If you’ve ever accidentally conflated art museum The Frick Pittsburgh with New York’s renowned Frick Collection, a new exhibit is a good chance to clear up the confusion — and to catch the Pittsburgh premiere of some masterful works of art besides.
“Vermeer, Monet, Rembrandt: Forging the Frick Collections in Pittsburgh & New York” is the first collaboration between the Frick Pittsburgh, founded by Helen Clay Frick, and the Frick Collection, founder by her father, industrialist Henry Clay Frick.
It features some 60 works drawn from both institutions, including three dozen from the Frick Collection. Among the pieces never before exhibited publicly in Pittsburgh are a Rembrandt self-portrait from 1658 and Vermeer’s “Girl Interrupted at Her Music,” one of just three dozen extant by the Dutch artist. Also on loan are paintings by Degas, El Greco, Titian, Whistler, Hals, Van Dyck and J.M.W. Turner.
“This is the largest loan that the Frick Collection has ever approved of works,” said Frick Pittsburgh chief curator Dawn R. Brean.
The Frick Pittsburgh contributes a Monet, numerous medieval and Renaissance religious paintings, and its complete collection of pastels and drawings by Millet — the latter rarely shown, and not exhibited together for two decades, said Brean.
Brean said “Girl Interrupted” is the first Vermeer to appear in Pittsburgh since 1940, when Vermeer’s “The Milkmaid” was shown at the Carnegie Museum of Art.
She said the Rembrandt "is thought to be his most grand, the most impressive self-portrait he ever created.” The artist paints himself as a weathered monarch, though (or perhaps because) he was broke at the time.
As stipulated in Henry Clay Frick’s will, most works from the Frick Collection rarely leave New York City. This show is possible because of a construction project that has closed the museum at least until late 2024.
Brean said a subtext of the show is the sometimes disparate, sometimes complementary approaches to art collecting taken by Henry Clay Frick and Helen, one of his four children.
Frick fils, a coal, coke and steel baron who partnered with Andrew Carnegie, is also remembered for his anti-union policies and notorious role in cracking down on mill workers in the deadly Homestead Steel Strike of 1892. His wealth let him nurture his passion for art, and “Vermeer, Monet, Rembrandt” includes the first artwork he is known to have purchased, an 1880 landscape by George Hetzel.
Brean said Frick’s collection reflects his times as well as his evolving tastes, which around 1900 moved away from contemporary artists and toward the old masters. (She said he acquired the Rembrandt self-portrait in trade for a set of contemporary French landscapes.)
Frick had a particular fondness for Vermeer. The Frick Collection includes three of the Dutch artist’s extant paintings. “Girl Interrupted,” which he bought in 1901, likely hung in his Pittsburgh mansion, Clayton, at least until the family moved to New York, in 1905.
But the Frick Collection as it stands today does not purely reflect Frick’s taste, Brean said. After he died, in 1919, his estate continued amassing art, and “Helen played a huge role in the type of artwork that was brought in.” Whereas Frick eschewed religious paintings, for instance, his daughter was drawn to them, as reflected in the Frick Pittsburgh’s collection. Nor did she share her father’s eye for impressionism.
She also acquired one of the Frick Collection’s best-known works, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ 1845 portrait “Comtesse d’Hassonville,” with its aristocratic subject forthrightly assessing the viewer.
The Frick Collection opened to the public in 1935. Helen Clay Frick opened the Frick Pittsburgh in 1970, and inhabited the neighboring Clayton until her death, in 1984. (The mansion has long been part of the museum and open to tours.)
“The local context of the Frick family’s roots in Western Pennsylvania inspires new ways of looking at these iconic works of art, underlining their place in a history of art in the United States and the significant roles of the women who shaped these collections,” said Frick Collection curator Aimee Ng in a statement.
“Vermeer, Monet, Rembrandt” opens Sat., April 6, and continues through July 14. Pre-sales have been high, and the Frick Pittsburgh recommends getting tickets in advance. More information is here.
