1857. Graphite on off-white wove paper, 9 5/8 x 6 1/2 in. (244 x 165 mm). Promised gift to The Frick Collection from the Collection of Elizabeth and Jean-Marie Eveillard. Photo Joseph Coscia Jr.