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Room 21

The Frick’s extensive holdings of British art are reflected in this suite of rooms, at the heart of which is this grand gallery of British portraiture. Displayed here are works by the leading artists of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries engaged in portraying privileged members of British society. All seven of the Frick’s paintings by Gainsborough are displayed together in a rare reunion.

The prominence of female portraits in this gallery reflects the taste of American collectors like Frick at the turn of the twentieth century. The exaggerated paleness of the women’s skin and hair tells of the ideals of feminine beauty in this age: wigs and hair were powdered white, even for young women, and makeup was applied to make white European faces appear even whiter, the lightness of skin associated in this culture with hierarchies of class and race. Sometimes the application of cosmetics turned deadly: lead poisoning from the use of white makeup was not uncommon in this time.

The paintings in this gallery trace a history of British portraiture over nearly a century and represent various functions of portraits: Hogarth, for example, celebrates the independence of a very wealthy self-described spinster, Mary Edwards; Reynolds pays tribute to General John Burgoyne’s military success by imagining him on the battlefield; Gainsborough offers an intimate encounter with one of the most scandalous women in Britain at the time, Grace Dalrymple Elliott; and Romney presents his young muse, later Lady Hamilton, in the first of a commercial series that benefited the artist more than the model.

By the early nineteenth century, the uncontested top portraitist in Britain was Thomas Lawrence. His extravagant vision of Lady Peel both looked back to Rubens’s seventeenth-century Flemish portraiture for inspiration and was hailed as among the greatest achievements of modern art.

L 75TH STREET MADISON AVENUE Entrance Ticketing Membership Shop Elevators Stairs Stairs Exit Coat Check

2 75TH STREET MADISON AVENUE 1 Barbet Angel 2 Holbein and Early Netherlandish 3 Dutch 4 Rembrandt 5 Van Dyck 6 Vermeer Elevators Stairs Restroom Restroom

3 75TH STREET MADISON AVENUE 7 Italian Sculpture 8 Early Italian 9 Indian Carpets 10 Porcelain 11 Italian 12 Venetian 13 Bellini 14 Bronzes 15 Spanish 16 Enamels and Clocks Elevators Stairs

4 75TH STREET MADISON AVENUE 17 French Sculpture 18 French 18th-Century 19 French Decorative Arts 20 British Landscape 21 British Portraiture 22 Whistler 23 French 19th-Century 24 Fragonard 25 Fragonard 26 Impressionism Elevators Stairs Reading Room By Appointment Only


LG 75TH STREET MADISON AVENUE Café Restroom Restroom Elevators Stairs Stairs

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Frick Madison
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FRICK MADISON
945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street
New York, NY 10021

Closed for renovation
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1 East 70th Street
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