The Frick Collection--an Homage

By now I’ve visited the Frick Collection in New York City a number of times. But it wasn’t too many years back that I’d only heard of Mr. Frick’s magnificent collection. Thinking that my time in Manhattan was limited and besides, the Metropolitan is gigantic, I gave this jewel of a collection a pass. When I finally did come to my senses and visited the Frick Collection, I found it utterly charming and more important, as museums go it's quiet, uncrowded and devoid of the usual hubub. Here’s a little of what I know of the building and its contents.

Situated on 70th, just across 5th Avenue from Central Park, the Collection began as the residence of Mr.and Mrs. Henry Clay Frick in 1914. Before that the Lenox Library (now part of the New York Public Library) occupied the site. Although it was called “bungalow-like” by at least one newspaper, it’s actually an enormous, imposing stone building in the classical style. It was built to the specifications of Mr. Frick both as a residence and as a gallery for his already-imposing collection of art and antiques.

Henry Frick was a multimillionaire industrialist from Pennsylvania who made a fortune in coke and steel during the last decades of the 19th century. Frick initially made millions as the supplier of coke to the Pittsburgh steel mills, then made multi-millions working with Andrew Carnegie. By the turn of the 20th century, he and Carnegie had parted ways and Frick was devoting his attention to art and to his burgeoning collection. Mr. Frick was an autodidact in several areas, most importantly the history of art. A self-made connoisseur, he also had a sharp eye for quality. Although at least one former art dealer said that Frick had little taste and was inept at collecting, the quality of the works housed in this delight of a little museum belies that. In fact, the Frick rivals all but a handful of other world museums. As a singular vision of one man it reminds me a bit of the Philips in Washington D.C., albeit with a different focus entirely. The collection amassed by Frick has been expanded, but today’s Frick Collection is still those masterworks he purchased a hundred years or so ago. The Frick Collection features Vermeer, Rembrandt, Hals, Holbein, Chardin, El Greco, Goya, Velazquez, Gainsborough, Romney, Fragonard, and Boucher, to name only the ones I can remember offhand. We’ll take a look at a few in the remainder of this entry. Mr. Frick either had excellent taste or excellent advice, and his pockets were nearly bottomless. He said that he was collecting these artworks and decorative items so that they would eventually go to the public, and he followed through. In 1931, after Mrs. Frick died, the Frick home became the Frick Collection. Today’s building is an expansion of the original house; the entrance hall, Garden Court, a music room and a gallery or two were added along the east side. The property occupied the block from 70th to 71st Street.

Mr. Frick was apparently not very impressed with American painters and sculptors, although he did use American architects to design his house. The only American painter he collected at all was Whistler, who spent nearly his entire life in Europe although nominally he was American. Mr. Frick did own a portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, the only truly American painter represented. Guidebooks to the collection claim that the Washington portrait is only there because Mr. Frick thought it proper to own a portrait of the great man. But in general, he collected “old masters.”

Let’s look at a few of the works in the collection.

This painting, completed in 1527 by Hans Holbein, depicts Sir Thomas More, the famous humanist who served (and was beheaded by) King Henry VIII of England. As the best portraiture always should, this painting of Sir Thomas gives us a glimpse of his intractable personality, his clear intelligence, and his inner calm. More was Privy Councillor at the time of this portrait but would later become Lord Chancellor and in that capacity refuse to sanction the King’s separation from the Catholic Church. As he did nearly anyone who disagreed with him, Henry had More beheaded. The work hangs alongside the fireplace in the Living Hall, part of the original house, just as it did when the Fricks were alive. Holbein had a startlingly accurate eye, it seems, and his work bears close inspection from anyone who is interested in seeing how well a man could paint half a millennium ago. The velvet of the sleeve, the gold chain, even the stubble of his beard is rendered with exactitude and art. This is one of those paintings that you can study for a long long time. It’s one of my favorite portraits, and I always spend just as long as I dare loitering before it, wondering at the freshness of the colors and the astonishing facility of the man who put them down on this wooden panel so long ago. The painting is about 30”x24” by the way. On the other side of the fireplace is the less arresting portrait of Thomas Cromwell, Thomas More’s mortal enemy. Unlike Sir Thomas, Cromwell supported making Henry the head of the Church and became one of the chief persecuters of Catholics for a few years until he inevitably lost his own head to Henry’s anger. Of the two, I like the More better.

