Past

When is a work of art complete? And when do further additions detract from the desired result? These questions lie at the heart of aesthetic theory and have preoccupied artists, critics, and collectors for centuries. The problem of "finish" is particularly relevant in the graphic arts, in which images are developed in stages and often distributed at various points in their making.

Frick Collection visitors had the extended opportunity to view a painting by the Renaissance artist Parmigianino (1503–40), Portrait of a Man with a Book. The work was on loan from the York Art Gallery, and took its place as part of the highly praised special exhibition A Beautiful and Gracious Manner: The Art of Parmigianino, which closed to the public on April 18 after setting winter attendance records.

Born in Parma in 1503 and known as Parmigianino after his native city, Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola lived only thirty-seven years, yet in that brief time the quantity, variety, and sheer beauty of his drawings came to exemplify the art of draftsmanship. Less than twenty years after his death, the theorist Ludovico Dolce observed, "Parmigianino endowed his creations with a certain beauty which makes whoever looks at them fall in love with them. So delicate and accurate was his draftsmanship that every drawing of his . . . . astonishes the eyes of the beholder."

Celebrating the tercentenary of the artist's birth, this exhibition was the first survey of François Boucher's (1703–1770) drawings in more than twenty-five years. Featuring approximately eighty sheets — few of which have ever been on view in the United States — the exhibition provided a new understanding of Boucher's prolific output of works on paper and demonstrated his extraordinary technique and style as a draftsman.

This was the first exhibition devoted to Willem van Tetrode, the Northern sculptor who brought the tradition of the classically inspired Italian Renaissance bronze home to the Netherlands. During almost twenty years in Italy, Tetrode studied and restored antique marble sculpture and worked for celebrated artists such as Benvenuto Cellini. From these experiences Tetrode invented expressive small bronzes showing the male nude in poised or violent motion. These heroic nudes transformed the Renaissance bronze statuette into a powerful Northern idiom.

In celebration of the publication of the ninth and final volume of the series of comprehensive catalogues of The Frick Collection, a selection of works on paper were placed on view in the Cabinet. Although Henry Clay Frick was interested primarily in paintings, he did periodically acquire drawings and prints throughout his collecting career. Following his death in 1919, the museum has continued to purchase, on occasion, important examples of graphic art; its collection of works on paper, though small, is one of high quality.

Marking the centenary of the death of James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), The Frick Collection presented Whistler, Women, and Fashion — the first in-depth exploration of the artist's lifelong involvement in fashion as an essential aspect of his work.

This was the first retrospective exhibition for the eighteenth-century French still-life painter Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744-1818), a highly regarded artist who was one of the favorite painters of Marie-Antoinette. Through a selection of approximately forty of her paintings, the exhibition demonstrates Vallayer-Coster's artistic development as one of the foremost still-life artists of her generation. Accompanying the exhibition is the first catalogue to present the majority of Vallayer-Coster's known oeuvre in full color.

During the winter of 2002 to 2003, visitors enjoyed two eighteenth-century tapestries woven by the Brussels workshop of Peter van den Hecke (c. 1752). On display in the Music Room on a half-year rotational basis, 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.

To mark its centenary, the Toledo Museum of Art lent twelve of its greatest European paintings. Masterpieces of European Painting from the Toledo Museum of Art included exceptional works by artists such as Piero di Cosimo (1462-1521), Jacopo Bassano (about 1510-92), El Greco (1541-1614), Gustave Courbet (1819-77), James Tissot (1836-1902), and Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), many of whom are not represented in The Frick Collection's own holdings. The presentation of these treasures illuminated another chapter in American collecting.