Past

Featuring approximately seventy drawings, Poussin, Claude, and Their World: Seventeenth-Century French Drawings from the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, included outstanding masterpieces by Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain, as well as lesser-known masters such as Sébastien Bourdon, Simon Vouet, Noël Coypel, Charles Le Brun, Eustache Le Sueur, and others. Selected by Emmanuelle Brugerolles, Curator of Drawings at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, and Colin B.

This exhibition was the first devoted exclusively to the drawings of Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805), the remarkable eighteenth-century French painter and draftsman.

A vogue for furniture featuring secret compartments and complex mechanical devices swept France during the eighteenth century. Featured in the Cabinet was a mechanical reading and writing table with Sèvres porcelain plaques, attributed to Martin Carlin (c. 1730–85), a German-born cabinetmaker who worked in Paris and created furniture for such notables as Madame Du Barry and the daughters of Louis XV. Normally exhibited in the Fragonard Room in closed position, the table was displayed partially open, and photographs revealed the mechanisms that make possible its moving parts.

Gilbert Stuart was the foremost portrait painter of the newly formed United States. He painted many of the most prominent figures of his day, including the first five American presidents, but none of the thousand portraits he made attained such renown as the three he painted from life of George Washington and those he replicated to order throughout his later career. To most visitors to The Frick Collection, Stuart's George Washington is instantly recognizable; in a collection of mainly European masterpieces, it is the only painting of an American by an American.

After an initial preview last summer, visitors were again able to enjoy two eighteenth-century tapestries woven by the Brussels workshop of Peter van den Hecke (c. 1752). Displayed in the Music Room, these rare hangings are important for their state of preservation, the significance of their design, their royal provenance, and the evidence regarding the identity of their maker and manufacture.

In 1999, Winthrop Kellogg Edey bequeathed to The Frick Collection a remarkable collection of twenty-five clocks, fourteen watches, and an extensive reference library relating to the history of time measurement. Over nearly five decades, Edey had purchased a large number of timepieces, many of which he later exchanged or sold to upgrade with artifacts of greater significance. This continual refinement enabled him to assemble a small but exceptionally fine collection, illustrating both the stylistic and the technical development of clocks and watches from about 1500 to 1830.

Master Drawings from the Smith College Museum of Art opened at The Frick Collection on June 19, 2001. The exhibition, organized by Ann H. Sievers, Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Smith College Museum of Art, featured 68 drawings — all examples of superior draftsmanship — and allowed visitors to view drawings ranging in time from Old Master pieces to the most recent work, Mark Tobey's Echo of 1954.

The Frick Collection's St. Jerome and Purification of the Temple comprised the core of this special exhibition, which was shown in the Oval Room. Together with five loan paintings — all replicas or versions of the two Frick canvases — these works revealed different aspects of the master's recycling of his own compositions. Although El Greco was a highly original painter, he frequently made replicas or related versions of his works, at a time when few if any other major artists did so.

In summer 2001, visitors enjoyed two eighteenth-century tapestries woven by the Brussels workshop of Peter van den Hecke (c. 1752). On display in the Music Room, these rare hangings are important for their state of preservation, the significance of their design, their royal provenance, and the evidence regarding the identity of their maker and manufacture. They depict scenes from Cervantes' novel Don Quixote de la Mancha, which proved to be an important literary source in the fields of fine and decorative arts for over two hundred years.

In honor of the spring 2001 exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art,Vermeer and the Delft School, The Frick Collection installed its three paintings by the artist in a special manner. For the first time in over fifty years, the works by Johannes Vermeer (1632-75) Mistress and Maid, Officer and Laughing Girl, and Girl Interrupted at her Music were hung together in one gallery at the Collection, the South Hall, offering visitors an opportunity to consider these treasures side by side.