Art in the Frick Collection (Frick Museum)

Frick Collection,Charles/Davis Ryskamp

ISBN 10: 0810926687 / ISBN 13: 9780810926684

Published by Abrams Books for Young Readers September 1996, 1996

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 585224

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Art in the Frick Collection (Frick Museum)
• Publisher: Abrams Books for Young Readers September 1996
• Publication Date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0810926687
• ISBN 13: 9780810926684
• Binding: Trade Paperback
• Condition: Used - Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Art

About this title

Synopsis

Covering a wide array of great paintings, as well as rarely-published sculptural treasures and numerous masterpieces of the decorative arts, this is an illustrated survey of the Frick Collection, housed in a Fifth Avenue mansion in New York City. It was founded by Henry Clay Frick, an industrialist whose interest in and knowledge of art led him to begin buying artworks in about 1880. Separate sections of the book are devoted to paintings, sculpture and the decorative arts, presenting colour reproductions of some of the collection's most prized works. They include Bellini's "St Francis in the Desert", Holbein the Younger's portrait of Sir Thomas More, El Greco's "Purification of the Temple", three Vermeers, seascapes and landscapes by Turner, and works by Degas, Renoir, Monet and Whistler. There are also portrait busts by Andrea del Verrocchio and Jean-Antoine Houdon, and furniture made for Marie-Antoinette, as well as views of the mansion and the richly furnished rooms in which the works are installed.

Review

In Art in the Frick Collection, museum director Charles Ryskamp takes readers on a tour of the Frick's permanent collection, including paintings by Rembrandt and Vermeer as well as Renaissance sculpture and 18th-century French furnishings. Ryskamp begins with a biography of Henry Clay Frick, detailing his development as an art collector, and then guides us through the evolution of the museum, which is housed in the Fifth Avenue mansion Frick himself helped design and in which he lived until his death. Large (in some cases full-page) photographs of art are naturally the focus here, but the accompanying text, written by the museum's curators, elucidates both the work and the artists who rendered it. Illustrating why Frick's collection is a model for many other notable American art collections, this graceful book is worth the price of admission.