The first joint venture between the Frick Collection, started by billionaire Henry Clay Frick, and his daughter Helen Clay Frick, founder of Frick Pittsburgh, is called “Vermeer, Monet, Rembrandt: Forging the Frick Collections in Pittsburgh & New York.”
About sixty pieces total, including twelve from the Frick Collection, are included that come from both institutions. Among the works never before shown in public in Pittsburgh are a self-portrait by Rembrandt from 1658 and one of the three surviving paintings by the Dutch artist Vermeer, titled “Girl Interrupted at Her Music.” Paintings by Degas, El Greco, Titian, Whistler, Hals, Van Dyck, and J.M.W. Turner are also available for rental.
“This is the largest loan that the Frick Collection has ever approved of works,” said Frick Pittsburgh chief curator Dawn R. Brean.
A Monet, a number of religious paintings from the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and the entirety of Millet’s pastel and sketch collection—the latter of which hasn’t been displayed collectively in twenty years—are all contributed by the Frick Pittsburgh, according to Brean.
Brean stated that Vermeer’s “Girl Interrupted” is his first exhibition in Pittsburgh since 1940, when the Carnegie Museum of Art hosted a display of “The Milkmaid.”
She said the Rembrandt “is thought to be his most grand, the most impressive self-portrait he ever created.” Despite being broke at the time, the artist portrays himself as a worn-out king.
The majority of the Frick Collection’s artwork is rarely taken outside of New York City, as specified in Henry Clay Frick’s will. Due to a building project, the museum will be closed until late 2024 at the latest, making this show conceivable.
According to Brean, a subtext of the exhibition is sometimes complementary, sometimes divergent approaches to art collecting that Henry Clay Frick and his child, Helen, took.
In addition to his business partnership with Andrew Carnegie, Frick fils is a well-known figure for his anti-union stance and his renowned involvement in suppressing mill workers during the 1892 Homestead Steel Strike.
Due to his fortune, he was able to pursue his love of painting, and “Vermeer, Monet, Rembrandt” features the first piece of art he is known to have bought—a landscape by George Hetzel from 1880.
Brean claimed that Frick’s collection captures both his era and his changing tastes, which shifted away from modern artists and towards the old masters about 1900. She stated he traded a collection of modern French landscape paintings for the Rembrandt self-portrait.
Frick was especially fond of Vermeer. Three of the surviving paintings by the Dutch artist are in the Frick Collection. He most certainly hung “Girl Interrupted,” which he purchased in 1901, on his Pittsburgh estate, Clayton, at least until the family relocated to New York in 1905.
