Frick and the BNP Paribas Foundation Publish a New Guide to the Collection

For the first time in more than ten years, The Frick Collection has published a combined general guide to its collections, history, and building, a softcover volume that features the most recent scholarship and new photography. The book has been produced with the BNP Paribas Foundation, which has created a series of beautifully designed popular guides to French museums. The Frick publication is only the second produced in the United States and will be available in June in both English and French.

Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919), the coke and steel industrialist, philanthropist, and art collector, left his New York residence and his remarkable collection of Western paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts to the public "for the purpose of establishing and maintaining a gallery of art, encouraging and developing the study of fine arts and of advancing the general knowledge of kindred subjects." Designed and built for Mr. Frick in 1913 and 1914 by Thomas Hastings of Carrère and Hastings, the mansion provides a grand domestic setting, reminiscent of the noble houses of Europe, for the masterworks from the Renaissance through the nineteenth century that it contains. The museum opened to the public more than seventy-five years ago, in 1935, and has become a model for similar collector-founded institutions worldwide. Visitors today appreciate the Frick for its unparalled domestic setting, its peerless masterpieces of European art in all media, and the romance of its association with America's Gilded Age. They encounter the work of a wide range of artists including Duccio, Antico, Verrocchio, Bellini, Severo da Ravenna, Holbein, Titian, Bronzino, El Greco, Riccio, Susini, Rembrandt, Velázquez, Vermeer, Boulle, Joubert, Lacroix, Boucher, Carlin, Fragonard, Riesener, Clodion, Hogarth, Gainsborough, Houdon, Goya, Turner, Constable, Ingres, Corot, Manet, Degas, Renoir, and Whistler.

Comments Frick Director Anne L. Poulet, "It is a particular pleasure for me to introduce the latest book devoted to The Frick Collection in which the reader will find succinct and up-to-date information on the Frick's founder and the mansion he built. Above all, it contains studies of a selection of the masterpieces that he acquired, along with those that entered the collection after his death. The text in this volume has been contributed by our curators, each of whom is a specialist in his or her given area, and reflects the latest scholarship available. We are delighted to participate in the prestigious series established by the BNP Paribas Foundation. It is gratifying to know that this beautifully produced and meticulously edited book will serve as a fitting souvenir of a visit to the Frick, and inspire its readers to return often."

Adds Associate Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Colin B. Bailey, "We are delighted to have collaborated with the BNP Paribas Foundation to bring forth a new guide to The Frick Collection. Indeed, in the years since we produced the last broad-based guides [Art in The Frick Collection, 1996, and The Frick Collection: A Tour, 1998] our staff members have been engaged in a wide range of research on the holdings of the institution. In addition, the Collection has been able to acquire, through purchase and gifts, several remarkable works of art that are also included in the new publication. The history of the house has been a subject of much research as well, and in the last five years especially many of the galleries enjoyed by the public have been refurbished, relit, and rephotographed, as has the entire collection. This new book offers the public a thrilling update on the institution and how it is experienced today. For that, we thank BNP Paribas, as well as the many specialists who contributed to the project."

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