Directly over the fireplace is this El Greco, if you can believe it. Again, this one seems to have hung there during the Frick’s residency, as it does now. This large painting (about 42” x 36”) was painted a few years after the Holbeins, around 1590 or so, by El Greco and his helpers in four different versions. Another, nearly identical, is in the Metropolitan Museum, just up the road. El Greco, whose real name was Domenikos Theotokopoulos (his Spanish name just means “The Greek”), trained in Italy under Titian and painted in Rome for a time before settling in Toledo, Spain. Although I don’t know much about his life beyond that, his Mannerist works are always touching to me. Some experts have written that he was exploring religious ecstasy with his flame-like faces and hands, and perhaps that’s so. Whatever the painter’s motivation, the work in the Frick Collection is simply magnificent. Fittingly, across the room facing St. Jerome are two works by El Greco’s teacher, Titian.

One of my favorite painters is George Romney, a British portraitist of the late 18th century. Romney was a wonderful painter who somehow became obsessed with a woman named Emma Hart. The story goes that he painted many pictures of her and eventually lapsed into mental illness. This 1782 painting by Romney is titled “Lady Hamilton as Nature,” depicts Emma at about seventeen. It hangs in the Library, which is also the repository of Frick's enormous collection of books about art. When this was painted, Emma was already mistress to Charles Greville, who commissioned the portrait. She seems to have passed from her relationship with Greville to Greville’s uncle, Sir William Hamilton, whom she married. Despite being "taken," though, the active little minx also was in a torrid affair with Lord Horatio Nelson until his death at Trafalgar. Anyway, Romney painted about twenty portraits of Emma, being obsessed with her beauty. This one is quite lovely and fresh, and I like the dog a lot.

Another favorite of mine (and everybody else I think) is Johannes Vermeer. Much could be said about this one artist and his meager output of three dozen paintings or so. That’s for another time. The very best Vermeer, in my opinion, is “The Milkmaid,” which resides in Amsterdam at the Rijksmuseum. But perhaps that place could be challenged by “Mistress and Maid,” a lovely work even if the painting isn’t quite so finished as Vermeer’s work usually was. Painted around 1666 or so, long before the bright cadmium colors came along, this yellow robe nonetheless simply glows. This is the last painting bought by Henry Frick before he died in 1919. It’s a little mysterious because we’re let in on a scene where the maid is giving her mistress a piece of paper. The mistress is clearly the seated, richly-dressed and bejeweled woman. And she is apparently writing or reading something. It is tempting to supply one’s own narrative, perhaps even an illicit one. But there’s no indication of exactly what is going on. The mystery adds to the charm of this late work by the Dutch master.

Any museum would be delirious to own a Vermeer, but wonder of wonders, there are two more in the Frick Collection. One of them, “Girl Interrupted at Her Music,” is ordinary and rather dull to my eye, but the other is the “Officer and Laughing Girl,” a real favorite of mine. The officer is in a big, black hat with his back to us the viewers, and the girl is sunlit, smiling, holding what looks like a vase or a bottle—a gift from the man? The chairs in the picture and the map of Holland on the opposite wall of the painting can be seen in other works by Vermeer. If you go to the Frick, whatever you do, don’t miss these two paintings.
One of my favorite Dutch masters of the 17th century is Franz Hals. Hals was a very great portraitist who lived and worked in Haarlem. In his day he made a great deal of money but somehow always managed to be in debt. In the end he went bankrupt and his household goods were sold. Supposedly he had only three mattresses, an armoire, a table and five pictures when his goods were listed for sale. Whatever he had remaining, it’s a terribly sad story. In the Frick there are several of his portraits hanging in the West Gallery. None of the sitters is identified, although one is called “Portrait of a Painter.” Here are the two I like best. The first one is “Portrait of an Elderly Man,” painted about 1627. In this portrait, Hals shows everything I enjoy about his work. His draftsmanship is impeccable and his brushwork has the energy and looseness that make us marvel at his facility. The reproduction here does little justice to Hals and makes a trip to the Frick almost mandatory.

