Frick Collection, at 1 East Seventieth Street in New York City, is a museum devoted to late medieval through early modern art. Founded by the industrialist Henry Clay Frick (1849–1919), it houses his collection of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and decorative arts, as well as acquisitions made after his death. They are displayed together in his mansion planned expressly for exhibiting works of art, designed and built in 1913–1914 by Thomas Hastings. Frick's widow and daughter occupied the house until Mrs. Frick's death in 1931, whereupon the building was modified; alterations have been made since then. Bequeathed to the City of New York and opened to the public in 1935, the museum offers permanent and temporary exhibitions, lectures and concerts, and, in an adjacent building at 10 East Seventy-first Street, the Frick Art Reference Library, designed by John Russell Pope and opened in 1935 at the behest of Frick's daughter, Helen; it is one of the outstanding art history libraries in North America. The Frick Collection is still supported partly by the founder's endowment, but of the $15 million annual budget, as of 2000, more than $2 million had to be raised from outside sources.
Among the most famous paintings at the Frick Collection are three by Jan Vermeer, Giovanni Bellini's St. Francis in Ecstasy, a powerful self-portrait by Rembrandt, Hans Holbein's portrait of Sir Thomas More, several works by El Greco, wall panels showing The Progress of Love by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres's portrait of the countess d'Haussonville, and a Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington. Works by Duccio, associates of Jan van Eyck, Piero della Francesca, Titian, Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Frans Hals, Velazquez, James McNeill Whistler, Edgar Degas, and Edouard Manet, among others, are displayed in rooms offering also furniture, small bronzes, sculpture, Limoges enamels, and other objects.
Bibliography
The Frick Collection: An Illustrated Catalogue. New York: Princeton University Press, l968.
Ryskamp, Charles, et al. Art in the Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts. New York: Abrams, 1996
Symington, Martha Frick. Henry Clay Frick: An Intimate Portrait. New York: Abbeville, 1998.
—Carol Herselle Krinsky
