Images of Interest

Looking Closely

Black and white photograph of a monumental wall tomb featuring several figures and decorative reliefs.

Scholars celebrate photo archives for providing access to little-known works of art housed in private collections or in circulation on the art market. A feature of photo archives such as the Frick’s that is less often appreciated, however, is how comprehensively they document famous works of art on public view.

Art and Advertising

An advertisement for a painting of a landscape featuring a settlement of Native Americans.

Perhaps one third of Photoarchive reproductions are cut from publications, including catalogs, books, newspapers, and magazines. This advertisement sheet for a painting possibly by Ralph Albert Blakelock (see illustration) was printed in 1942. As the sheet describes, the dealer Americana Arts is offering a landscape with teepees that might or might not be a good deal:

Know Your Meme

Painting of the corner of an apartment featuring a blue sofa, a side table with a lamp, and walls covered with framed paintings.

Interior of the Artist’s Apartment, made sometime after 1910 by the American painter and watercolorist Walter Gay, shows a narrow view of a sitting area in Walter and his wife Matilda’s Paris apartment at 11 Rue de l'Université, where the couple had moved in May 1909.

Intimate Sketches of New York

Drawing of a massive, multi-family townhouse with turrets, gables and round arches standing on the corner of a busy intersection in mid-century Manhattan.

One of the most popular series completed by the American illustrator Vernon Howe Bailey was his "Intimate Sketches of New York," which records the city during a period of dramatic growth — and change.

Analog Facial Recognition

A black-and-white photograph of a Renaissance wall tomb set in a Venetian church.

Beginning in 1925, Helen Clay Frick hired the Italian photographers Mario Sansoni and Oreste Nesti to traverse Italy documenting in situ sculptures, paintings, and frescoes that other firms such as Anderson, Alinari, and Brogi had neglected to capture. On several occasions, staff of the Frick Art Reference Library requested photography of objects specifically related to works in The Frick Collection. See more at frick.org/blogs/photoarchive/analog_facial_recognition

A Byzantine Madonna in Italy

A restored half-length painting of the Virgin Mary wearing a veil holding the Baby Jesus.

The third and final entry in a series of three blog posts focusing on conservation "interventions" as recorded in the holdings of the Frick Art Reference Library Photoarchive is this mysterious devotional image in the church of San Martino in Velletri, Italy.

Lost and Found

A woman holding a young child and a small spaniel on her lap.

The second of a series of blog entries focusing on conservation “interventions” as recorded in the holdings of the Frick Art Reference Library Photoarchive is this problematic portrait of an engaging young woman, her son, and their serene spaniel attributed to Sir William Beechey (1753–1839).

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