This one is “Portrait of a Woman,” purchased about 1910 by Mr. Frick. It’s tempting to view this painting as pendant to “An Elderly Man,” and indeed they hang in the West Gallery as if they’re a pair. But then again, Hals painted many many portraits so it’s not likely these belonged together. Nevertheless, once again Hals’ mastery of portraiture is clear. Hals had a true knack for loose but expressive brushwork. He’s one of my particular favorites.

The last painting for this entry is a Rembrandt von Rijn self-portrait painted about 1658. Rembrandt made perhaps sixty self-portraits, many brilliant. The most famous, perhaps, is the one in the National Gallery in Washington, painted a year afterward. In that painting, he has represented himself as an alert, intent man of affairs and appears younger than he does in this earlier painting. Here Rembrandt takes on the image of a ruler enthroned, holding a stick (or scepter) and wearing richly embroidered, golden garments. And the image is of a world-weary man who has by this time in his life seen everything and found it wanting. This painting also hangs in the West Gallery and unlike a number of other self-portraits by Rembrandt, this one is quite large and quite imposing at about 52”x 40”.

Rather than making this entry an encyclopedia of the Frick Collection, I urge you to take time to visit this delightful museum any time you happen to be in New York City. The rules of the museum provide for a wonderful experience (children under 10 are not allowed, there are no velvet ropes) and the ambience is gracious, calming, and altogether unforgettable.

A First Time for Everything

Perhaps you remember your first museum visit. I certainly do.


The Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma was the first art museum I ever saw. These days it's called "Gilcrease: The Museum of the Americas," and touts itself as "one of the country's best facilities for the preservation and study of American art and history," according to its web page. But in the mid-2oth century Gilcrease was one of a bare handful of museums devoted to Western art. Today there are considerably more institutions in the western United States that exhibit Native American art, "Western" art (more on that below), or historical art. Anyway, around that time we went to the museum for a school field trip, a mass of elementary school students, gleeful at escaping from the classroom and giddy with the excitement.


The Gilcrease, as I'll call it throughout this piece, was then as now located northwest of downtown Tulsa in the Osage Hills. Thomas Gilcrease, after making a fortune in the oil business, began buying art--a lot of art. In 1943 he opened The Museum of the American Indian in San Antonio, Texas, but it attracted little attention. In 1947 he bought an entire art collection. Today that collection is the nucleus of the Gilcrease. The group of works contained forty-six paintings by Charley Russell, the famous "cowboy artist," plus nearly thirty of his bronzes, but the jewel of the collection was (and is) bronzes and paintings by Frederic Remington. Remington began his career in art as an illustrator but made the leap to fine art in the early 20th century. In addition to works by these two iconic western artists, Gilcrease's acquisition included photographs by Edward Curtis and an archive of documents and correspondence of well known figures in the American West. Gilcrease, himself a member of the Creek tribe, exemplified a new interest in the Old West and the American Indian. (He had made his fortune primarily because as a Creek he had been granted 160 acres in Oklahoma that just happened to be on top of the largest oil discovery in North America up to then--what luck!) After the lack of interest in his Texas museum, in 1949 Gilcrease founded the museum I visited around a decade or so later.

Today the institute is called (rather grandly) Gilcrease Museum of the Americas, but the core of the collection is still Remington and Russell, with a healthy dollop of other well-knowns, including Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, and George Catlin, among others.

So lets take a look at some of the features of the collection. You can't talk about Western Art without talking about Frederic Remington. Although many think he must have been a westerner, Remington was actually from New York. During the late 19th century, he made a reputation (and a great deal of money) as an illustrator for various periodicals and books, but he yearned for recognition as a fine artist. Although Remington did briefly attend art school at Yale, he wasn't that interested and left when he was still only eighteen. Refusing to go back to school, Remington instead went west to Montana in 1881 when he was about twenty. The mythical "Old West" was already fading by Remington's time, but the hook was set and he would return numerous times to sketch and paint. Nevertheless, except for brief periods, he never lived in the west.

The painting to the right, "The Stampede," is one of my favorites by Remington. It dates from 1908, a year before the painter's death, the period when he was intent on throwing off the label of illustrator. To that end, he began a series of extensive studies that resulted in a series of about 70 paintings he dubbed nocturnes. In these paintings, of which "The Stampede" is one of the finest examples, he throughly studied the color of night as he saw it. (For other examples, see the entry for the 2003 exhibition The Color of Night at http://www.nga.gov/programs/abstracts/remington.shtm .) If you look carefully, you can see too that Remington was a master draftsman. His animals and humans all have real bones, convincing anatomy, and personality. And he could render action better than many of his contemporaries. Note that the galloping horse has all four hooves off the ground. Clearly, Remington had studied the pioneering photographic work of Edweard Muybridge.

Although he made his name in painting, by the end of the 19th century Remington had also begun sculpting in bronze. The Gilcrease is rich in original bronzes by Remington and now hold 18 of his originals. Today you can buy reproductions via many sources, and there is a brisk trade in fakes. But the Gilcrease pieces were all produced by the artist himself. To the right is a view of the one that I've always loved. Remington called it "Off the Range," but it has come to be known as "Comin' Through the Rye," which in my view is much more appropriate. Here we have four cowboys, probably fresh off a cattle drive, tanked to the maximum (hence the "rye") and having a great time. Remington originally sold these through Tiffany's in New York City.

Besides Remington, the Gilcrease has perhaps one of the finest collections of Charley Russell's work. Russell was perhaps as well-known as Remington a century ago, although today I suspect his reputation is less glossy. Russell, like Remington, was not a native of the Old West but instead was born in St. Louis. Unlike Remington, though, Russell went West and stayed there, emigrating to Montana in 1880 to become a cowboy. He seems to have had no formal art training, and in fact his reputation was of "cowboy artist" came after a small watercolor of his, painted in the early 1890s, was circulated by the owner of a ranch where Charley was a cowboy. A his fame grew, Russell made many friends among well-off collectors of his works, including actors and film makers such as William S. Hart, Will Rogers, and Douglas Fairbanks. He died in 1926.

My favorite from that first visit to Gilcrease is this one, aptly titled "Meat's Not Meat 'Til It's In The Pan," is one that caught my adolescent fancy, probably because the title is humorous and the painting clearly needs the viewer to add some narrative. Russell was never the great draftsman or colorist that Remington was, but for a primarily self-taught painter, he was damn good.

Gilcrease is also a repository of American history and anthropology. The museum holds one of the circulated copies of the Declaration of Independence, signed by Ben Franklin, among other documents and letters by Founding Fathers, early maps, and even correspondence from the family of Christopher Columbus. There is also an extensive collection of Native American artifacts--clothing, pottery, basketry, and weapons.

If you're ever in Tulsa, take a couple of hours and visit. It's well worth your time.

Museums in History

The word museum used to mean "a place of study" and was inimately connected to scholarly work. The word derives from the Alexandrian temple called the Mouseion. It was built to honor the nine minor Greek goddesses known as Muses who presided over creative activity in aniquity. Over two millennia ago the Mouseion was a school and library; our word museum is rooted in that ancient Greek name. And the traditional meaning seems to have lasted for 1500 years or more. So a scientist in the 17th century might have worked in his personal museum, not a laboratory; a scholar often had a museum in his home--the kind of home office we'd call his study.

By the 19th century the word became closely connected to curiosity shows, displays of artifacts and the like. The great showman P.T. Barnum had a "museum" in New York City that was more like a carnival sideshow. Barnum's American Museum was located in lower Manhattan for more than twenty years including the Civil War before being destroyed by fire in 1865. Ever the showman, Barnum made a fortune charging visitors to see everything from the Cardiff Giant to General Tom Thumb, the most famous midget who ever lived. Barnum seems to have salved his scalawag conscience by providing serious lectures and displays as well; even devoting some space to natural history, notably by showing live animals and taxidermy exhibits. There were nods to political and social history, too. The American Museum owned paintings, wax figures, and personal memorabilia of a number of very famous people. In short, Barnum's place housed just about anything you could use to extract an admission charge for the public to see. Surprisingly, Barnum was both a teetotaler and a campaigner for temperance and promoted both in lectures at his establishment. If you'd like to read more, you can read more at http://www.lostmuseum.cuny.edu/archives/museum.htm.

Perhaps because of Barnum, among others, people in the 20th century began to view museums as places where virtually any collection of items was put on display, rather than as places of contemplation and education. It's tempting to say that the Smithsonian Institution also contributed to the trend; its vast and eclectic holdings spread all over Washington and environs represent the ultimate museum. And besides the well-known art and natural science museums of today, oddball museums devoted to nearly anything you can imagine have popped up across the world. Today you can visit museums of cheese, museums of barbed wire, museums of Bad Art. It's arguable that museums today are more like Barnum's and less like Alexandria's.

Quite a few contemporary museums of art rely on blockbuster shows of popular artists or movements to attract more visitors and hence more income. It costs considerable money to run an establishment like the Museum of Modern Art in New York and if the institution wasn't endowed by a billionaire the way the Getty (in Los Angeles) was or is not run by a government the way the National Gallery in Washington is, then the huge sums and considerable publicity accrued by running popular exhibitions are very very important. So we see continual (and repetitive) shows of Impressionists or Post-impressionists. Or we have head-to-head shows of Picasso and Braque. Or we see yet another show of the work of the gloriously mad Vincent van Gogh.

Luckily, the best art museums in this country do occasionally organize shows of the lesser-known artists of past centuries and the present day.

Why?

Because.

Because as the years have rolled by my visits to art museums (and other, similar institutions) have enriched my life, added knowledge, staggered me with their glories. And of course on occasion certain museums have been less than a pleasant experience, depending on all sorts of variables--crowds, too-strict guards, lousy exhibitions, and other failings.

Because museums are often the sites of the latest, most comprehensive, biggest "blockbuster" exhibitions of whatever Impressionist or abstractionist or modernist or concept has currency in our popular culture.

Because museums offer us windows into other lives, other ideas, other locations and times.

And of course, because I can.

So herewith is a blog devoted to museums visited by the author and evaluated according to his own very personal taste and ideas. None of the posts here should be read as anything except my opinion. As such this blog probably has little value for those who want to know about the latest art exhibitions (although if I happened to be in the museum during a show I might comment on it). And if you are eager to learn about contemporary art galleries, or you're curious about the latest in conceptual art or installation art or any of the myriad newer kinds of art, you should look elsewhere. This blog is written for my own amusement and my own favorites are all you'll find. This blog will be decidedly personal.

Nor will I argue the meaning of art, or "what is art" because those are circular and non-productive discussions. Look elsewhere for arguments on aesthetics, or the ability (or lack of it) of any of the usual artists/targets, or for any of the dozens of disagreements that have characterized the ever-shifting scene in art.

I don't know much about this technology but as the blog continues there will doubtless be additions, links, indexes, images, and who-knows-what-all that finds its way into these pixels.

Last, although most people don't, if you want to post a comment, great. It's fun to hear from the rest of the world.